48 Hour Film Project! Shooting and Death Scenes!

It’s always hard to wake up in the wee hours of the morning on a Saturday. The time is 6:30am and I am finding it hard to establish motor control over my body despite my alarm already hollering for the last 15 minutes :p. After doing the necessary morning rituals, I was back on the NKVE, hurtling towards TTDI to gather with the others at Linus's place. We had breakfast at our common haunt, Devi's Corner, before heading out to the 1st shooting stop, the bus stop along Jalan Dato' Sulaiman, TTDI.

On the set with the team...

For this shoot, most of the dialogue will be in good old, Bahasa Malaysia. ;) Therefore the expertise of our thespian, Mr. Faisal is needed for this task. While we filled our bellies, Faisal and Kay Lee were busy working and 'feeling' out the translated script. ;) The shoot started at about 9am, with Kay Lee and Nurafidah starring after their faces were generously doused with makeup by our artist, Lyana Dee ;).

Lyana Dee (Daffy's makeup artiste) working her magic...

The weather was generally cooperative, the sun was up with little cloud cover, although the sound of passing traffic was quite a nuisance. Apparently, the people of TTDI with their better access to bigger and more powerful cars tend to create a larger amount of noise when they drive by, VROOOOMMMMM!!! ;) As we are filming at the bus stop, our activities also managed to attract a few people within passing buses (it is a bus stop after all ;)) although fortunately no crowds formed around the shooting area (I wonder if it was done in my hometown, Klang, what would happen?) ;).

Filming at the bus stop. Surprisingly this outwardly 'mundane' looking public amenity is quite popular as a film set! :)

Prior to the shoot, my director gave me an active chance to contribute to the 'wellbeing' of the shoot. Calling out my name initially illicited a confused response because on this very fine day, there were two 'Eddie's' on the set, the other one being our Director of Photography (who also seems to have an affinity for red Mazdas :D). The 'task' our director reserved for 'Eddie' leaves no doubt as to which 'Eddie' he was calling out. It was to pick up rubbish around the bus stop so that the set don't look so dirty, something which I guess would have made the other 'Eddie' go bonkers. :p *Sigh* The things I do for my 15 secs of fame... :p ;).

The DIRECTOR! :D

After 3 hours of golf ball swirling in a glass jar and bizarre explanations of how someone could keep a love one forever at one's side, we finally took a break at about 1:00pm for lunch, a little bit behind schedule.

Kay Lee must be thinking, "Little ball, little ball in a jar, who is the fairest of them all?" ;)

By now, I had a second task from our esteemed director and that is to ensure everyone gets fed their share of chicken rice. For 'halal' fare, Sum assisted me by getting the required foodstuff from Devi's. Meal time over, we went over to the next set, a motorcycle shop in Kayu Ara. There was a brief spell of rain which fortunately petered out rather quickly. No matter, we were 'safe' as the next shoot is held indoors.

At the recently 'commandeered' motorcycle shop in Kayu Ara

Located close to where we shot House about a year ago, the motorcycle shop was 'commandeered' by our ever resourceful Mr. Dennis, for a small fee to the owner of course. Thankfully there were also no muscular thugs to harrass us like the last time. Guess now is the time I get to fulfill my '15 seconds of fame', posing as the protagonist's father's motorcycle riding friend ;).

Ah... Director Linus giving pointers to a noob... :p ;)

Greeting Mr. Danial Mamat (Faisal), I was to exclaim about his new name tag, his mispelt name and then comment about his daughter as she passed by. The longest line I had was, 'Wah, tiap kali saya datang, anak you semakin membesar. Dahlah macam mak dia, Cantik pun macam mak dia'. That was however, reduced to 'Wah, anak you semakin membesar ya?". Why? Well, because we are shooting on celluloid, so if you mess up that's one length of unretrievable useless tape, oh as well as oh... one minor detail? I kept forgetting the extended line! :D

"Fuyoh! Ada name tag baruuuuuu!!!" ;)

Admittedly, I was rather pleased that the remark on my little star protagonist was mostly removed, the line did sound a little bit 'not right'. ;) At length, it was Faisal, who acted opposite me that had to babble a long string of stuff after my line. No sweat for our veteran thespian! :D

I had to leave quickly after the motorcycle shop scene as I had appointments galore this day. Pretty unusual really, because my Saturdays are usually quite vacant for this 'quantum singularity' ;). After redoing the scene from different angles and almost being made to a 'tango' with Faisal, I had to reluctantly bid the crew goodbye. :( My phone was already buzzing with people waiting for me at the next destination. ;)

At this point, I do have to mention one rather strange event that happened during the shoot though. It sort of happened while Carol was holding the clapper board in front of me and Faisal as we were made to do the near tango for the camera. She apparently saw 'someone' passed behind the both of us on the monitor that was hooked up with the camera. Eddie (the other one), who was behind the camera saw that 'someone' passing behind as well. Now this is where the 'strange' and a little 'bone chilling' part comes in.

Creepy... Brrr... :S

EVERYONE knew where they were and NOONE on the set saw ANYONE passing behind us at that point of time!!! :p We can't confirm anything at that time because the camera that we had cannot have the film rewound and replayed to show that scene on the display monitor. I'm told that length of film can only be replayed when it is being editted in the studio later on. Kinda ironic isn't it that our genre is er... 'HORROR'? :p

The team! :D

In any case, the whole experience was definately FUN! :D A lot different from what I would usually do as a mundane engineer, preparing datasheets and material handling studies, staring at numbers and tinkering with formulae all day :p. A breath of fresh air indeed! :D

Experiences like this also provides me with a unique opportunity to get to know new people from professions on the very opposite side of the spectrum (science vs fine arts) like Kay Lee, Faisal, Lyana and Eddie (the other one ;)).

My early departure did rob me of one very interesting experience though. Faisal's Death SCENE!

Hmm... Forensics team member or 'makeup artiste in her element? ;)

Ah... but then again, maybe we should wait patiently for the release of Linus's film and marvel at the movie magic, eh?

Death by Power Tool anyone? ;)