Everything started building up to incredibly insane heights by Friday. I hadn't planned my shoot for the weekend, there was a strong possibility that I wouldn't have a cameraman on Sunday, I had an open house to attend on Saturday and a gig and most of all, the Y2k album had been delayed severely.

With exhaustion levels reaching killing point, it came down to crunch time: either concentrate on the movie this weekend or concentrate on the band. In the end, I chose the latter. I signed on to make the band's dreams come to fruition long before I even decided to shot 'Ciplak' and it wouldn't be fair of me to hold it off any longer. So no shooting was done over the weekend.
But that doesn't mean there was no shooting.




Way out West from here, in the lovely surroundings of Shoreditch in England, Man Method shot two of the UK scenes with his cast and crew (who's names I can't remember and those that I can I can't spell too well, so I'll refer to them as the 'Shoreditch Collective' for now).

The scenes shot were with the character 'Zash', best friend to my character, as we both talk over the phone and, from what I saw of the photos by the Meth', it should look quite cool indeed.

This weekend (this week, for that matter) my priorities will be towards (a) the band, (b) my physical and mental health and (c) work (notice how work comes third?). I'm trying my best to mix down the Y2k album to its utmost quality (a task which is quite difficult considering my supreme lack of decent equipment) to hopefully send off on Wednesday (if not, Friday, but if we send it this Wednesday we won't have to pay postage) but we still don't have all the vocal tracks recorded, which I'm doing tonight. Then, after playing at the Road to Soundstage gig on Saturday I'll be zooming off to Genting with some friends for some R&R.
Then, on the 11th and 12th of December, I'll be shooting everythingelse that requires daylight (including my still unplanned action sequence) whilst the Shoreditch Collective shoot the scenes with Neil the gangster (you thought I'd make a movie and not include gangsters? Pshhh...).

Even with the Y2k album I have been spending some of my time on Ciplak: editing the teaser trailer. I've finished about 55 seconds of it so far and it looks pretty cool (I think). I've cut it supremely fast so that hopefully you won't notice the... amateur-ish ness of it all. It's a bit tough considering I've only got 60% of the movie shot and that other 40% is a large bulk of the story and other cast, but as a teaser I guess it'll do. I'll then do up a quick teaser site so that people can download the trailer and find out a bit more about the movie.

Unfortunately my emotional and physical side is a bit on the downer. The day after the gig I woke up with an incredibly stiff and painful neck. Must have been all the headbanging on stage whilst playing. But that's not all. On the way out of the gig on Saturday my bag got caught at the side of the exit which yanked my arm out a bit more than would be safe for the human body. Now the muscle around my armpit/right side of the pec is in intense pain everytime I lift my arm more than 45 degrees upwards. Spend yesterday on painkillers and muscle relaxants only to be greeted by my parents in, to put it lightly, a bad mood. I won't go into details, but let's just say after that 'little' talk I felt quite worthless indeed.

Fuck it. I'm still making this movie. It may come out like shit, but it's myshit.
Hehehe... Gwen Stefani... "that's my shit, that's my shit".

I'm quoting Gwen Stefani. I need help.

The Weekend Clincher

Weekend's looking... weird. Either way it's packed, dependant on sunshine and the weather is still looking weird. This morning I saw and felt the sun and I couldn't have felt happier until it decided to play peek-a-boo with the clouds followed by hide and seek.

And the fucker's winning.

I'm planning to shoot Tony's scene on Saturday in the day and if the weather's looking good I'll get some pick-up shots of the car zooming past and what-have-you (plenty of scenes with my little red Kelisa. I should be sponsored). Then on Sunday hopefully I'll be able to shoot Ben & CK's scene (f-ing finally) together with the rest of my scenes in bruised up make-up and maybe, just maybe some of the shots for the action sequence, time (and weather) permitting.

The only thing is Saturday's looking a bit problematic:

(a) I have an open house to attend during lunch time (which I want to attend, regardless, due to it being at my girlfriend's house and it's free food),

(b) I have a gig at 7pm (which was meant to be in the afternoon but things are being moved around like Risk pieces) and

(c) My Director Of Photography might not be able to make it. And I can't exactly get Tony to do it because I want to shoot his scenes on that day.

Harumph.

I've also been digitizing the footage I've been shooting and keeping a seperate folder on my computer labelled 'Cool-Shots-For-Possible-Trailer'. By this weekend I should have enough to start fooling around on the edit of the trailer, at the very least come up with a teaser (fingers crossed).

Now I gotta get on the phone to see which actors I can rope in for this weekend. One day, lackeys will do this for me. Female lackeys in schoolgirl uniforms.

One can dream.

Everything Is Grey

We haven't seen the sun for five days. If the clouds don't clear and I don't get some regular sunlight and dry tarmac shooting will have to be postponed again due to rain.

What makes it worse is that if I don't shoot this weekend I'll have to wait another two weekends before I can shoot again due to gigs and a trip to Genting which I could cancel but like fuck am I gonna give up a trip away from this city.

