Filming Weekend day 1
Having missed Daniel Hui's previous production "The Bracelet", I'd felt obliged to go for this one. Besides, my weekend was turning out to be one huge black hole and Daniel Hui's offer was to me like the prospect of sleep to a lazy koala that had been force-fed a caffeine-rich diet for a week. Okay I'm not too good with similes, but what essentially sealed the deal for me was "Food n drinks provided plus u'll get good karma :-)" So I went.
Picking uniforms wasn't much of a problem for me, but Karthi had to borrow Eugene's trousers. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Ling Min in the filming schedule was indeed Ling Min from 6E! The other principal actor, Marcus, was this Eurasian-looking guy. Eugene hadn't arrived yet.
The first location was a classroom. Karthi and I strolled in and picked two seats all the way behind, all pumped and fired up to be extras. No sooner had I sat, Ah Hui motioned for me to go in front. "Eh Kangwen sit here and flirt with her."
After the initial trauma, I shuffled up front, grinned sheepishly at lingmin and mumbled "This wasn't what I'd bargained for." Basically the scene involved a flirtatious retard trying to get the attention of the female lead (named 'Girl') while the male lead (Wei Tian) steals glances at her. Let's just say I wasn't Wei Tian.
Flirting is a delicate skill which I obviously do not possess, because the next few minutes involved frantic deliberation over how I was to go about it, and how she would respond. This was more or less how it went in the end:
flirt: aiya promos coming again..so sian!
girl: yah lor..and did you see in the canteen there was this countdown thing..
flirt: yah so stressful..they dunno what they're doing" (I later found out that LM wasn't fabricating the countdown thingy, and that I had just taken a jab at the TPJC faculty)
girl: especially my maths..I can't even do simple problems.
flirt: really? hmm....hey I happen to be really good at maths!
girl: yah you're always top in class..will you help me?
flirt: yeah sure! you free after school? we could find an empty LT and do some sums together! girl: okay sure!
flirt: let's do lunch before that..what do you like to eat?
girl: i like japanese!
flirt: what kind of japanese?
girl: sashimi
flirt: ooh I happen to be a really good japanese chef. my dad taught me. why not come over to my house (her idea) and I'll make you some sashimi! It's really quite simple. You just buy some fish and chop it up..
I don't think what we were saying mattered, which was a good thing. But I think they actually recorded the dialogue in the next scene, which involved "big actions" i.e. contact. This surprisingly only required a couple of rehearsals and one take, which we both thought was disgusting, but they took it anyway. Low standards lah ah hui...
(I shan't post the dialogue here because frankly, I'd rather forget it)
What we needed to do next, now that the shooting for that scene was over, was to provide the ambient noise. It's pretty interesting how it's done - shoot the picture, silence on set other than the dialogue, record ambient noise later on and overlay. We had to get into groups, pick a topic and talk about it, thus creating ambient classroom chatter. We were pretty much done with that scene after that.
It was the assistant director Vel, rather than Hui, who did most of the "commands" which I thought the director was supposed to deliver. I found out during lunch that the directors and the crew were all pretty stressed out and sleep deprived. But Ah Hui always looks sleepy, so no difference there.
Apart from a scene where the students are supposed to walk out of the classroom after their lesson, the afternoon was pretty uneventful. But I did get to know my fellow extras better, and found out to my bewilderment that KI - which some of them were doing in place of GP - involved Achilles never being able to catch up with a tortoise with a head start, given that he is only able to half the distance between them. Go figure.
Two pictures (a portrait of Wai Wan and a collab with Jacq) later, I cabbed down to Lido to watch Invisible Target with my sis and Fenglei. Pretty spectacular movie in my book.
Picking uniforms wasn't much of a problem for me, but Karthi had to borrow Eugene's trousers. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Ling Min in the filming schedule was indeed Ling Min from 6E! The other principal actor, Marcus, was this Eurasian-looking guy. Eugene hadn't arrived yet.
The first location was a classroom. Karthi and I strolled in and picked two seats all the way behind, all pumped and fired up to be extras. No sooner had I sat, Ah Hui motioned for me to go in front. "Eh Kangwen sit here and flirt with her."
After the initial trauma, I shuffled up front, grinned sheepishly at lingmin and mumbled "This wasn't what I'd bargained for." Basically the scene involved a flirtatious retard trying to get the attention of the female lead (named 'Girl') while the male lead (Wei Tian) steals glances at her. Let's just say I wasn't Wei Tian.
Flirting is a delicate skill which I obviously do not possess, because the next few minutes involved frantic deliberation over how I was to go about it, and how she would respond. This was more or less how it went in the end:
flirt: aiya promos coming again..so sian!
girl: yah lor..and did you see in the canteen there was this countdown thing..
flirt: yah so stressful..they dunno what they're doing" (I later found out that LM wasn't fabricating the countdown thingy, and that I had just taken a jab at the TPJC faculty)
girl: especially my maths..I can't even do simple problems.
flirt: really? hmm....hey I happen to be really good at maths!
girl: yah you're always top in class..will you help me?
flirt: yeah sure! you free after school? we could find an empty LT and do some sums together! girl: okay sure!
flirt: let's do lunch before that..what do you like to eat?
girl: i like japanese!
flirt: what kind of japanese?
girl: sashimi
flirt: ooh I happen to be a really good japanese chef. my dad taught me. why not come over to my house (her idea) and I'll make you some sashimi! It's really quite simple. You just buy some fish and chop it up..
I don't think what we were saying mattered, which was a good thing. But I think they actually recorded the dialogue in the next scene, which involved "big actions" i.e. contact. This surprisingly only required a couple of rehearsals and one take, which we both thought was disgusting, but they took it anyway. Low standards lah ah hui...
(I shan't post the dialogue here because frankly, I'd rather forget it)
What we needed to do next, now that the shooting for that scene was over, was to provide the ambient noise. It's pretty interesting how it's done - shoot the picture, silence on set other than the dialogue, record ambient noise later on and overlay. We had to get into groups, pick a topic and talk about it, thus creating ambient classroom chatter. We were pretty much done with that scene after that.
It was the assistant director Vel, rather than Hui, who did most of the "commands" which I thought the director was supposed to deliver. I found out during lunch that the directors and the crew were all pretty stressed out and sleep deprived. But Ah Hui always looks sleepy, so no difference there.
Apart from a scene where the students are supposed to walk out of the classroom after their lesson, the afternoon was pretty uneventful. But I did get to know my fellow extras better, and found out to my bewilderment that KI - which some of them were doing in place of GP - involved Achilles never being able to catch up with a tortoise with a head start, given that he is only able to half the distance between them. Go figure.
Two pictures (a portrait of Wai Wan and a collab with Jacq) later, I cabbed down to Lido to watch Invisible Target with my sis and Fenglei. Pretty spectacular movie in my book.
Labels: filming
posted by kangwen at 4:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home