After re-watching the rushes and constantly thinking about it, I decided since my parents will be back from their holiday with my lil' bro on Thursday, I might as well try and shoot as much as I can in my room before anything happens to it. Unfortunately, time is a factor, so after thinking about it long and hard, I decided something rash:
I'll shoot me.
It seemed feasible on paper. Set up the tripod, get a lot of pick-up shots and fix up the pacing in the edit so the shots don't look so static. This is of utmost importance to me because I hate static shots set up on a tripod. The only question was when.
The answer: this morning.
Shooting the footage was the only thing that got me out of bed this morning. The night before I rehearsed how I was gonna set everything up and referred to the earlier footage to make sure the props' positions matched. I then set up the tripod, angle the camera, press record and act out the scene three times. I did this for about four scenes then shot some close ups of picking up stuff, opening and closing closets, etc.
One thing I discovered after watching the rushes was that the camera had a quite wide angle lens which was warping my already chubby face into Stay-Puft-Marshmallow-Man-blimpiness, so for all my shots I set up the camera further back, zoomed it in and made sure with the aid of the monitor that I was roughly in shot. Since it was so close, it was easier to hide the mic. In one of the scenes I just held it, in others I lodged it in a crevice or between clothes as close as possible.
Later on in the day, after my meeting in Subang, I pulled out the camera whilst driving in the heart of KL to capture some random KL-ites as they go about their KL duties. I was also hoping for a shot of the three tall structures that are to appear in the movie - the Dataran Merdeka flagpole, the KL tower and the KLCC twin towers - but no chance. No worries, though. I now know where're the best parts to get the shots.
I also have another messed up plan in mind: to gaffa tape the camera to the dashboard of my car and shoot whilst I drive to the office. I don't want to have to wait to get my footage, and I need loads of it right now because as each day passes I keep thinking of better ways to get the shot.
You see, usually I wouldn't bother. For 'Nicotine' there was an entire dialogue scene that needed to be reshot because the angles were such that both characters didn't look like they were talking to each other no matter how you edited. But, instead of re-shooting, I rewrote the scene using the existing footage and fixed it in post.
For 'Ciplak', though, I don't want to do that. I want to get the shot, and it's getting tough. I'm quite sure even with all the footage I'll have at the end of the day there will be loads of bits that won't be right, but we'll try and fix what we can.
But speed is of the essence. There's a scene where Tony will be making a cameo appearance as a fellow film geek and since his scenes are indoors, I'm writing into the script that he keeps his windows boarded so I can shoot his scene at night and use indoor lighting set-ups.
What? His character's supposed to be a bit eccentric.
I'm also wonderng whether we can shoot the night scenes sooner, and have even considered re-shooting all of the second days footage differently. I guess the problem I'm finding with shooting a feature is that I can't edit it straight away so I can't 100% see whether something works or not. Need more footage so I can start editing, dammit.
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