Besides, I don't want to over-rush like I was trying to do before. It just leads to re-shoots (and I'm already constantly looking at rushes thinking "maybe I should re-do that").

I've also been slowly trying to whore myself to the powers of the press for a tiny smudgeon of exposure before the movie's finished. KLue still hasn't gotten back to me (and I used to write for them, too) and I've just e-mailed kakiseni. I'll start following up with others in the press but the fact of the matter is I'm not that good at this kind of thing.

On the one hand there's that fear that my creative endeavours aren't 'artistic' enough (don't ask me to define 'artistic') and on the other hand I'm not good at coaxing people in order to get something. It's a manners thing. To me, asking the press to write about me is like asking a friend to join a 'business opportunity' which 'isn't a pyramid scheme, honest'. It just feels rude (this coming from a guy who likes to use the word 'fuck' more than a full-stop and repeatedly describes his bowel movements).

Promotion-wise, I'm hoping to at least get the teaser campaign out (a very lo-budget guerilla style teaser campaign) by the end of this month if I can get (a) my art director at the office to find some free time to design it (which, considering the work load we've got, looks impossible for about 3 years) and (b) whether this weekend I can get enough footage to start cutting a teaser trailer. No point in a teaser campaign if I can't lead them somewhere, so I'll lead the public to a trailer on a website.

Hmm... perhaps it's this lack of sun that's getting me down. Perhaps I should snort some crushed St. John's Wort. Or dilute it and inject it in my eyelids.

Bad Omens

Last night I had a dream. I was sat down on a bench with two other people who were filmmakers in Malaysia. One was quite prolific, the other was up and coming. We were awaiting a screening for something.

Then a friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous) who's trying to break into the film scene and happens to be working there comes over to ask us whether we'd like anything to eat. I order spaghetti bolognese, the prolific filmmaker orders aglio y olio and the up-and-coming guy orders carbonara.

A beat later, my friend returns with my plate. There's barely enough spaghetti for one bite.

"Dude," I ask, "what's this?"

"That's all you get," was his reply. He returned with the pasta for the other two guys: huge, overfilled plates. They dug in and I watched.

Then I woke up.

I think that pretty much sums up the way I'm feeling right now. Once again, my subconscious gives me short films to watch whilst I sleep.

(Some of you may have noticed I've edited this post from its earlier incarnation. I have reasons for this, which are many and varied.)

Calmer Now

Had some time to relax. Feeling calm now. Just needed to rant out all of that crap in one vitriolic bile infested paragraph. A lot of crap's built up that needed an outlet. After all, that's what blogs are for, right?

Phew... fuck it. Back to regular Khaiser in control. Nicotine and duck has a soothing quality. It's time to release the rampant wilderbeasts, smack the cheeks of some fine, perk booty, pull out the radish and yell, "Chicken Uber Alles!"

Ah... the silliness is back.

Some Don't Like It White

Had a look at the MVA website today. They've posted up the entire agenda and what movies they're screening. 'Some Like It White' is nowhere to be found.

Ah, bugger.

'Wrath' isn't up there either. Double bugger.

With cheese.

I could be wrong. When I was checking the website I had to keep refreshing and checking other links because everything was going weird (as if someone was updating it whilst I was searching it) so maybe, just maybe, there might be the slightest chance that...

Fuck that, who am I kidding? It's 10 minutes of profanity and cleavage shots.

This is exactly why I was hesitant to enter the MVA's last year. There's a whole unsaid expectation that builds up inside you when you prepare your materials to enter for an award, be it advertising or film festivals. As you prepare each piece, each promo slide and copy of the movie, this expectation and anticipation builds up and when you pay your entry fee and submit your movie it doesn't subside. It gets bigger.

So... let's recap: no MC2 for my Young Guns ad, no Kancil for my TVC and not even a screening for my short film at the MVA's.

If 'Ciplak' doesn't work out I'm selling the video camera and taking up stained-glass painting instead.

Talk About Rubbing Salt on the Wound...

*Beep!*

Hmm... SMS received... unknown number...

"Hi, you r invited 2 come for the MVA's official opening ceremony and experimental&short films Awards Night @National Art Gallery on 25th Nov@6pm!"

Aha. By "invited", read "your short hasn't been accepted but we'd appreciate it if you could help us get some bums on seats".

As you can tell, I'm feeling a bit bitter.

It's not just the MVA's, though. It's a blow, but in all honesty it's really not that important. But this coupled with the other two hopes for awards that didn't come into fruition had me sitting in Coffee Bean (I felt an urge to splurge) eating linguini and wondering whether my creative juices were really that juicy to begin with.

The Young Guns, I reckon, was the biggest blow. It was the second time entering and we were hyper-confident about our ads. No go. It seems an ad with a cat driving will always beat an ad with a guy making out passionately with a mobile phone.

Sitting in that auditorium, waiting and waiting and waiting, to find out someone else won again is downright depressing. I didn't even bother going to the Kancils because I didn't want to have to go through that again (plus our ad wasn't that good to begin with).

