For production, I was not a very good AC. Couldn’t help Phua to carry the camera or the heavy equipments. Only manage to help to carry some of the lighter stuffs. Try to help Phua get things faster like the light meter, gloves, pegs and torch light. Thank god for Nuqman, Kevin, ben, alfian and my other classmates who came to help us to grip.
Was very prone to injuries too. Like hitting my head against the flower pot, developed allergy from the dust and dirt from the equipment, causing my hands to swell painfully and itch all over. I have never done so much grip work in a production before. But I’m glad I did in AFP#2. I learned more about the equipments. I was never a cineto kid nor good with heavy equipments. At least now I can say I am a little bit better with stuffs like this compared to before. I was learned how to set up a dolly too. ) there was a problem with the magazine as well. We shot halfway and suddenly there was a very omnimous sound coming out from the magazine. We stopped and re tried several times to find out what was the problem. Found out that we forgot to push up the latch that hold the film in place. But even after that, the film still made funny noises. So we changed our magazine and decided to leave it until the shoot ended then did we take out the exposed side of the film.

For post production I am once again not very involved. But at telecine I was excited by just seeing the footage. Although there was some issues with one of our footage, we the footage still came out alright. We had a crack in the film for some of the shots. The rough cut came out quite okay, only the vinyette (don’t know how to spell) an ND could be seen. We have to crop it off. Hopefully framing will not go off too much after the crop.We had done ADR for the maid part too, cause her pronunciation was too inaudible. However the perspective and accent of ain’s voice is too weird for the maid. In the end we used the original voice and put in subtitles. Hopefully it will work. =)

Managed to get all the signatures, permissions and everything.

But we do have a few hiccups. We had to reshoot our b-roles with a 5dmark because our film looks weird without them. Had a few problems like colour correction and other complications. Thank you Mr Lau for helping.

Note to self, never to edit on our laptops again. However sometimes it is really difficult because everyone is so busy, our editors do not have to time to sit in the NLE room to edit. We have work around it I suppose.

Submitted already, let’s hope we won’t get too bad a grade. =)

Crew call at 6am, so I had to wake up at 5am. Super tiring!

We started a little rough when the casts were late due to traffic jams. Some of the extras were late too due to early timing. Most of them overslept or were caught in the jam too.

We shot at our first location and Mr Lau came. He suggested a shot that cut out lots of our shots and saved us a lot of time. Then we boarded the SMRT bus, went over to the opposite petrol station  bus stop so the extras could have a toilet break while we had some shots without them. After that we had our lunch on the bus and moved to our next location at Lim Chu Kang. We stayed there for a couple of hours and amazingly we finished on time.

The fun part was when we drove the SMRT bus all the way up till FMS block. The look on everyone’s face was classic. It was a bit bizarre to see a SMRT bus in NP.

On Saturday we shot our last 2 shots of the traffic light and bus coming and leaving bus stop shots. It was very fun shooting the traffic light. The exit at NP has sensors on the floor, when a car is parked there for more then 40sec the traffic light will turn red and stop the main road traffic. So we used Kevin’s car and parked it on the sensor so that we can shoot the traffic light going from green to amber to red, and then we reverse the car off the sensor and shot the traffic light going back from red to green. We were like playing with the traffic light. Pretty cool!

Let’s hope now that our footage comes out good during telecine.

So many things did not go smoothly.

First it was the bus. The weekend we were shooting on, just have to clash with the Army Open House, and they booked ALL of the SMRT buses, and we can’t book any. So we tried SBS buses. They have already stopped providing that kind of services. So we asked SMRT if we can rent a private bus, and trade our private bus with one of their SMRT bus. The guy on the phone went: HAR??? No no. We don’t do that. No we don’t.  -.-||| We asked if we can book on Thursday if the weekend is booked, but the Army Open house starts from Thursday onwards.

