Shooting Day 1

Had our first shoot for LiR today and it was something short of total chaos.

Part of it was due to the fact for the past few days, juz has been away and yk suddenly fallen ill and thus there wasn't any plan for this shoot.

Scene 6: Bus Stop

Got to the location late in the afternoon because yk having just recovered needed more rest in the morning.

(Juz: Part of the reason why we started late(r) was because everybody was late. And well, sick people walk slower. Heh. I actually anticipated us starting late(r). What I didn't anticipate was me missing my bus stop, and getting sent to Far East instead. No worries, cause at Far East, I managed to pick up a cheapo tripod (our tripod was MIA), and 3 mini dv tapes. I met up with yk and najib at carrefour, where their attempts to find a fake phone for dropping ... failed.)

(yk: yah I actually took longer than expected to finish my lunch or rather gave up halfway and yeah, sick people do walk slower. The cheapo tripod that we bought was so lousy it shakes when I just place my hand on it. You can actually see it vibrating in some takes.)

First thing we notice was the "Bing Bing" noises of some construction going on neraby. This scene has to be dubbed.

So having no plan whatsoever, we started with a wide angle shot from the centre divider. Shots of buses pulling out of the stop but some were ruined due to miscommunication.


(yk: Was kinda disoriented having not read the revised script and not having any idea what to shoot. So we just shot whatever came to mind then.)

Did only two takes and then it started to rain. Heavily.

Took shelter under the bus stop and and shot some close ups from there.

(Juz: We had to take shots of a handphone dropping, and najib offered to drop his! In total, we dropped it about 6-8 times! Of course he took care to disassemble the parts before dropping. An old man watched us intently from the side, and even tried giving us a tip or two on how to 'drop it better'. I guess at the end of this experiment shot, we had to conclude that SE phones are indeed hardy.)


Now the main problem was showing Neil getting onto a bus without him actually getting on. And having chosen an "ulu" bus stop means having to wait for the bus and getting it in that one take, with the angles and all.

Rain subsided to a light drizzle and we resumed our wide angle shot of Neil boarding the bus. It must have been a sight seeing two fools standing on the centre divider, holding a plastic sheet over a camera. Waited and waited but no suitable bus came, gave up that shot and just when we returned to the bus stop, a bus came.

(yk: How can you make a sick man stand in the rain? The sacrifices I make for this project. =P)

Hurriedly set up the camera but somehow the bus didnt' stop where we'd expect it and that take was wasted. Feeling tired and fustrated, called it a wrap and went to get dinner.

Now because there wasn't any plan, and nobody took any notes of this shoot, we didn't know for sure if we had gotten enough takes to put the whole scene together. It turned out to be a nightmare during post but somehow thank God we managed to find those single takes which were used to make it smoother.

Scene 3: Neil's phone call

Shot this scene later that night. Having enough of the day, and no idea how to cut, decided to just have one cut for this scene.

Brought out all the house lights we have and contary to what it appears, jib actually has like 4 lights on him.

(Juz: Why we did not use this shot:


Check out najib's mickey mouse ears!
Those are actually the reflection of our lights.
The 4 lights are: (1) houselight, (2) standing lamps, (1) tiny but powerful bulb clamp-like thing. Of course we also did the infamous 'ah beng' versions of the scene, which most of you enjoyed =P.)