Now I've been invited to another event where I'll basically sit down and watch other people's 'great works of art' and fume. Fuck that. The whole 'maybe I'm not cut out for this' thought process began again.

That is, until IridescentButterfly left a comment on my last post that put a bit of a smile on my face. Thanks, Butterfly. You've been dropping a lot of nice comments that always seem to give me a little boost and I really appreciate it.

...

Speaking of comments, when are the rest of you fuckers gonna leave your two cents?

More Setbacks

Whilst my optimisism on the movie is at least no longer non-existent, there is the ningling fact that we are behind schedule considerably. I originally intended to finish shooting mid-November. That turned to end November. Now it looks like the last weekend of shooting will be mid-DECEMBER.

Ooh, booolocks.

Couldn't shoot last weekend due to the problems of work, the fact that I really need to get the Y2k album finished (19 tracks! So far!) and the weather has been in a perpetual state of wetness and gloom. I could've doubled the UK shots here with this weather.

Then, this coming weekend, I've got a gig on Saturday together with an open house, so I may only be able to shoot in the morning. I've got Sunday free, but then the weekend after that I've got another gig and a weekend trip to Genting, so the next time I can shoot after this weekend is two weekends after.

That means, if I get all the shots I want within this time frame, we'll be done shooting on the 11th of December. I was hoping I could cut a trailer before that. Ah, well. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Damn, there's still the animation too. And the soundtrack. Must make it to Singapore International Film Fest... must... must... may have to send preview cut first. Shiite.

You'd think after reading of the hardships of other filmmakers doing their first film I'd be prepared for this, wouldn't you? Poo-nuts.

Pics From Day 7 of the Production of Ciplak

Effing finally...

Definitely gonna use this as one of my promo stills.



Hassan Peter Brown gets in character whilst Ariff focuses in. I absolutely loved Peter's performance and I think many a person who've known him from the music scene will probably get a shock. It's so out of his usual character.


I'm really not sure what we're doing here, but a guess I'd say we're checking the camera before shooting the 'Blair Witch' shot where I run through the garden (which I swear could pass for a jungle).


Production manager and love of my life Diana and I wonder what the fuck we're going to do. This is probably my pensive 'how-do-I-best-do-this-shot-for-optimum-artistic-merit' pose when in actuality my thought process would've probably gone more along the lines of "Fuck me, why didn't I just grow up with a love for accounting?"


A rare moment of happiness before the inevitable shit-storm that is a day on the production of 'Ciplak'.
More pics, as usual, available on my Flickr page for your viewing pleasure.

Hot Shot Creatives Can Suck on my Toe Jam

Being told you've done something wrong is never fun. In fact, more often than not, it's downright depreciating and embaressing.

Being told you've done something wrong when you're presenting someone elses work and the person you present it to thinks it's your own is not only depreciating and embaressing, it's incredibly infuriating, insulting, degrading and has the ability to piss you off in new found ways you never thought existed. Especially when you're in a position where you can't say otherwise.

So there I was. Yesterday, to be precise. Chilling at my desk with not too many tidbits of work on my plate when my traffic person (so called because he/she coordinates the 'traffic' of work going to and fro from the servicing department to the creatives) comes over saying that I'm needed on a job which is, apparently, a 'no-brainer'.

"All you have to do is present the stuff. All the work's being done from Singapore."

I'm already wary. Nobody's telling me what the product is, what it's about, what's the strategic brief, nothing. And this is a pitch.

I manage to get a call from Singapore where the person on the other end who's come up with this stuff, some multi-award winning creative director, 'briefs' me. Understand me when I say I'm using this term incredibly fucking loosely.

The storyboards are faxed over and as I look through them and listen to the explanations I can already spot a bazillion flaws in them. After the phone call I ask my traffic person whether these ideas have been bought internally. She says yes. Fine, then.

I go through the run-through with the rest of the 'team': all heads of their respective departments. I am but a lowly junior copywriter, but I'm the only one available, and if everyone else is fine with the work (which I, by this point, think is worth less than nothing and am of the firm belief the person who did these ads wouldn't even be able to sell tit-mags to pimply teenage boys) then maybe they know something I don't. I had just come off another pitch where I thought the overall ideas and concepts were passable at best but everyone was happy and the client was, apparently, in awe. Maybe this was the case with this pitch too.

Fat fucking chance. If there's anything this has taught me, it's to trust my instincts.

I brought up my concerns, but it didn't seem like a problem to them. Fine.

This morning I presented these boards to the Chief Operating Officer. This man has seen me in a couple of pitches before and so far my (creative) reputation with this man has been pretty clean. But the dude intimidates me. And when I've got something I didn't do and don't even believe will work, it's a bit tough to sell, to put it lightly.

He politely told me where to stick it.

One of the ads is usable. The other two are about as effective as horse semen on a cockroach.

And, as I expected, I got whacked for it.

Whilst the blame wasn't put solely on me, the fact that I'm the only guy representing the creatives meant there really wasn't anyone else to talk to about how crap it was.

And, to top it all off, in retrospect I should have voiced my opinion of the ads and talked about how I wasn't happy about them and that it was a serious concern. That's my bad.

But, leaving that meeting, the feeling of fucking anger I felt was incomparable. I was ready, right then and there, to tender my resignation because I have better and more productive things to do with my day.

Then came the kicker. I called up the hot shots in Singapore (who, I might add, have less clients than a 2 cent whore with no legs and a moustache) and told them, as politely as I could, about the situation and how another ad is needed to replace the two worthless scraps of fecal matter that hang from the ass crack hairs of there foetal excuse for a concept.

They, in turn, defended the ads with all their might, stating that they "don't see what the problem is", the concerns are "unwarranted" and they feel it "unfair to have to put in more work".

I put down the phone politely before yelling obscenities at the poor machine, much to the shock of the others in the office.

Thankfully, by then my superior was back and I told him of the problems. He's gonna be the one that has to end up presenting this worthless shit to the client (if he couldn't make it I was back-up, hence my involvement). He took one look at the work and was prepared to vomit blood. I then told him what happened and what the multi award winning creative directors from Singapore told me. I deduced that either

(a) they truly believed in their work (*ring!* hello? Ah, it's your village, they say their idiots are missing),

(b) they have no intention to work on this project anymore than they already have (which is weird considering it's their fucking JOB) or

(c) they believe that my requests and point of view is of no interest to them for I am but a lowly junior copywriter whereas they are decorated award winning creative directors (and they probably won the awards by stealing ideas from lowly juniors).

My superior reckons its (c).

So now we at Malaysia have to fix up their stinking turd of an ad, we have to make it all up and we have until tomorrow.

I find it particularly ironic that the product is for one of those baby milk powders that supposedly makes your child more intelligent and creative and yet the people in charge with making these ads have the intelligence of a fart and the creativity of a nose hair.

If it wasn't for the fact that I have a few friends in Singapore I'd bomb the place just to make sure those fucktards don't breed.

Help Whore Me to the Masses

Ok. Ordinarily I wouldn't do this, but I figure 'fuck it', one must whore one-self however one thinks one must.

One. Tanamera.

Anyway, yes. This is a call to all you readers (yes, all twelve of you) who may, by some twisted turn of events, be involved in the press/media in anyway: the Y2k album will be shipped off for mastering overseas next Monday before going for printing and my feature length movie 'Ciplak' should be out and about by the end of December with a trailer and website by the end of this month and (here it comes) I need some exposure.

If any of you guys can help me out on this (and I know for a fact some of you guys work in the press so help a brother out, G) or if you know anyone who you could spread the word to, it would be most appreciated.

Of course, all you peeps out there working for the press who I know personally will be hounded by me on an individual basis until you either relent or set the rampant wilderbeasts on me. But I figured I'd give you all a heads up. That way you'll have enough time to run to the hills and pursue more worthwhile and interesting press stories.

I'm writing up a pre-press release (not the final final press release, but enough to possibly give an editor a half-woody). Reason why I'm starting so early, I completely forget the amount of time it takes for things like printing (in the case of magazines), permission from superiors on high (in the case of everything, really) and ass scratching of the highest order as you wonder whether my 2 minute blow job is enough compensation to write up about my crazed untalented antics as I attempt to set myself up so I can start doing crap creative endeavours for myself (as opposed to crap creative endeavours for clients with walnuts for brains).

So yes. Calling all press! Help whore me out to the unsuspecting masses! Unleash another 'Khai'! The public are hungry and the empty slot 'Khai AF' has left after everyone realised how untalented a nutbag he was needs to be filled by another talentless hack with a goofy smile! this time with glasses! I am the one who can fill that hole!

(hehehe... filling holes... hehehe)

Seriously, though. Help me out, man... Buy my cheeseburger, man... I'll suck yo' dick.

This Is How I Feel Right Now...

This pic should've been posted up together with others in a post of the pics taken on Day 7. Instead, I've been rushed about like a headless chicken, sat in to watch a research group where the discussion was done in mandarin and the person translating had a poor grasp of English and bad hearing, I've rushed through traffic, forced to take a job which is basically a cock-sucking session as incredibly serious (which I don't appreciate one bit), I'm late for an open house with my parents (which I know they were secretly looking forward to and now they will be quietly dissapointed), I've discovered I'm working on Saturday (which happens to be the same day that I'm supposed to be recording) and all those times that I used to feel like quitting that I thought were gone are all back again.

And it's not even that bad a job. It's just infuriating. This whole week it feels like everybody's out to piss me off and whilst I know that a lot of other guys in the same field as mine go through a hundred times worse. Hell, I know I've gone through a thousand times worse than this.

BUT I used to believe in it.

Whenever I start a job, I absorb, learn and do all I can. Hell, make me a shoe shiner and for that first year I'll shine those shoes so fine you'll be able to see up girls' skirts.

But if there's no rainbow, if there's no light at the end of the tunnel, if all the rousing speeches begin to feel like they're without promise and all those things you thought would happen the harder you worked don'thappen, well, there's a problem.

