The Letters Crusade

Oyeah! It's the 3 days 2 nights trip to one of my group member, Meng Min's house in Kajang to do some filming for my EALD(English as Additional Language and Dialect) coursework. We depart from our college after evening class and reached her house at night. Yeah, its a girl's house!! And me and Dao Zhen are staying overnight together with 2 other girls of my group!! GG. We sleep in different room of course. duh~

Luckily, her bro drives a Pajero to fetch us because we have 5 of us and luckily, it happens that all of us are stickmen and stickwomen.




We didn't start our shooting straight away on first night. Instead, we practiced for the tomorrow's scene. Bloody.. I think I'm born to rock in comedy, I just suck in acting when I need to be serious - side effect of watching too much Taiwan entertainment shows. Miraculously, I didn't NG laughing like what I expected to be throughout the whole shooting. XP


We woke up at 4am in the next morning FML.


There's a scene that we need to capture sunrise and it's on the hilltop too. It's a 30-minutes ride away. We arrived there at 5 something and hell it's already full of people! What's more shocking is that, me as the director *ehem*, didn't even know that we have to climb the hill for about 25 minutes in order to reach the spot that we are going to shoot. Oh god~ It was actually a palm tree estate where we started our journey and then up the hill following the track which previous hikers opened few years back then(I think so lah)

Before climbing, we only have a cup of Milo.


But what I saw in the ads about Milo is that after you drink a cup of Milo, you will have the energy for the whole morning. I seriously doubt it.But after all, it's an ads.

The first thing we did when we arrived at the spot was, we panted like hell. I was like,"wtf!? are we coming here for extreme sports or filming actually?" And there are actually 3 stages of hilltop to go! But since we have found a good spot where not many people would linger on, we decided to stay at the spot. XD

So, we finally began our shooting, after panting for like 10 minutes. There's a serious problem when you wanna film something at the hilltop, the blaardy freaking wind who travels for 100+ miles per hour but receive no summon from the traffic police without paying duit kopi. The sound of the raging wind just overlap all our voice and all we could hear in the video taken was "Fuuuu~!! Fuu~ Fuuuu!!"

To solve this problem, We planned to record our sound in a closed room and then replace the sound of the video later on. And hopefully, it works.


Another problem is, the camera's battery life. Our whole filming process was constrained by the limited battery, like 120 minutes? We can't afford to sacrifice too many time on one scene as we might not have enough battery to shoot the remaining scenes and I swear to god that I would never climb this hill again for the 2nd time just to shoot a few scenes. Nooo way~

So basically, we were racing against the weather(wind), the time(before sunrise's scene and when sunrise) and the battery life. =X


Another thing about low budget film like us, lol, is that we don't have professional lighting system and some bunch of cameras. Camera problem can't be solved - no money, no extra camera. But we do manage to solve the lighting problem when shooting in dark places. All you need is some high volt (like 6V) flashlights and you are good to go. Of course the effect won't be like what you see in Hollywood films but what could you expect from a low budget educational movie. LOL

All in all, this 3 days 2 nights trip really gave all of us a good experience, I'm pretty sure. Knowing that, what you could imagine is not necessary what you could carry out, especially when you have limited resources, tools and experiences. I thought that I could film out what I expected it to be. It's so hard to actually realize it rather than just imagine how the whole scene should be going. So silly of me... There are soooo many unexpected problems which may arise throughout the whole shooting. Till now, I finally understand how hard it is to make a successful film and the obstacles the whole crew might experience.


Here are some photos taken through out the whole trip,

Fify, the little cute dog that always wanted to participate in our film. XD

Breadman, who dies with honour after 'sacrificing' himself as one of our crops.


'The Inspired' crews up the hilltop!! From left, behind row: Me and Dao Zhen.
From left, front row: Meng Min, Winjing and Li Chi


At last, the breaking dawn~

Last but not least, I would like to thank Meng Min and her family members especially her parents who spend their time bringing us out to various kind of places to eat and her bro who is kindly enough to fetch all of us and letting me and Dao Zhen to sleep in his room temporarily. Thanks! =)

Many scenes left to go! Wish us luck~