more pics

stolen from Amanda N., more pics here

Day. Effin. Two.

This is what you get when you shoot on a full moon. Pix stolen from our production designer Amanda Nava. More pics here. And here (from Shine)

morning
I was prepared for a disaster to be honest. I woke up at 2am and it was raining like hell. Didn't stop till after lunch. We weren't able to shoot the exterior scenes in the morning. We couldn't shoot anything but Charles Hilado (72) reverse shots. Prosthetics was being done at Noel's workshop while we were at the location in fti. They did come in within the expected time and we were able to shoot, shot by shot. No time for masters. We had to do it shot by shot. I guess the actors' rehearsal the day before helped make the scenes run smoother. But the continuity could get a bit tricky. Especially in the lighting. Good thing DOP Alma Dela Pena is a freekin genius. We didn't get to finish what we were targetting to finish. Lovely Gazelle Canlas (Nara) had a previously scheduled event that afternoon so we had to let her go. She was to be back by evening, go through the whole ordeal of getting the prosthetics applied, and to the remaining scenes. What a trooper.

afternoon
We had a late lunch at 1:30pm. We had to do as much of Gazelle's shots as we could. Good thing Karr Cotamora, production manager extraordinaire got Tempura King to sponsor. Though she was gone the whole afternoon, the "angels" Renz, Peachy & Elena took over. They're students from the University of Makati who volunteered (bravely) for the film. Of course Shiney was there to oversee things and help out. Thankfully it stopped raining and we were able to do the exterior flashback scenes (with the talents who had been waiting since 4am). It was around 2:30. Kuya Ben, Alma's asst camera/ focus puller did wonders in the shoots. We shot on an island with cars passing through both sides. Good thing Alma pulled off a stunning shallow depth of field with the lens we had to take out the background. I heart the HPX500. Plus we exploited the 48fps feature with embarrassing frequency. We came back after a couple of hours. Jao Mapa (Elis) had been waiting as well all ready for take. We immediately did his sequences.

night
We shot the Jao sequences in order. It was all action. This is the trick for faster shooting. The less dialogue you have, the faster you can do your scenes. do your shots as they appear and you have less continuity worries. We were able to finish 3 sequences by the time dinner came in at around 9pm. Worth the wait was the birthday party of a dinner with pancit, and roast chicken and lumpia. All courtesy of Ping-Ping's lechon who had been providing digital films free dinners for the past 3 years I think.... Ok, I'm gushing but with just 2 each of the 5Ks, 2Ks, 1Ks and 3 inkies, Alma was able to make the scene look like we had a ton of equipment. Shiney & Kuya Chris (gaffer) & Alma and I all worked together to get the "floating leaves" shot. Can't wait to do the trailer. ;-). Jao surprised my with the breakdown scene. The guy is underrated, plus he still has some of his matinee-idol qualities. At least I think so, when he's walking in high speed, with the wind blowing his black Mike Tidalgo costume coat, looking intense into the camera.
Gazelle was able to arrive back on time and in prosthetics. But we had a ton of remnants to shoot. We had to prioritize that. Plus Jao's remaining shot involved the use of a crane which was yet to arrive. Apparently the jib we borrowed from Brass Knuckles (courtesy of the very generous Gary Rada & EJ Salcedo) couldn't support the HPX. Good thing Balicas (thanks Kuya Jinggoy) had a porta-jib available that could support our camera. It was just 8 feet, but with a scaffolding we could add to the elevation and achieve the same effect. Thing was the traffic to QC was a killer, but what could we do. We were worried too about the added expense (which is another long story. Good thing my mom let me use her cheque book to issue post-dated cheques and good friends Jules Katanyag and Arden Condez (both soap opera writers btw) helped loaned me some cash)....

morning again
Somewhere during the last scene with Charles & Gazelle, I lost my temper and threw a magnificent tantrum. I walked out of the set. It's crazy. I was on the verge of tears but I couldn't cry in front of my crew. I was so angry but I couldn't scream at anyone. I guess the issue with the cloth strips looking like crap was the last straw. It was almost 2 in the morning and we still had the special effects tree transformation scenes plus the crane scenes. I had to finish all the warehouse scenes now and some people I felt were slacking off. I could barely afford a day 3 let alone a day 4. I guess I let the pressure get the best of me. Anyway, I called Renz and told her to ask Shine to direct the inserts with the cloth strips. To this day I have no idea what those inserts look like....But I guess because of that incident, people started to get their act together. There were less complaints and less goofing around. And the miracle was we actually finished by 4:30am. I had to trash some shots but I basically got what I wanted.... The sfx shots, I hope were correct. VFX supervisor Bon Labora was there anyway to make sure it was all done to work in post. I got my crane shot. Good thing Jao was a trooper, waiting for more than 4 hours just to get his last shots despite having another shoot shortly after.

