This does not mean that the performances that I shot sucked. Far from it. Rauf's reshoots of the 'T-Fresh scene' (the obligatory ammusing hip-hop wannabe) were great, full of energy and hillarious. And Ahmad's scenes were faultless (apart from all the times he kept looking at the camera).
But that was only meant to be ten percent of what I wanted to shoot. I had a whole bunch of footage to shoot on that day and those two scenes would amount to about two minutes of screen time in the finished product.
I was supposed to shoot the first half of the 'chase sequence'.
My original intention was to shoot half of it on Day 10 and the rest on Day 11, intercutting the two because it would be too troublesome getting the whole cast in one place for two days. So I planned to shoot close-ups and reaction shots of the guys chasing me on Day 10 and me being chased on Day 11 at the carpark at Pusat Sains, which is usually dead empty on Sundays.
I guess it was my own blatant stupidity to not expect it to rain during monsoon season.
And rain it did. Huge streams of chubby rain as if horses grew wings and were flying in flocks above us, peeing simultaneously with much glee. Which is probably an apt description because to say I was quite pissed off on Day 10 would be a huge understatement.
Day 11, in comparison, rocked much of the skills of cat ('catskills', geddit?). We started off by shooting the scene where Ben & CK of Ben's Bitches fame as DVD pirates selling their wares until they get busted. Based on their insane live shows I knew I could trust them to ad-lib it through so I didn't bother scripting it and I got quite a number of hillarious lines, although there were a couple references to 'Sepet' which I'm not sure whether I'll keep in or not.
To shoot the scene, I asked the permission of the owner of a kedai runcit near my house who I've known since I was a kid. We set up a table and pulled out a bunch of DVD's from my collection. Some people thought we were actually selling them.
After that it drizzled for a bit but that soon subsided so we went to the carpark at pusat sains for the chase sequence.
The chase sequence basically involves me, Paul, a Proton Wira and a trusty skateboard. Chase chase chase, pop a few tricks, get hit by the car and run over it to escape, car crashes into trees.
Simple enough.
The skateboard is actually quite an invaluable tool when shooting on the DIY tip. Like this:
Lets say you wanted to shoot someone driving. But you can't afford to get a rig to hook up the camera to the car, you can't afford a lorry to put the car on and you don't have the woodshop skills to make your own rig. Just get a guy who skates, get him to hold on to the car and film it. Voila! Tracking shot.A car is also very helpful. You want to shoot someone running but don't want any shake? Drive the car next to the guy who's running and film him from the car. Done n' done.
The stunts, on the other hand, were a bit tricky.
I'm not sure if the shots will work in the edit. I took a whole bunch of shots at various angles, a bunch of takes, whole load of close ups... hopefully it all cuts together. For the bit where I run over the car, I didn't realize my own weight (yes, I am a bit on the tubby) and left a couple of huge dents on the roof of Ahmad's car. Saiful beat them back into shape.
Then I injured my wrist somewhere along the way climbing over which hurt like fuckery. Thankfully, it was Paul's turn to act as my stunt double.
We got a bunch of shots of Paul from the waist down skating and pulling some tricks: ollies, nollies, kickflips and shuvit tailgrabs. Should come out ok.
With these scenes in the can I have about 80% of the footage needed for the whole movie. Bearing in mind that only 80% of the movie is actual footage. The rest is animation and other such things. That's a whole other headache I'll figure out in pre-pro.
Later on... last night...
Couldn't sleep so I decided to stay up till 4.00am cutting the trailer.
And I'm happy.
I cut it to the tune of Triple 6 Poser's "Another Lie" and Soft Touch's "Listen 2 What U C" as well as the acoustic part of Y2k's "Lara" and it looks pretty damn cool. Just gotta fix up the sound and colours and I'll upload it.
And now I'm fucking tired.
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