Yes. That's right. You see that? That's my name on a slate. I've finally got my name actually on a slate for a shoot! With lights! And a monitor! And a crew!
The shoot is for a TV series called 'Dark City', a kind of 'Twilight Zone' meets 'Tales from the Crypt' kinda thing. Originally I was brought on to write an episode. Then two. Then I was brought on to direct one. Then I wrote two more. And I directed three more.
As you can imagine, life was very busy...
At first, the thought of shooting with a crew was kinda daunting. I didn't know jack-shit about lighting and was kinda worried about my innability to speak fluent Malay, but it was good enough to communicate with the crew, who were all really cool, very profesional and incredibly talented. And I got to play with tracks!
The story, in a nutshell, is about a guy who finds a cellphone in the carpark of his office and decides to take it, only to be haunted by its previous owner. The show stars Bront Palare and Corine Adrienne and the two of them put in great performances.It was actually kinda weird 'cos all this time I thought working with a crew would seriously hinder me, but it's done nothing but make life easier. There's someone else to think about what order to shoot the scenes, someone else to think about whether there's enough light in the shot, someone else to grab the props and feed the cast and make sure everyone's on time. And I could still shoot in my own style.
The only thing I wasn't used to was having the whole scene played from beginning to end because I've never had the luxury of two cameras. I was so used to shooting all of one actor's lines then shooting the rest of the other actor's lines for a conversation because of my own low-budget constraints.
On the production company side, it's just incredible that a company in Malaysia would be daring enough to have the kind of subject matter we've been shooting (murder, cannibalism, ghosts, vampires, posession, double-crossing, time travel, rape). Hell, the first episode (directed by the executive producer, Keith Chong) had the main character, a serial killer, taking off her panties and wiping the blood of her victims with it (in the end the panty shot was cut out by the station for obvious TV censorship reasons).
But yeah, enough of my rambling. Enjoy the rest of the weird comic-book photoshopped pics and be sure to tune in to this week's episode by Tony Pietra. My first episode, 'Cellphone', will be airing next week. Dark City, every Wednesday at 10.30pm on Astro Ria with a re-run on Thursday at 4.30am.
