I’m usually very uncomfortable being in front of the camera, you can say I really hate the camera looking the camera in the eye, ironic isn’t it?

Today in class we were told to act a scene that was given to us, only this time we were emphasizing on actors and how excellent actors almost go unappreciated for their hard work. Today, I took a step in to their shoes, and realize how truly hard it is to face the cameras with a director that was constantly in argument with her director of photography.

The fact that the director didn’t know what she was directing made it even more difficult for both me and the actress to perform what was being told to us because we didn’t understand what we were supposed to do. Instead of acting, I ended up setting the shots up for them when I wasn’t in frame, which made things a little bit more easier, but still very confusing.

What I can take from this assignment is that we really have to understand what we want to achieve before having to shoot with the actors as it can really effect the confidence of actors towards the director’s vision. Not to be insulting but throughout the shoot, the thought “when can we start rolling” constantly rang in my head as they kept wanting me to be in place, but didn’t have a clue on how to shoot the scene. This not only made me angry, but unwilling to act for them again.

I now appreciate actors a whole lot more knowing the difficulty of having to be patient while providing a professional standard of acting. Being tolerant is key to acting as some directors would want multiple takes of the same scene which can be really draggy for a whole day’s shoot.

For this research, I wanted to focus my attention on a local filmmaker that made a path for Malaysian filmmaking, the one and only P.Ramlee. On this research I wanted to focus on the filmmaker rather than his films because of what he brought to the table for Malaysian filmmaking.

Raised and born in Penang (Malaysia), P Ramlee represents one of Asia’s biggest influence in the golden age of Malaysia. To date, P. Ramlee has known to be the most successful director, actor, songwriter and singer in Malaysian history. And this in itself is very interesting because it’s very rare to come across a director with so many different talents. Over his career, he starred in 63 films, directed more than 30 films and written well over 200 songs.

Most of P.Ramlee films consist of song and dance, and since all of this were filmed in the around the 1950s to the 1960s, the Golden Age of Malaysian Cinema, were all black and white. Due to the very limited opportunities film studios in Malaysia had that time, P.Ramlee had to work his way from the bottom, being a coffee guy for many sets just so he can learn how to make films. Often times, P.Ramlee would perform and direct his own films, sometimes even taking control of the camera works for his films.

Song and dance were largely popular in Malaysian film, reason being of the influence from directors from India who were brought in to do filming. P.Ramlee largely received his influence from Indian, Japanese and Hollywood cinema. In his films, he likes to shoot in kampong, a place where villagers used to stay. One of his better known films is called “Bujang Lapok”, and in this film he compares the more stylized kampong in contrast to the city. His vision for films were to show what it was to be Malays, Muslim and Bumiputera, also known as a native.

Kampongs are commonly found in the rural areas of Malaysia

P.Ramlee wanted to make his film real, sand Bujang Lapok is a great example of his work. In the film Bujong Lapok, the actors that were involved in the film used their real names in the film blurring reality and film. Besides that, the film was meant to target the issue that was present in Malaysia in the 60’s.  This film reflects the change in lifestyle in Malaysia from both the Japanese invasion and the British colonization. Besides that, the dialogue presented by the actors were spoken in both English and Bahasa, evidence of cultural influence from the British.

In my opinion, featuring in your own film although give you total control over what you have vision in mind, it sometimes gives very little creative space for other cinematographer, and actors to bring in ideas.  As prove, P.Ramlee often fought with other directors but he always had the upper hand because the studio had his back. What is present in his film though truly shows the culture and issues that were faced by the locals at that point in time.

Overall, watching his films really do reflect his love for Malaysian cinema. Although P.Ramlee ended his career in a very harsh way, watching his films today really do give us a sense of enjoyment and laughter. Just like most directors today, many of their film styles and technique are based on how they were influenced growing up, it was just unfortunate that P.Ramlee was way ahead of his time.

Write about a recent class exercise: your approach; the experience of pre-producing, shooting and editing.  Analyse the result.

