24k Film In-The-Making

I got feedback yesterday from Robbie Tan regarding our test shoot. He’s the head of the monitoring committee for Cinemalaya and the one who’s really nakatutok on what the 10 filmmakers are up to. He said that the result of the shoot was generally good. He nonetheless gave me a few comments and suggestions on how to improve. The main gist of it was to have a lot of coverage so that we would have enough footage to choose from during editing.

I have to admit, I initially thought the test shoot was a huge hassle. Especially since I found out about it only this February, when I was already planning a very tight schedule to shoot late this same month. But since I was forced by circumstances to move my shoot to late march, I was game to do a practice run.

Lowell, and Edwin, in a scene from the test shoot

I learned quite a few things from the experience. For one, since I am not working with the same team I worked with before, I was able to gauge how Hitler-esque I have to be to command this team of 30-35 people on the actual set.

Secondly, since this is also the first time for me and Pao, my DOP, to work together, it was a good rehearsal of how we visualize and work out the shots together.

Thirdly, I saw during editing what shots worked and what was lacking in our coverage. I’m making sure I don’t do the same mistakes during the actual shoot.

Now that the test shoot is over and done with, it’s time for a test party! I have a good reason to party too!

Yesterday my co-producer officially jumped on board the project. He had given his commitment to co-produce 24k earlier. But since we didn’t sign a contract (or well, actually i did, but he didn’t), it was only yesterday when he released the first tranche of his investment that I considered the agreement final. He is a great help to this production, not just financially but also in terms of logistics. We’re lucky to have his support.

Tags: 24k, ana agabin, cinemalaya, edwin guillermo, hitler, pao orendain, robbie tan, test shoot

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 4:56 pm and is filed under cinemalaya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.