As I parked the car I heard the familiar riff of 'Fade Away' and thought to myself, "fuck me, they've started!" I ran like buggery, up and down and up and down flights of stairs and into the hall where they were playing and proceeded to shoot non-stop, jumping off one end of the stage and running across to jump onto the other end before running back down the stairs and back to my car the second they finished.
All this running and jumping and stairs did not do my legs well. As some of you know, I am incredibly unfit and I ended up pulling a muscle. After realizing this I dreaded the next day of shooting. Will I end up walking around with a limp in my scenes? How very 'Melinda & Melinda' (if you didn't know, in that movie Will Ferrell plays a character who's a failed actor who plays every role with a limp).
Then it was a rush back to The Hive to test out the microphone I borrowed from Jordan. The night before I had gone to Jordan's house to pick it up, assuming he'd already found it. No luck. After trawling through endless boxes we found the mic but the cable was broken. It looked like a standard stereo jack so I told him it'd be ok and that I'll figure something out.
When I finally tested the microphone I discovered that the stereo jack for the mic is very unique: it's a screw-in jack. My regular cables were, well, regular cables, and to keep the jack in I had to gaffer tape the fucker.
But here's the thing: because it's not the proper jack, my guess is that the stereo jack's thingeys (I'm not sure of the technical terms) didn't align with the mic's stereo thingeys. The result? A mono mic.
But it worked well, and isolated my dialogue in my tests better and clearer than the camera's on-board mic. Done.
I then realized I hadn't set dressed my room yet. The guy's bedroom had to look like he was a real movie freak. I want to establish this early on, at least subconsciously, so that later on as we find out more about the character it doesn't seem so sudden that he's crazy about movies and wants to be a filmmaker. I had two Sin City posters and a Breakfast at Tiffany's poster back at home that we're full size, but I'd need more than that. So what do I do for the next hour and a half? Take out all my copies of Empire and Total Film, slip in Superman on the DVD player to keep me company and start ripping some pages out.
(I almost forgot how good the original Superman movie was. Although Lex Luthor and his gang are a bit too comical now that I'm older. But Christopher Reeves is the BOMB.)
Tired and in dire need of sleep, I brought back whatever movie related posters and pictures I had and went back to my parents house to sleep. It was four in the morning, and I had to be up by at the very latest 10.30am if I was going to shoot at 11am on Saturday.
Saturday: Ahmad woke me up via phone to tell me he was outside waiting at the gate. The plan was to have a quick breakfast, set-up and start shooting ASAP. I got up, put on whatever clothes I had and made my way to the mamak for some toast and orange juice.
At the mamak, Ariff (my D.O.P.), sms-ed me:
'Might be reaching a little late, i'm still moving machine from my shop to kl...'
(The guy works at a photo lab, and they were moving shop that morning.)
Since Ariff was gonna be late, I figured I'd get Ahmad to buy all the extra stuff we needed for the shoot (reflectors and tracing paper for our 'lighting set-up' which is basically a borrowed Ikea lamp from someone at the office) and I'd spend the morning doing up my room with the posters and stuff.
I still had to build my boom-mic (which I shall post photo's of soon) which basically consists of Jordan's mic on a short mic stand with cloth wrapped around the grip so that it doesn't pick up too much of the mic's shakes. The mic stand is then gaffa tapped to a long wooden stick.
(Raimi fans: altogether now - "This... is my BOOM stick!").
Whilst I was making the boom stick Ariff was figuring out the lighting and angles. Ahmad filmed us all doing this which I might upload also.
By the time we were ready to shoot it was about 4pm. we were chasing day light and my girlfriend had already finished work so she came over to help out. Ariff shot, Ahmad held the boom-stick and my girlfriend held the lamp and reflector.
It didn't help that, on-top of us trying to get as much day light as possible before the sun went down, it kept raining on and off. Then Mommy Cat refused to act. She was doing exactly what I wanted her to do in the film in the morning but now, after seeing the crew she had never met, she ran off, 'meow'-ing all the way to her safe spot under the sofa. No more special attention to Mommy Cat.
My maid also refused to act so I had to cut her scene out. When I wanted to shoot my shower scene I didn't realize how dificult it would be to emulate the scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off until I found myself constantly wiping shampoo out of my eyes. As we kept shooting, the sun kept going down and by the time we had to shoot the seventh shot it was already too dark. Fuck it. Tomorrow's another day and I've got a gimpy leg.
Sunday: Even though we stared late on Saturday, I didn't want to start any earlier than noon. The last few days of the week had left me exhausted and my leg was getting worse. Everyone came roughly on time and we shot the last interior shot before moving to exteriors. Ariff brought his photo friend (whose name I can't remember right now) to help out.
Today was much more acting intensive and that's when I realized that even though I wrote the fucker, memorizing the lines and acting it is another matter. I think my accent when a bit wonky but I'm sure (fingers crossed) it'll come out ok. We shot around the house for about an hour and a bit. Halfway through a cop car pulled up and eyeballed us. I smiled and waved.
We then hopped into our respective cars and went to our first outside location: Plaza Damansara. It's an office area, so I expected it to be quiet and empty on a Sunday. Fat chance. For some reason the mamak stalls were packed so we were contsantly looking for quieter areas to shoot. I decided for these exteriors to use the onboard mic because we'd be moving around so much. Thing is, a lot of the shots weren't as move-y as I thought and we could've set up with the boom-stick. Damn. We'll fix it in post.
Somehow Ahmad managed to get hold of a clapper board. At first it was kinda fun, having a clapper board and starting every scene with some guy shouting, "Scene 23 take 1!"
Unfortunately, after a while it got pretty fucking irritating. Especially when the person's taking way too long to set up the clapper board (of all things) before shouting, "Scene 23 take 9!"
We wrapped up around 4pm with about 26 or so scenes done in total over the weekend (bearing in mind each scene is about a third of a page). After having a quick drink with the crew I went home to check out the rushes (although I guess this term doesn't apply for video).
They say you gain about 10 pounds on TV. When you're borderline tubby this is not good news.
I watched the rushes and I couldn't help but keep thinking to myself, "fuck me, I'm ugly. I am an ugly fat fuck."
(I know what you're thinking, Man Meth'.)
I kept saying this to myself as I watched and for most of the night I kept bitching about it to my girlfriend who wanted nothing more than to relax and eat some tom yam. As we had dinner I watched the television and watched ad after ad, all featuring pretty boy male models.
"That! That's how a lead character for a movie should look!" I exclaimed.
"Would you rather have the lead be good looking but can't say the lines like you want them to or look like you and say the lines right?" was the general reply from my girlfriend. That shut me up.
The fact of the matter is, there aren't that many good young actors in KL. Even less who'd do this kinda thing for free (strangely, though, there are some quite good young actresses). Plus, I wanted to shoot this fast and I didn't want to involve anyone I didn't know too well. We'll soon see what people think of my so-called acting abilities when the movies done.
But back to the rushes. Now that I've gotten through my first weekend of shooting I know roughly how my crew performs. By the second day things went faster and smoother, but there's a lot of footage from the first day I'd like to reshoot. I'm even tempted to reshoot it myself using the tripod. I can't make heads or tails of this footage yet because it's only about ten minutes or so of usable footage. I might cut the first ten minutes to see how it looks, leaving 'scene missing' cards on whatever bits haven't been shot yet.
Unfortunately, the very first scene is a telephone conversation between my character and Man Method's character in England, and I don't have that footage.
Holla back, Meth'!
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