Anyone who's been keeping tabs on this blog know that I rant a lot about my job, but I'm sure many of you noticed last year it was for the sake of ranting, and more often than not I wrote them in such a way they'd (hopefully) entertain. Release tension through humour. Fun.

But I'm sure those who keep tabs have noticed that they don't sound like that anymore. They sound like someone who's well and truly pissed and tired.

This week really wasn't as bad as I make it out to be if it happened maybe a year ago. But now? It's a different kettle of fish indeed.

I'm looking back at my options. I'm not sure whether I can hold off till December (for those that remember the plan). Either way, we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

By the way, that make up job was done by my friend Aishah for my movie. Pretty good, eh?

Ciplak: Day 7, 8, 9 - Production

Day 7 of production was supposed to start on Friday, but that didn't happen for a variety of reasons. The lethargy of the oast week (or should I say month) had caught up with me, but I still struggled on,trying to plan everything, thinking to myself, "goddamn, I need a producer".

I decided to go out for a cup of coffee when I suddenly realized something: it's a weekday. All the shots I'd planned for Friday were outdoors in places where there usually wouldn't be anyone on weekends but on a Friday, these places were super-packed. Fuck. I called up Tony (who was covering camera duties on the days Ariff couldn't make it) and cancelled.

By some twisted coincidence, Eddy was off on the same day. I picked the Edstar up and we hung out at Devi's in Hartamas whilst I got my car washed, then did something I haven't done for almost a year: lepak (laze about) and play video games.

You see, for the past year everytime I've met up with a friend there was an agenda/objective to the meeting. But not on Friday. I had no reason to hang out with Eddy other than the pleasure of his company and we went over to his place to play Soul Caliber 2, Tony Hawk 3 and SSX Tricky till the sun went down.

God, I needed that. After the hustle and bustle that has been my life it felt so good to know that I wasn't at Eddy's place because there were things that needed to be done and it was even better to know that I didn't have to rush off to somewhere else after that to get something else done. It was just relaxing times, listening to Steppenwolf and playing video games. Kick. Fucking. Ass.

Then, later that night, I hit up the Loft for some Twilight Action Girl after what has been maybe two months of no booze. Naren joined me together with Tony and the boys of Voxel (Jordan, Rauf, etc) and we got crunked up. This was, thankfully, one of the nights where they played a whole bunch of tracks I knew and loved. Never thought I'd get to rock out to both Beastie Boys' "Root Down" and the Public Enemy/Anthrax combo version of "Bring tha noize".

Day 7 (for real, this time) - Woke up hungover and feeling very tender. I had a scene to shoot with the folks from Ben's Bitches, who will be playing the DVD pirates in my movie, and the rest of the day would be the scenes I planned to shoot on Friday of me in various carparks (my movie has a lot of scenes in carparks).

I was sat in the mamak at Pusat Bandar Damansara, waiting for Ben and CK and Tony, when I get a call: Ben can make it, CK can't. Shit. Nevermind, I'll schedule it for another day. Still feeling like shit, I was having a bad feeling about the production in general. Whilst I had a great time on Friday, I was still thinking about how troublesome this production has been. This, in turn, got me to thinking that if I wasn't making this movie I could have more days like Friday. This thought depressed me.

Then it rained.

That was all I needed. Add to that the fact that I was broke and I was seriously considering shutting everything down. Fuck it, I figured. I ain't cut out for this shit.

Then Tony arrived. The night before he had just finished reading the entire script and the dude was still raving about it. I told him how I was feeling. He put things in perspective and gave me enough of an ego boost to persevere and keep on trucking. He also bought me coffee and a sandwich, which was nice.

Thank God.

The rain stopped and was replaced with a bright, blue sky and the car eventually dried up around 2pm. One of the carpark locations I had in mind (which I never really scouted) came out even better than I thought when I found it was no longer in use, just an empty barren wasteland which suited the scene perfectly (there was also a set of eerie yellow stairs leading to nowhere in the woods nearby. Possible future location). We shot some scenes straight and for fun, tried out some funky ass camera techniques which came out looking quite cool.

We then went to our other location, the carpark at the Pusat Sains and shot some of the other scenes there which came out great and most importantly, played hillariously. I decided to ad-lib what was in the script no more than "Jo loses it". I doubt you'll find a Malaysian production with the lines "sea monkeys in the penis" anywhere else. Hell, that should be our Unique Selling Point.

I was so glad Tony convinced me to keep going.

Day 8 - At around 1.30pm Diana, Ariff and I made our way to Hassan Peter Brown's house to pick him up. We were going to shoot his scenes at Jordan's house, a huge and richly decorated location with a very nice backgarden patio/pool thingey. Peter and I had discussed previously about wardrobe and he had gone out to buy a tight white sleeveless shirt ("to make my character look more bisexual" I think was his reasoning). I had, on my side, an outfit I had bought in Egypt: a light, khaki coloured Egyiptian cotton two piece of trousers (tied by a string) and short sleeve shirt. when Peter put it on, we both agreed this was the look, giving hi a very colonial feel as if the Brits never left.