As mentioned in my previous post, I had to tackle most of the problems I encountered during set alone and that really kept me on my feet. Pre-production was fairly simple, I saw a vine(which is a short video that usually lasts up to 7 seconds) that appeared on Facebook and thought if somebody on the internet could tell a story in 7 seconds, what more a full length film. For this part of the class assessment, I wanted to take a different approach. Instead of the standard complex coverage that I would usually do, why not one shot, one story but long enough that it manages to grab and keeps people’s attention.

In this process, I focused mainly on the script and simple dialogues in order to make the conversation quick and snappy. Once I was done, I got the help of Henry and Matt to be my actors and we started filming the scene. The setup was simple, just a tripod and a mic which I hooked on to it, and I let the comedy play itself.

We had multiple takes before I was satisfied with the footages, this was because I didn’t feel the gag in the earlier takes. It felt dry and forced, but after the actors got comfortable to be infront the camera, everything came out nicely. From this lesson alone I’ve learnt that comedy is not just dialogue, it’s visual as well. The frame is a playground and it is important to know what to put in the frame and what not to have in the frame as well. Since the dialogue was between 2 person, I couldn’t do much but to refine the script until I was satisfied with the results.

Overall, I have a better understanding on how difficult it is to pull off comedy. I’ve understood the principles of the lens better. I felt that when shooting comedy with a short focal length isn’t as effective as using a long focal length, but that really comes down to the director’s choice.

Reflect upon your experience in class.  Did anything come as a revelation to you?  

So I attended class pretty late for both days of class, and one of those days we were told to film a script we had in mind and collaborate with others. Since I came late for a class after an important event, I brought a friend along with me who was suppose to be an actor. At that time, I knew that I would have to take up all the roles and worked as a one man filmmaker, which isn’t something I’m familiar with.

It became clear to me that having a team is important in filmmaking because it was physically impossible and very time consuming to handle everything, even just to shoot an extremely short scene. But with that in mind, I knew the work and had to be done and I had to get creative. Since Henry (my actor) had some experience in filmmaking as well, I told him to help me set up the gears and I’ll frame the shot and we decided to go for a one take in order to save time, only problem was there was nobody to control the audio, or hold the boom.

Again encountering the problem, I had to work with what I had and mounted the boom mic on the camera. It wasn’t the ideal situation from filming, but it was good enough to pick up the actor’s voices. We took the one shot on the camera which was mounted on the tripod and I was surprise how good the video came out. I believe with a bigger crew I could’ve pulled it off better, but that’s the beauty of filmmaking. There’s always something new to learn and problems to solved.

Overall, this assignment taught the importance of a hard working crew and it is not impossible to work solo, you just need the patience and creativity to pull it off.

Reflect upon your experience in class.  Did anything come as a revelation to you?  

This week in class we were told to film again, but this time with more freedom to move the cameras and collaborate with others. I took on the role which I am most familiar with which was the group’s camera operator. I’m very comfortable with the camera, but one thing I did learn this week was communicating with the director.

For our group, Sam was the director and he had a good idea on how to film the shots, problem was the way he intended to film the scene required a lot of movements and could cause some safety problems. I guess the reason why I had problems communicating with him was because of my low self esteem when speaking english although it was my first language. This was definitely outside my comfort zone because I decided to take up the challenge and communicate with him the issues we will run in to during set.

After we both took out our phones and started taking pictures and recorded videos as to show how we were going to shoot the scene, we finally understood what we wanted from each other. We came to an agreement that certain shots might not be suited for the scene, but some can be improved. He gave me his input which I valued and put in to consideration during filming, and he took my advice with a few shots as well. Overall, I’ve learnt that a strong communication with the team is very important while filming as it could really effect the outcome of the film.

I was very happy working with the new team as we all cooperated well even though it was rainy the day of filming, but we endured the rain and managed to pull off some in my opinion pretty good shots.

For this film analysis, I decided to take a study on the film Inception (2010) by Christopher Nolan. The scene I decided to analyse is the dream hallway fight sequence.

This scene serves as a very part to the film as it shows the importance of planning before shooting of scene. In research, the team took about 6 months in planning and preparation to shoot this scene. Reason being that they had to take care of safety precautions, the way the shot will be framed and the time it took for Nolan’s team to create the whole rotating structure. What’s more important to take note was this film was 8 years in planning, and was an original concept developed by Christopher Nolan without any pre-existing intellectual property.