So we tried calling SMRT MRT. My mum has 2 friends working in SMRT, One of them gave me an email to contact. But they could not help us because we need 2 weeks in advance notice, and we can only shoot on weekdays between 10am to 4.30pm. So that’s a no. The other uncle could not help me too, because his department is not in charge of filming requests, so he gave me an email which directed me back to the same person that I had contacted. So after going rounds, it’s still a no.

So we shifted our shooting date to Wednesday. But we have presentation on Wednesday afternoon for Advance Studio Production. We contacted Douglas pleading him to change our presentation to either Tuesday or Thursday so that we can shoot on Wednesday. He agreed and we presented on Tuesday. YES! So the bus is settled. But our female lead is unable to make it and there was no reply from our male lead. So we went to find a new female cast. First replacement said because it’s not a fully paid job, she doesn’t want to do it. Fine. Second replacement came down to have a mini audition with us, was pretty good, and said ok to our filming dates. In the night she told us she has graduation on Wednesday and can only make it from afternoon onwards. *entire crew faints* We are 2days away from shoot. Our male lead has also informed us that he can’t make it either. Plus, we still did not have a pregnant lady. We decided to change the pregnant lady character in the story to an injured man. As we already found Maxi to replace as a injured man. Nicholas to replace as Edward. So on Tuesday, we frantically contacted almost every female adult on AADB to act for us as Linda. Finally we found Kate to act for us.

Then Maxi informed on Tuesday afternoon that he has something on from 12-1pm. So he can only come to shoot in the afternoon. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we decided to let him leave at 1130 and be back by 1.30pm for shoot. At least we only lose 2 hours compared to half a day.

And there were a lot of shifting of shoot dates between Saturday to Sunday and to Thursday. But finally settled on Wednesday and Sunday.

SO MANY HICCUPS.

( Sorry she keeps moving, couldn’t get a clear shot of her)

Guess it yet? I’ll reveal the answer now. It’s all three of them. Don’t look like it? They are among my favorite  children in the childcare centre. They are so pure and innocent. No motives, everything they feel, everything thing that they dislike or like are all shown on the face. No attempt of trying to hide it. People stop doing that after they grow up right? I do that. I bet there are times when you do that too. I love hanging out with them because they are so real. They want something they will ask, they feel unhappy they will cry, they feel jealous they will cry too, when they are happy they smile and when they are having fun they laugh out loud. You should hear their laughter, its hilarious and adorable. Though sometimes their actions gives the teacher’s headache but they are so adorable that we just simple forgive them. If only I could turn back time and return to being a kid, where everyone’s facing everyone with their real and true side of themselves. That would be great and impossible.

Well it’s the last week of school. Time flies so quickly. It was as if yesterday was the first day of school. My worse first-day-of-school ever. I came to school 2 hours earlier than lesson actually starts because I read the timetable wrongly. So I was left with 1 hour and 45 minutes of nothing to do. So met up with my best friend for lunch. Thank god she was having break too. While looking for her, I stepped and dragged my iPod earpiece without even knowing it. By the time I realized it, it was already a gone case. Plus I wasn’t feeling well, had fever the night before. When it was finally time for my lesson, I was so cold my finger nails literally turned blue and numb. I was wearing jacket but it still turned blue. After lesson I was feeling so unwell I thought I might faint, so my dad came to fetch me, only then did I realize my fever came back. No wonder I was feeling so cold. For the next 2 weeks I was never healthy.

Then there was also the uncertainty of everything. Everything is so new and unfamiliar I felt extremely uncomfortable. New faces, new lecturers, new school life, everything! I felt as if I have no firm grip on anything. For a moment I thought I had it, then it slipped right through my fingers and I feel lost again. It was a horrible feeling. For an extremely short period of time I felt scared to go to school and I wanted to run away from it, but then if I did, I’ll be such a loser. I rather face it, get it over and done with. The longer I prolong it the longer the problem will be with me.

Now I love school. I’m studying something I love and my classmates are fun to be with. I’m glad that I’m getting firmer grip on things, though some stuff still slip through my fingers but I bet that’s how life is. You can’t have everything.

Oh by the way, story 1 is true and story 2 is false. I don’t have a dog. =D I wish I had one though.. =P

The army was just able to remove this huge rumble, when they opened upped, they saw kids, ages 2 to 3 years, all curled up in pockets, all DEAD. The soldiers carried the kids out one by one, all crying. It was a kindergarden that collapsed. Their lives are just starting. How can they just die so early???

This soldier was given the task to go deep into the rumble area to save other people. The moment he reached there, he saw his house, his son saw him and started to call out to him. Asking his daddy to save him. His dad told him to stay where he is, soldiers that are being sent to his area will be coming to save him soon, he has to follow his orders. By the time he came back, his son is dead. They interviewed him, all he said was: my son is dead. He’s dead.

The soldiers used a machine to check for life. But they couldn’t. However they saw this female dead body, they wanted to go looking for survivors first before removing the body. But they realised that the lady died in a weird position. She is kneeling on her knees and crouched over, as if protecting something. So then they removed her and found a 2 months old baby, totally uninjured. And in the mother’s hand, they found a message she typed into the phone before she died. She wrote in chinese: Baby, if you have a chance to survive, Mummy loves you.

The school collapsed. A teacher ran in to save her children. She grabbed 2 child and came out. Went in again and saved another 2 child. On her third save, she was hit by a falling wall, and was severed at the waiste. But the 2 children was saved. When the rescuers tried to carry the kids away from her they couldn’t because she is grabbing the children so tightly with her hands even though she is dead. They have no choice but the saw away her arms to bring the children out.

The rescuers found a couple under a rumble. The wife is dead but the husband is still alive. They rescued the husband and pulled the wife’s body out. They told the husband to leave the body and go seek for treatment. But he said he cannot leave his wife out there. So he tied his wife body to his back, piggy- backing her, then wrote a motorcycle out and all the way to the hospital and put her in the mortuary.

Those are some of it. There are more that my mum told me. I really don’t know how they manage it. I seriously don’t. I may not like China people but they are humans after all. We are all the same kind. I just can’t help but feel so so utterly sad for them. I want to do something for them. But I don’t know what.

After I got home, this scene somehow resurfaced in my mind again and I started to think about it. I knew for the fact that she will change her promoting tactic the moment I say that it is not for me but for my mum instead, and yet I still told her that. Its as though I want her to brainwash me into thinking that this is the bag to buy. Or is it because I am curious to know what will she say if I told her that it’s for my mum? Can it be because I’m alone and I have no second opinions to ask thats why I need the sales person to convince me into buying it making sure that I don’t regret it later. To push away the lack of confidence I have with my own taste? Could it also be I’m tired from walking around and searching for my mum’s present that I want to just buy the bag and be done with it? A second person to just tell me its good and suitable so I won’t feel as though I just randomly grab a present for mum with no effort or thought put into it? To push away my feeling of unfilial towards my mum? My mum took care for me for 17 years and I can’t even get a nice present for her. These are all the thoughts that came flooding into my head. I did buy the bag though. My mum says its nice, she love it. But those thoughts still doesn’t leave me. So I ended up thinking the whole night. By the time I slept it was about 5 in the morning. And the amazing thing is I still haven’t got my answer.

I realised that the habit came back last Friday during studio production class when I started to dance in front of the huge glass pane that connects the control room and the corridor. I was eating at the corridor and I started dancing because I can see my own reflection. After a few moments, I realise what I was doing and I stopped myself. Its a bad habit I want to get rid of. From your point view its weird, funny, or not important. You may think that I’m making a big deal out of it. But to me it is important that I kick it. I bet there are habits that you want to get rid of too right? Like biting nails or cracking your knuckles. You don’t like the habit and you want to kick it. Its the same for me. I don’t want this habit of mine. My parents told me before, HABIT, take away the H you still have ABIT, you take away the A, you still have BIT, you take away the B, you’ll still have IT. Habit is the hardest thing to kick. I will have to practice self control when ever I walk past a reflection. I must kick this habit away.