I had planned to shoot all his scenes on that day but that was wishful thinking. There are three scenes that need to be shot at this location. I managed to get one.

But it looked kick-ass. Peter takes this acting lark a bit more seriously than most of us, ever the trooper, and put in a great fucking performance. He delivered the lines just as I imagined them (well, not exactly how I imagined them: I originally wrote the character like Noel Coward, he turned him into Hannibal Lecter) with a ton of menace.

Then we shot the big beating up scene. This is where my character gets beat to a pulp by Peter's characters' "goons". Amir and Dique agreed to help out (I wanted to get the guys from Voxel since they'll always be at location). I blocked out the scene for the main shot at a low angle. I wanted to shoot it as a series of cuts, but thought I'd tell the cast what was happening so that they could block the scene as per. I called out action and they went through the entire scene without stopping. And surprisingly, it looked best. In a nutshell, Peter hits me repeatedly with an iron bar, then his goons come and drag me across before proceeding to beat me up. And they really hit me. Whilst they pulled their punches, all their kicks connected, and connected hard enough that I don't have to dub in any sound effects.

Kick ass.

As the sun came down it was time to get my ass to make-up. Diana's friend, Aishah, worked production at RTM with her boyfriend and knew how to do movie make-up. We made our way to the Taman Tun house and as we settled down, Aishah and her boyfriend noticed one DVD in particular.

"Whoah! Army of Darkness! Best giler cerita ni!" ("This movie rules!")

So, whilst getting 'made up', we slotted Army in.

The purpose of the make-up was to make me look like I'd been beaten to a pulp, so Aishah proceed to bruise my eye and the right side of my lip. I was hesitant at first. I didn't want it to look like stage make-up, I wanted to look like I got my ass kicked. But they knew exactly what they were doing and when I finally looked at the mirror I was stunned.

We then went to meet up with Nazneen and Ariff for the night scene. Ariff was held up so we started late. They were both at a mamak stall so I walked in, in character, much to the shock of the patrons, especially Ariff, who couldn't stop staring. It took him about 5 minutes before he realized I was in make-up.

The night scene was something I wrote after re-looking at the script and noticing there were no positive characters. No actual nice people, which kinda bugged me. I also wanted Nazneen in my movie but her portrayal as the annoying girlfriend didn't really work out. She was too nice... hang on. Nazneen's nice, I need a nice person somewhere... BINGO!

So we shot what I like to call the 'Deus Ex Machina' scene in front of a shoplot at Plaza Damansara and it played wonderfully (except for the annoyance of cars driving past making unwanted noise).

We wrapped up for the day at 12.30am and on my way home realized I left the bag with all the tapes and my charger at the location. I rushed back and thankfully it was still there.

I also noticed that for some reason since Saturday I had a bad runny nose and had been sweating a lot. Maybe I was coming down with something... fuck it. The show must go on.

Day 9 - I made my way back to Jordan's house again with Peter and also Tony this time, as Ariff couldn't make it. We shot the rest of Peter's scenes (the really tough ones with the reams of dialogue) and it came out quite cool. Peter should host National Geographic documentaries, he'd be perfect.

I also needed some pick ups of my two goons, Amir and Dique. Peter asked whether I could give them names since he needs to get the attention of the Amir goon. After much thought,

"Call him 'Canterro'."

Or something along these lines. Some Spanish name. Nobody could pull of the scene, they kept cracking up. I decided to have a bit more fun with it.

"Ok, Amir, here's your line. When I click my fingers you and Dique both turn around as if Peter just said the line. Then Amir, I want you to turn to Dique and say with a straight face, 'Come, Poncho. Let's make whoopee', then rush out to chase me."

Hillarity ensued.

I then changed it to "Come Poncho. It's crab season" and as much as they couldn't keep a straight face before, they really couldn't act tough now.

I also wanted their cat in the movie. A particularly horny little bugger, when you repeatedly tap the top of her butt she raises it higher and higher. the guys joked that the cat could come in useful if there was a flat tyre and someone needed to raise the car.

After that, we rushed off to Saiful's parents' house to re-shoot a scene with Saiful and his sister. I had storyboarded the whole thing, thank God, because it started to rain. When Saiful arrived we noticed he had a cap on. Immediately I started thinking of the serial killer from 'Haute Tension' and told him to keep it on. We got all the exterior shots done quickly and ran back into the house to shoot the rest of the scenes.

One of the problems I had with when we first shot one of the scenes here was that in the scene where Farah's character is supposed to pop up from between my legs as if she's been going down on me, (a) it didn't look realistic and (b) I was worried about censors. Even though we don't show it, enough is suggested that you'd know what's going on. So I decided to improvise:

"Ok, set up the camera at an angle, medium shot of the bed. Make sure you can't see my legs, I gotta pop into shot from the bed. Now, first off I'll pop into shot and say 'Oh my God, it's your brother, isn't it?'. Then, Farah: I want you to pop up from next to me holding the straightening iron with a dissapointed look on your face and say the line 'aww... I never get to play'. Ready?"

