Wednesday 15 October 2008

It's a wrap!

At 11:30pm, at a Ramly burger stall in Kampung Baru, we wrapped the six-day shoot for the revised version of Malaysian Gods.

It will not use any images from the first version (which screened for one day, and has now been deleted) but it will have about three sentences in common. Other than that, it is much wordier, set in many more locations, covers a year of protests rather than just one day, has a rock score and, oh yes, features interviews that are entirely in Tamil. As such, it is my first Tamil movie.

The Big Durian (2003) had 19 hours of rushes. The Year of Living Vicariously (2005) had 55 -- but to be honest, most of that was because I didn't want to look like the only one on the Gie set who was not running around and working. Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (2006) went overboard with 83 hours and I don't regret a single minute. Apa Khabar Orang Kampung (2007) slimmed down considerably to 20 because we stayed in only one location.

Malaysian Gods (from now this will refer to only this definitive version) is the leanest: we shot only 12 hours. I'm much more precise about what I want now. Perhaps the experience of working on the 35mm Susuk helped. (Even though that film did break the Grand Brilliance record for the most cans of film: 239).

I look forward to showing Malaysian Gods to you in December.

2 comments:

Fikri said...

I had 7 cans of film for my shoot last month. You can probably imagine the expletives running through my mind right now at the thought of shooting 239 cans.

Malaysia 'can' (boleh), I suppose. :)

sera_a said...

where can i get a copy of lelaki komunis terakhir. i have wanted to see that since i was in uni and i even submitted a paper about it without watching it. (the paper was on censorship and i based on that story because it was the highlight at the time)