10 July, 2010
Today was the first day of proper end-to-end outdoor shoot for me. Till date, almost all the scenes I shot were indoors, but today our first location was a small garden in the premise of my apartment followed by a shoot near Changi beach. Someone recently told me that I should be writing a book about the process of making a film with close-to-zero budget. I think I can definitely already write some of the key learnings I have taken away just within this one day!
So here we go. If you are thinking of making a film, with some outdoor locations, but has no money to control the environment you are in, the below pointers might just help.
a) Watch out for the clouds - You maybe just half way through a beautifully rendered dialogue by a cast member, when a silly cloud would decide to block the sun and suddenly you have gone from a lighted frame to a pitch dark one. Then you would adjust the camera settings to suit the darkened atmosphere and right in the middle of the next take, the sun would have had enough of hiding behind the clouds and would come out and shine in all its glory. So how did we overcome this? We just waited until the clouds covered the entire sky. That was only a matter of time, considering we are in Singapore. Plus of course, I reshot all that was shot again, much to the annoyance of my cast.
b) Remember, people stare - I thought people in Singapore were like the non-staring, well-mannered citizens of the developed era. But nope. They stare. Especially if you have a pretty actress. Then they simply gawk. For example a particular Indian dude of an uncle, walked past staring at my actress. Then he decided that she was really pretty, so much so that he walked on and twistedhis neck to continue staring even when she was well beyond his field of vision. The result was me getting footage on my camera that included a) my actress rendering her dialogues, blissfully unaware of her admirer and b) the admirer in the background, staring at the actress and almost spraining his neck in the process. Obviously that's useless footage.
c) People love being on camera - And am talking about passers-by who simply love to walk between your camera and the subject you are trying to capture, in spite of having an entire park or beach to walk on around them. They choose to just cut across, making sure that a glimpse of their head or tummy or ass or whatever bodypart that's in line with the lens, is captured on tape for posterity. The only thing to do under such circumstances is to breathe deeply hoping that you don't pop a vein and simply reshoot with the consolation that you have enough footage to go for the bloopers video.
c) Praying works - At least it did for me. When we were shooting at Changi Beach Park, the sky turned from a stark cloudless blue with a blazing sun to one filled with heavy black clouds that posed a downpour threat. In fact halfway down the shoot, a few drops fell for about a minute or two, during which I held an umbrella over the camera, and prayed with all my heart that the shoot doesn't get cancelled. Because Changi Beach Park is a ridiculous $50 cab ride from my house and the scene is super long and we will have great difficulty in going all the way there again and reshooting the whole scene. So I just prayed and prayed and prayed. The drizzle stopped and we managed to complete the whole scene, with all the angles and emotions I wanted to capture. And believe it or not, just as I said "It's a Wrap!", and dismantled the camera from the tripod and placed it in the camera bag, it started pouring! The team ran and took shelter under a bus stop. It was almost as if the rain waited for the shoot to end, so it could happily pour in peace. A pure coincidence you may say, but I like to believe the prayer worked. :)
So there, you can see it was a colourful day! Am guessing I would have many more such experiences before the shoot is finally wrapped for good. It's going to be another interesting month ahead!
765 more to go.
hahah nice summary :)
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