Today was Day 1 of our principle shoot for Staring at the Sun. It was a short and fairly simple day (car chase and running people… on the indie budget) which I’m thankful for because it allowed me to get my gears cranking again after Like Fish.

The best part of production is always the exhilaration, camaraderie and adrenaline rush of the production process itself. Pre-prod is always nail-bitingly meticulous and full of uncertainty. Post-prod can be monotonous and full of (potential) despair. Generally the two most ‘song‘ or immediately satisfying bits of production is the high of wrapping set production and the high of watching your final product on a screen bigger than 15/21 inches and realizing it looks less like crap than it did while you were editing it. And of course all the fuzzy moments you end up having with your crew because of the sheer audacity of the things you put each other through.

So today we resorted to our usual no budget no issue stunts which was a slightly horrifying flashback to our earlier, even more indie short films. In stuff-I-did-today:

1. Sit on the edge of an open car window with a 5dmkII + 70-200 F2.8 IS mkII while my producer Huiying hurtled and careened sharply in corners at 70/80kmh while chasing another car. Self did not fling out of window though I was balancing for dear life. Bonus: Nothing (camera, lens, human) got exterminated. Still managed to get some measure of decent footage.

2. Revisited our meepok cop days by tracking with a supermarket trolley. Except this time, a Mustafa trolley is about half the size of an NTUC Fairprice one. Plus I was flying the dinky little glidecam from the side of the trolley over my director’s shoulder. Lide was pushing it at a speed which was insanely mad and needed a good 3metres to finally screech to a halt just in time for us not to crash into painfully solid things like walls and pillars. Bonus: No one died. Still managed to get pretty decent footage for what our #likeaboss DIY-ness is worth.

3. Flinging our leftover lunch in the air to attract a hoard of pigeons, thrice, so our actors could burst through the glorious pigeon-y mess and we could tick off a shot on the universal checklist of stereotypical shots involving hoards of pigeons. Bonus: only one person got shat on despite optimal aerial coverage.

Our ‘serious’ shoot starts on Thursday and will be a series of mad days involving a lot of physical activity for our actors (and also, in relation, the crew). Hard not to be when our script is largely about a death row prisoner escaping to KL for a final bowl of bak kut teh (pork rib soup).

Many things to settle before Thursday rolls around, but am glad we had today to ease ourselves back into shooting mode. Am grateful for everyone who has and who is helping us in one way or another, including all the juniors and friends who are sacrificing their time to help the three of us on set. Can’t even begin to say how grateful I am to all the people who have helped us and are still helping us, silently or publicly. :’)

Onwards!

And good weather for the rest of our shoot days, like you have given us today Lord. Thanks.

PS: If you haven’t watched the second shortie we made for our backers, it is here: