Day 09 Tuesday 050509

Today my group mates and I gathered together to brainstorm on ideas for assignment 2. Last week, we thought of two ideas and we discussed on the ideas again. If we worked on the first idea, we will need to find different culture costumes and do make up of different races face. We don't have the budget to rent those costumes or get a professional make up artist to help us do the make up, so we gave up on this idea.

The second idea was the HDB flat idea. I myself think that if we shoot the multi camera scene of the residents come out of their house and running down the stairs will be very nice. Some of the shots, we can even do in slow motion. But after discussion, we thought that the residents might not willing to help us act out. If we don't have residents to help us act, this whole idea will fail. We were also afraid that we can't finish the work in time if we worked on this idea. We can't think of better way to improve the idea, so we decide to think of a new idea.

Our final idea was about a boy dressed as a pirate and ride his scooter to go around to search for treasures. He met a nurse girl sitting on the bench doing check up on a injured teddy bear. The girl then looked at her watch and quickly stand up blow the whistle. Everyone all stopped moving and looked at her. She then starts to recite the pledge. Blowing the whistle is like a signal to all the children in the world that the time has come to recite the pledge. Children at different places will stop doing their stuffs and starts to recite the pledge too.

These children each of them have their own occupation like some are florist, rich madam and others. In the end of the video, we will get a girl holding a red and white balloon to recite the pledge and let the balloons float up to the sky. All of us think that this idea was the best and we all want to work on this idea. After that, we went to consult Bertrand on our idea and he said it can be execute but we need to find quite a few children to help us act. Casting is our main problem we need to face, but we told him that we already had a few children in mind and we can also find random children to help us act too.

We further develop on the idea and decide the roles for this assignment. I am the producer, Kirin is the cameraman, Sholleh is the editor and Andrea is the director.

Day 08 Monday 040509

Today in class Bertrand showed us the interview recording did by all the groups and I find that some of the interview recording was very funny. After that, Bertrand showed us a car crash scene using multi cameras to shoot. I watched the process of how they shoot the scene and I was like Whao! It's so difficult but also very nicely done. The director even thought of putting the camera inside the dustbin to shoot the angle he want. I have learnt something about multi camera shoot from this film. It is not a very easy task to do, must go through a lot of planning then can execute it.

Shooting Day 04 Wednesday 130509

Today Kirin and I went to the playground again to shoot random shots of children playing. We also found a girl to recite the pledge. During the shooting, we wanted to shoot some creative shots of the children playing but we didn't succeed. We only shoot some shots of the children playing. Like top shot, zoom out shot and wide shot of the children playing.

Shooting Day 03 Monday 110509

We continued with our shooting today. Today we went to different playgrounds to shoot little kids recite the pledge. We found five children to help us recite the pledge. During the shooting, some of the children can recite the pledge quite well. One of the children parent was very helpful, she helped us to coax her daughter to help us act and direct her daughter to say the pledge too. Thanks a lot, Auntie! After shooting the children reciting pledge, we wanted to shoot some random shots of the children playing but the sky was getting dark so we postpone the shoot to other day.

Shooting Day 02 Friday 080509

Today we reshoot the 3 multi cameras scene again. This time we decide to start shooting early. We prepared everything and brought all the things to the water fountain. Same like yesterday, the weather was still very hot. We were sweating like mad under the hot sun. Jerm they all were unable to come over to help us act except for Yuan. Sholleh then asked me to be the fisherman and he asked me to go inside the water. I was like ARE YOU SERIOUS? He said like that it will be nicer. I was like ok lol, if that really worked.

Before the shooting, I was like running up and down to print our papers and took stuffs from the lounge that we needed for the shoot. I was so tired that day, like running marathon. We shoot the scene of the nurse girl (kirin's niece) and took a few takes. Of course, I had to go in the water a few times. Finally, we were done with the scene and we all thought that it was really nice especially the part I went inside the water to get the fishes. I was almost totally wet after the shoot.

After that we shoot Kirin's niece saying the pledge at the soccer field. We shoot until seven plus and the shots somehow gives the NDP feel. We all thought that it was nice and beautiful. We need to thanks Kirin's niece for all her efforts in helping us with the acting. Thanks a lot! As for the other scenes, we intend to shoot next week.

Shooting Day 01 Thursday 070509

Today was the first day of our shooting and we intend to shoot the 3 multi cameras scene. The scene was about a boy dressed as a pirate and ride his scooter to go around to search for treasures. He met a nurse girl sitting on the bench doing check up on a injured teddy bear. The girl then looked at her watch and quickly stand up blow the whistle. Everyone all stopped moving and looked at her. She then starts to recite the pledge. We prepared everything that day and the weather was like so hot. We were like sweating under the hot sun at the fountain there. We got our classmates to help us act as extras for the scene like fishermen, jogger.

Kirin also brought her niece over to help us shoot. We dressed her up as a nurse and she was so CUTE!!! Finally it was the time of our shoot. Sholleh went to bring the teh peng uncle son over who was helping us act out. But the boy was very shy that he didn't want to wear the pirate clothes nor helping us act out. So in the end we couldn't use him.

We tried shooting with Kirin's niece only and we were all surprised that she can act very well. She was very cooperative like she doesn't complaint the weather was hot or feeling restless when we asked her to act many times. She was wonderful man. We didn't got to shoot much today because we started the shooting at 6 plus and the sky got dark after a while. We also didn't shoot the shot with the fishermen and other people. So we decided to shoot tomorrow.

Day 07 Thursday 300409

Today my group and I we sat down and discussed about assignment 2. Bertrand told us that for assignment 2 we need to produce a short film based on National Pledge, to serve as examples for people who are joining the competition. One of the scene must be shot with 3 multi cameras, the rest can be single camera shots or still images.

After discussion, we came out with two ideas. The first idea was we get one girl to sit in front of the camera. We make up her in different looks like Chinese opera, Indian look and others. The second idea was we get residents staying in HDB flat to help us act like they all run out of their house to the open field. It feels like there is a fire break out so they are running away but is because of something else.

When all the people gathered at the field, a boy will stand up and start saying the pledge. The rest of the people will then follow. All of us thought that the two ideas were not very good. The first idea didn't really express out the meaning of the pledge and the second idea need to get a lot of cast to act out. So we decide to go back and think of other ideas. Continue our discussion next week.