"What were our characters doing with the straightening iron?"

"If you have to ask, you'll never know. Action!"

I decided to put in quite a number of silly lines in, including a little homage to P. Ramlee where I got Saiful to yell out my favourite Malay insult:

"Kecik-kecik tak nak mampus! Besar-besar menyusahkan orang!"

(roughly translated: "if you had died at birth you wouldn't be such a damn burden!").

And that was a wrap. In total, combined with the other days footage, we've got about 60% of the movie in the can. I've got a couple more scenes to go plus the animation and other effects shots and I'll be done. Hopefully we'll be done by December.

Noonch.

Ciplak: Production - Day 6

Day 6 (yesterday) lasted approximately 20 minutes. But it was 20 minutes well spent.

At 7.00pm I was sat at the steps of the HELP Institute reading my newly purchased P. Ramlee bio whilst waiting for my D.O.P., the trusty Ariff, and Mr. Wong. I had called Mr. Wong before about shooting in the HELP auditorium, which he allowed, but we only had a window of time of about 20 minutes because we were shooting just before they screened the KSFM Documentaries (which I didn't attend, unfortunately).

Now, why would we be shooting in the auditorium, you may ask? For an FX shot.

Yes, an FX shot.

You see, in the first fifteen minutes of the movie the main character (played by me) explains to the viewers about the many different qualities a pirated movie can be, and as he explains them, the movie's audio/visual quality changes to the type of copy he's talking about. I needed to turn bits of my footage into off-line edit copies (complete with running time-code), promo copies (with 'Not for sale or rental' scrolling across) and, of course, cinema copies.


The projectionist, Khairul, projected the footage I had burnt on DVD onto the screen and it was the first time I saw my footage that big, which was a strange experience. The colours all came out pretty good, as did the sound. Ariff then set up the camera in the front rom towards the side, used the strap from my bag to wrap the lens' edges to make it look like the camera's hidden in the bag, and shot the footage as it played and I walked across.

Well, I didn't really walk, I shuffled on my knees because we were in the front row, but the effect is still the same. When I watched the rushes I flipped. It really looks like some cheap-o cinema copy D5 piece of shit!

How often do you get a filmmaker happy about how shit his scene looks?

We then did the 'good cinema copy' scene where we went to the seats halfway up the auditorium, pulled out the monopod and kept it as steady as possible. For some reason everything came out green a la the Matrix, even though the image projected was fine. We tried fooling around with the white balance but we just made it worse. Ah, well, fix it in post.

I'm fixing a lot in post.

As we left, I bumped into Amir Muhammad as he was entering the building and later, in Mcdonalds together with Eddy, I met The Visitor. He'll be cameo-ing in the movie at some point, as will Eddy and loads of other guys I know. I'm packing this movie to the brim with friends.

Later that night I met up with my girlfriend and a friend of hers who looked, at the most, 25. I later found out she was 30 with 2 kids. Whatever she's using, it works.

At some point this week I'm also going to try and turn some of the other footage into 'off-line copy' quality (the copies you get which are obviously stolen from the editing suites). The plan is to (a) burn the footage as a VCD on a CD-ROM, (b) play the footage on my DVD player and record it via analogue cables onto my VCR, (c) record the VCR copy via analogue cables onto my DV camera, (d) firewire that footage into my computer. It's a lot of fuss for about 20 seconds of footage but if it works, it'll be worth it.

Then, from this Friday till Monday, it'll be a hectic 4-day shoot. Ariff will only be free on Sunday so it looks like Tony will be covering for the other days whenever he can. Friday I shoot the rest of my solo scenes and pick-ups of KL streets, Saturday I shoot my parents' scene and my Back-to-the-Future-homage action sequence, Sunday I shoot Peter Brown's scene and my beaten & bruised scenes with Nazneen and Monday I re-shoot Saiful's scene and a few pick-ups of Farah's scene that we didn't get before. After that, I need to shoot the other Farah (we have two Farah's) and voila: shoot finished. Then I just have to wait for the footage from the UK and I can finally sit down and really edit the fucker. I'm planning to get all footage done by this month, by hook or by crook.

Here comes the boom.

Buggerty Bollocky Balls

This is what happens when you're too fucking knackered and don't have a proper producer to handle your shit when you're zoned out.

I was supposed to shoot today. I hastily planned a day of scenes and thought nothing of it until I looked at the schedule sheet again today: they are all outdoor scenes in public places. Now, ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, because we usually shoot on weekends.

But it's not a weekend today, and these locations are packed with people.

Shit.

So I'm gonna take it easy today and plan my shit out. Fuck my brain. Fuck it with a shovel.

Figured It Out

I think I may have figured out at least one of the many dilemmas on this troubled shoot: the parents scene.


The parents scene, apart from trying to show a slice of home life for a character such as this, was to shed some light on how the main character ends up doing what he does.


Now I've figured out how to do it without even showing the parents, although it involves a whole new character who I now have to cast.