What I found very interesting about this film was Nolan’s stance against using digital filming, instead he preferred shooting on film and depending on practical effects to achieve the fight sequence. It was mind blowing to discover that Nolan had to build 100 foot rotating structure from scratch, with the help of a crew that consist of 500 people in order to achieve the very popular dream fight sequence, which doesn’t even star the main character of the film. The entire rotating structure had to rotate in sync and with precision or it may cause the structure to vibrate, or even worst result in a structural collapse.

To complete this project, Nolan turned to his frequent production crew and director of photography. Wally Pfister was Nolan’s choice as a cinematographer for this film, and honestly I think he did an amazing job covering this amazing fight scene. The fight scene was shot on wide angle lens with no shaky cam was used for this fight scene. In the hallway, they made the decision to attach the camera to the floor, following the rotations of the whole structure. Another camera had to be placed on a crane which, which was attached to a telescoping arm in order to follow the actors and track the movement of the scene.

The lighting in the hall was another amazing factor that contributed to this scene as well. This is because they couldn’t use the typical approach to light the scene due to the rotation of the structure, the lights had to be build in to the hallway itself. Every light that was placed in the hallway was meant for essential illumination of the actors and the hallway.

Towards the second room, the fighting scene was not shot as easily. Due to the difference in height and length of the room, the rotation of the entire room had to be changed in momentum, slowed down when the actors are on the long side and increased in speed when the actors were on the shorter side of the hotel room. Reason is because if the actors failed to get across the room in time, it may cause serious injuries due to the height of the fall. Besides that, the actors had to be invested in the scene as well, Joseph Gordon-Levitt mentioned in an interview that he had to constantly focus on set and try not to look out because it might cause motion sickness, the directors experienced the motion sickness when they tried it out themselves. Besides that, Joseph Gordon-Levitt spent 2 week training for the scene before the shoot, this includes physical training as well to help prepare them for the scene.

Lee Smith, the editor of the film was so stunned by the footages that he received that he made a decision to let the whole footage of the hall room fight be played out as a one take. He said that the footage looked so amazing and clever that there is no way possible that anyone can pull it off. But After the hallway fight was over and the editing in the room fight was a little different, the cutting were a lot faster, there were a lot more close up shots in the final product. This was because the scene was so dangerous to pull of, that sometimes they had to call in a stuntman to do the scene, and the editing was their way to hide the stuntman.

This whole scene only lasted several short minutes, but it proved to be one of the most memorable fighting scene of the decade. This scene proved that practical effects when done correctly can create an amazing outcome. Besides that, it emphasizes the importance of planning in a film production. What I feel was most important was that everyone was invested and wanted to make something out of the ordinary, and Inception was definitely one of those films where you can feel that a lot of thought and hard work was put in to creating this film.

Hallroom Fight Scene – Timecode 01:06 – 02:30

Q:Reflect upon your experience in class.  Did anything come as a revelation to you?  Did you learn something new technically, about the camera or film craft in general?

This week in class, we were told to shoot and edit the the videos that we took. My experience as a sound guy for the crew did not come as a revelation because I have done it plenty of times before I was given an opportunity to operate a camera back when I was in production. Although, it was fun to work as a sound guy again on a new camera as it did provide a different kind of experience when working with a new crew.

Working with a new crew is like familiarising with a new camera again, you got to get them to work together in order to achieve optimal results. After a good 10-15 minutes of discussion and location scouting, we settled to shoot in a nearby classroom. I liked the director’s instruction to shoot beside the window, which allowed light to reflect off the wall and bounce on to the actor’s face. It gave a very nice and subtle look to the actor, bringing out the actor’s eye color.

Besides that, the crew worked together really well. We all had a say in what we want to shoot and how we want to shoot the film. The director of photography although it was his first time handling the camera, did an great job in framing the shot, and with the help of the director the story was filmed beautifully.

I’ve also learnt the importance of the continuity guy as I used his notes while arranging the videos in post production. The notes that he took during set played a large importance in keeping the phase of the film consistent.

Overall, I really liked filming with the class, it was a fun experience which i believe will help me in the future of my filmmaking career.