Thank you so much to everyone who made this shooting day possible. Alma and her boys, the Balicas boys, Kuya Allan Hilado and his Boom man (his name slips me now...), Karr and the Angels, Noel and his tireless prosthetics team, Amanda, Mike and their friends, Bon, Shine, the Outpost boys, the drivers, the talents, and my actors, Jao, Charles & Gazelle.

Next step is to wrap up payments and documentation of day 2. PESTER NCCA TO PAY THE 2ND TRANCHE. Of course pay up all my debts. And figure out how fund day 3 and make sure day 3 is flawless. Day 3 will be in January. I hope that's enough time to find extra money.

-p

teaser

shine, karr & i got together and did a post mortem of sorts a couple of days after the shoot (the day after rendered everyone half dead). we were all poorer than when the project started. essentially we came to the conclusion that

1. we need to raise another 112,500 Php to finish shooting the film with a 3rd day shoot.
2. we need to seek sponsors to help arrive at that amount (ie: 10 friends who'll fork up 10k each in return of a percentage of all sales)
3. we need a teaser and sponsorship kit to help make this happen.

So last friday, shine and I trooped over to Outpost to view the existing footage and make a teaser.

So here it is. It isn't much. But hopefully it will amount to something. The moneyshots are still in day 2. Comments are welcome. Music was stolen (thank you, Bjork).





--

Yesterday we had a grand prod meet. Of course we couldn't get everyone all together at one table but everyone came at one point. Finally Noel, Bon & Amanda all got to meet up so we could discuss how to do the tree transformation. Sadly we were all hungry and i couldn't feed the crew. I guess it sort of affected the discussion. We ended up having most of the effects done in post, CG. But this morning I got this nagging feeling that I need live effects. At least when the first branch erupts from her arm. What if we never get sponsorship for visual effects? ARgh.. Noel brought samples of the latex textures. At least that got us excited. I hope we get the soil-morphing-into-tree bark bit right.

So no more chroma, no more studio or warehouse, no more alien landscape set. We decided on shooting in a tunnel. We need to find a tunnel by wednesday. Actually I saw pics of the malinta tunnel and it looks perfect. but in corregidor? fugetit.




Wednesday also, i am praying the money will be released, at least my personal money which i can use while waiting for the NCCA 2nd tranche. i don't know how i can location hunt and occular with just 500 pesos. that's all the money I have (plus the 73 pesos in my atm account which i hope doesn't close).

Money. Money. We need money.

Ito po yung "Galilean Moons"

this was what they were talking about in sequence 5. the moons around jupiter.... wala lang...

pic stolen from Thrilla in Manila, which is all about wonderful illustrations and not much about Manila.

In a few hours Shine & I will be doing the teaser. To help earn funds. Two more shooting days to go. And I have an idea to scrap the whole idea of chroma cloths and fake plastic alien landscape. I just might situate "the wastelands" in a tunnel/ network of tunnels. Yeah, just like TMNT but who gives a hoot if we'll be saving money...

Which means a quick occular and meeting over the weekend. Charles Hilado (72) will be leaving for Bacolod by next week. His handler Ms. Jo was gracious enough to work out extending his stay in manila till the 15th. But still no news from NCCA about the 2nd tranche will have to pester Roswil (committee on cinema) once again. I'm not very good at results-oriented pestering.... Oh well.

-p

Day 1

Call time was 5am and we packed up around 4:45. Which was a good thing if not for the fact that we decided on adding a 3rd shooting day. That's right, there was no way we were going to finish all 16 sequences that day. There were 3.5 sequences left, averaging 3 set-ups each.

But a third day was a good idea. On hind sight, there were scenes that I felt were shot wrongly. After dinner, I threw away my board and tried to block the shots based on the existing sets to avoid set changes. Of course it was horrible. I'm the type of person who gets lost and has a very poor sense of direction. And so it was like that. I lost direction. I should have stuck to my board and decided on the 3rd day earlier. The time saved setting up was wasted just the same on figuring out continuity of direction and how to avoid the spaces outside the set. Our set was usually just 2 walls? We are creating an illusion of a futuristic city with just 2 4-foot walls, how audacious is that?

On the good side, I got most of the shots I wanted. I was happy about the 48 fps shots, the fake 360 degree dolly track (we just used 3 curved tracks and switched the actors around), and the drawing on mist on glass shot. The lighting was lovely (home-made space lights). The costumes rocked. The actors were in it. Who cares about the weird story and lousy continuity? ahehe, just kidding.
Take a look....











pics stolen from shine. more pics here.

Now were in the process of preparing for day 2, figuring out how to get people's skeds right for day 2, following up on the money we need for day 2 to happen, and contemplating selling our kidneys to fund day 3...

More later