And there's still the problem of my 'chase' sequence (which I'm probably going to ditch), the fact that one of the locations is only available on Saturday and the actress for that scene is only available on Sunday and all kinds of other weirdness.


Ain't filmmaking fun, kids?

The Dilemma

Hmmm.

I seem to have cornered myself into a slight problem with the movie.

You see, there was a scene that I was hoping I could shoot with my parents. Like I said before, my mom's not too hot about appearing in a movie filled with expletives, even if they're of the PG-13 variety. I've been trying to figure out how to counter this and it's been bugging my brain all morning.

The scene's pretty important, because it's meant to reveal the reasons behind why the main character does what he does, and I've been trying to come up with different ways of getting the same thing done with... mixed results.

And, of course, there's the whole issue about the action sequence. I'm incredibly tempted to take it out completely.

Grrr. Aargh. Working with limitations makes you work around them creatively.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get out of this little pickle.

All About the Brown, the Methods of Manliness and My Momma Don't Take No Shit

Goddamn I was exhausted last night. I mean, seriously exhausted. You see, throughout the Hari Raya (Eid) celebrations, I didn't get much sleep. The weeks before that, I didn't get much sleep. After Raya, I still didn't get much sleep.

And, as obvious as the fact may seem, the lack of sleep is getting to me.

When I was hitting up a cup of coffee with Naren, I already felt it coming. I found myself yawning (sorry, Naren) quite a bit and thinking to myself, "it's fucking seven thirty. Why would I be sleepy?" By the time I went to see my girlfriend I was flat out dead. We went to her car after dinner and I cuddled up on her lap like a stray cat with fleas and passed out for about 10 minutes. I could hardly move.

But I had to. Movement is important. Read through of the script with Peter Brown at 10.00pm. Must dash. Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight.

Ah, yes. The Brown. I love the Brown. Peter (or Hassan, whichever name pleases you most) is a wonderful person and, as it turns out, the most dedicated actor on this ramshackle production yet. I got to his house at around 10.30pm, ready for the read through, when Man Method called.

"When do you need the footage by?" he asked.

"November would be great. December's ok," I replied, "why?"

I then discover my Man with the Method will be stuck with heavy-duty work till January.

Eek.

But there are one or two windows of opportunity and he may be able to shoot the stuff this weekend. If he had storyboards, that is.

Shite. I haven't done the boards. I asked him,

"Would I really be putting you out if I asked you to get the footage done within the small windows of opportunity this and next month?"

"Yeah, but it's alright."

I've put someone out already. Shit.

After the call, it was down to readthroughs and even though Peter hasn't really crafted most of the character yet, I am impressed. His scene should prove quite funny indeed. And what's great is that we spent a good hour just talking about character: should he be camp and melodramatic, or a bit more sinister and dark? What should he wear? Hairstyles? Que?

Leaving at 11.30pm, I wondered whether I should (a) go home (which was very close by) and sleep or (b) go to Taman Tun and get these storyboards done. I was tired as fuck but I reasoned that if I'm putting Saj out I should put myself out too. Off to Taman Tun, doodle the boards, scan 'em, stick 'em in photoshop to put in some notes, burn it to CD and e-mail it at work the next day.

Then, this morning, whatdya know? My parents aren't free for this Saturday for me to shoot them (on film, not with an assault riffle). Then my mom turns to me and says,

"I'm not acting in it if the word 'shit' is in the script."

"Don't worry, you're character doesn't say 'shit'".

"No. If the word 'shit' is in the script. Anywhere. I don't want to be associated with a movie like that."

Hmmm. In my attempt to stay away from the word 'fuck', I've used 'shit', 'arse', 'arse-biscuits', 'twadger', 'bollocks' and 'bitch', and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

I foresee a few problems.

Current State of Mind

Sleep. Need. Need sleep. Sleep needed. Poontang. Sleep.

Gawdemmit.

Can't seem to get my head straight. Hands've got the shakes. Can't focus. Keep trying to think about how to solve a bunch of the problems I have on the movie and can't think of anything.

Boo-locks.

Right side of my brain hurting. It's always the right side, never the left, just the right. Throb, throb, throbbing away. Pointy sharp ouch ouch. Makes it tough to keep my eye open.

Sleep. Rest. A quick joygasm, perhaps.

There are times when I feel like I've gone a bit too far, thinking I can pull off all the things I'm planning to pull off in this time frame. There's the album, there's the movie... fuck, the San Fran film fest final submission date is 9 December. Can I get it in by then? Will I be dead? Who knows. We'll see.

Oh, fuck me dead.

But yes. Times where I feel like 'fuck it'. Hang up the dreams and concentrate on my job purely for the income it gives me and do fuck all after work besides eat, play video games and watch DVD's.

Only thing is, I know that if I ever resorted to this, the moment I slip in a DVD I'll think about how I'm not trying to achieve my dreams.

And, after reading an e-mail I received from an old friend of mine, Ramteen (who found my e-mail via this blog), that filled me with smiles and confidence, I don't think I have it in me to quit.

The only question is whether I have it in me to keep going.