Time is a Motherfucker

So I get a call from Tony last night. Apparently the call-for-entries deadline for the 10th Malaysian Video Awards has been extended to the 1st of November.

Bastards.

This leaves me in a tricky position. I could either rush the production to make it for the MVA's or say "fuck you, Mr. MVA! Thanks for letting us now about the deadline at the last minute, asswipe!" Alternatively, I could pass them a rough cut and still keep working on the post for the international awards.

You see, the thing is, if it wasn't fasting month I could probably pull this off in the nick of time. If it wasn't fasting month and I still had some leave left I could probably pull this off no sweat. I wonder what's the deal with unpaid leave. How's that work? Maybe I should just call in sick.

Either way, the temptation to send my crzy lil' movie to the MVA's is great. My rational side is telling me to take my time and shoot it at its own pace and just get it ready for the Singapore International Film Festival.

Or maybe I should just call the curator. Who's the curator?

Tony's call came whilst I was transferring footage from production days 1, 2 and 3 to my desktop. Since it's been so difficult for me to imagine the movie right now, I've been doing a rough cut of the movie. By 3am I got about five pages of the script edited (with the scene from the UK replaced with a 'Scene Missing' title card). Surprisingly, most of the footage is working out. More surprisingly, the sound that I thought was great when we were shooting turns out to be incredibly teeny-tiny. I foresee a lot of audio manipulation.

After editing it I realized something: no music. I stripped in some temporary music for now (Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" and Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick") and press play again. Now it's working. I comepletely forgot about music, it's making a world of difference.

To give you an idea as to how hectic the scheduling has been, I only started editing at about 1am. Digitizing the footage was from 11.30pm. Reason I started so late was because before that I was shooting footage of Dragonred for their music video. Then, this weekend I'll be acting for Tony's short film 'Wrath' where I'll be playing a serial killer. Tony said shooting might only take a day, he's taking it easy since the deadline for the MVA's have been pushed. Hence I may be able to shoot some more footage for 'Ciplak' this weekend too. I checked with Ariff, he should be ok.

Thing is, after editing and driving home I only managed to fall asleep around 4.30am. Then my mom woke me up at 5am for 'sahur' (during fasting month, Muslims wake up before dawn to grab a quick bite). After eating I couldn't sleep till 6.30am and woke up at 9.30am.

I am now dead tired. My brain hurts. My eyes hurt. My arms and legs hurt. I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep like a cat on a sunny Sunday. Instead I have to spend a whole day pretending to work. After this I'll be meeting up with my girlfriend and I have two choices: either relax and watch DVD's in her arms or keep on working on this damn movie. For inspiration and drive I've got my copy of Robert Rodriguez's "Rebel Without A Crew" at work to remind me that even though I'm going through a tough time, it still hasn't reached the levels of insanity he had.

(Just realized this when readin the book: Rodriguez and I have the same birthday: June 20th. Does this date create kids with hair-brained hectic schemes on purpose?)

I'm seriously considering taking some days off to finish my movie.