We did the occular right smack in the mercury retrograde a couple of mondays ago, so of course we got lost several times, reset schedules, had tons of miscommunication incidents, and so on. We rented a van, a necessary expense considering we travelled from fti to makati to mandaluyong to marikina.
LK will be shooting its day 2 at a warehouse. The one in fti looked perfect. It was cool inside, the place being an abandoned freezer warehouse. And it was huge. Something like 60 feet wide. I just hope we get it for 5K like what they said before. We probably will need to rent an extra day before the shoot for the set up. I'm not sure if we can get a chroma cloth large enough to cover the the 22-ft wall, and the scaffolding of course. We won't use the entire floorspace, just enough for the Elis to run.
Day 1 will be shot in a studio with a pristine white cyclorama. Fine, we're doing a poor homage to THX, so sue me.
The one at Pioneer owned by artist katya guerrero was it. They had a better reception area and the staff seemed friendlier but I guess it helped that the studio was spotless unlike this other studio we went to where they had cars parked and equipment in the studio. Plus there were gigantic dogs in the reception area (i'm terrified of large dogs who act friendly by barking and pawing at strangers). In terms of size, the studios were pretty much the same, 90sqm according to their website, here's a pic...
The other one is from my cam. But what really sold us was that katya mentioned that maybe they could give us a cut off their usual rate and that they understood independent filmmaking and could adjust accordingly. This is the first time their studio will be used for a short film (usually its photo shoots and music videos), i'm not sure though if they're as excited...
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We wrapped up our occular visits at around 5pm and proceeded to our gruelling scene-by-scene meeting with the PD's at Gusi (along Esguerra). We broke down the scenes and every prop that needs to be constructed.
Prior to this, during a weekend at home, ideas came to me on how the sets should look like. Gossip Girl had a part in this... looking at Blair Waldorf's "Queen B" fanpage on facebook, I thought... "bees"! An alien culture that lived eusocially like bees-- centralized reproduction, colonies.. COLONIES --this was the term i actually used in the script even in the first draft in 2007. And so, the honey-comb structure in the dome design (Cedric H's idea) would make sense and carry-over to the interiors... and the semi-translucent whiteness of an alien-organic world would make more sense than a synthetic-plastic world. Hence the "whiteness" ripoff of THX 1138 (thank you internet video streaming!) but with a fuzzy-alien feel...
And then i stumbled upon this website. Molo Design! And this was the inspiration for the corridors and other "interiors". Bianca mentioned that it will be impractical to use paper like the molo softwalls. Eventually she came up with the idea of using the thinnest available semi-translucent high-impact plastic, folded in the same way.
I actually tried other semi-translucent material. I was hell-bent on using bihon or vermicelli for the walls until I tried doing a miniature at Shine's house. Vermicelli when wet is a nightmare to control (no different from my hair). When dry, it does look good, but practicality killed the idea, did i have any idea how much bihon it would take to cover a 10ft wall? what was i thinking?
I made "mood boards" to help them visualize (because I can't draw!). I'm posting them here as well.
We could save on props by incorporating gadgets in the costumes... and a charcoal palette to contrast the white sets.
And of course, the "wastelands". If earth/soil no longer existed, what would the wastelands be made of? Some alien element... And what landscape would be more alien-looking than one made of uncooked gelatin bars. Reddish, translucent and could be made to glow like lava... I tried it out with some orange gelatin bars and a ceramic house.
But where are we going to get the hundred kilos of gelatin to make the set? The solution would be to find a similar material. But what? and where? This seems to be what's bugging bambi and bianca. Will be meeting with them soon to see the preliminary designs.----
Later that evening the dome design by Cedric arrived. It was just a structure/ blue-print but there were some parts i didn't get and we might have to tweak the design a bit before constructing the miniature.
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And much later that evening Noel came. Noel volunteered to do the Nara prosthetics, yay! He used to work for the Batoctoys. Benny Batoctoy and Cecille Baun are like the ABS-CBN and GMA of prosthetics in the Philippines. Anyway, Noel just came from a stint in Dubai where he did computer graphics (i think). Sad thing is though he really wanted to do the project, he might not be here for the actual shoot because his visa could be arriving in early November. He did assure us that he was gonna teach someone and make sure his design is executed properly on that day. I'm not quite sure about this set-up though. Will have to talk to him during the week and make sure that his guy is on board at this early stage.
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A couple of days later, I finally met up with Bon Labora. Bon owns Anino Design and he did the visual effects of Blood Bank. He agreed to head visual effects. He's friends with a lot of CG and motion graphics people he could talk into helping out with LK. My thing is, I'm offering up the project for co-prod. It's up in the air still, but when I discussed the specific parts where effects would be needed, it seemed a piece of cake to him. Will be meeting with him and his people next week.
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And finally, I got the preliminary work for PD done, I can focus this week on CASTING...
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