Wahoo! I’m almost on picture lock!
Grabe, with all the deleted scenes and lapses in shooting, I was afraid the story would be full of holes. Now, thanks to intensive editing, I believe we will pull through after all.
matatapos na ho ang pelikula sir! boyet and manok consult a medium
After this week i’ll be bugging my musical director and sound engineer to do their stuff. Hahaha! It’s happy independence day for me tomorrow! Read the rest of this entry »
I’m in the editing room right now with Kat and Jamo, two of the interns who helped me with the last shoot. I’ve requested them to watch the rough cut of 24k. I really need comments from people who haven’t seen the film to see how I can improve it.
The film so far runs 107 minutes. (Haha. And to think I was afraid of running undertime.) I have to find ways to cut it down.
Jamo, by the way, took some great scene and behind-the-scene photos during our last shoot. I’ll post them here when I find time.
Got back from our 3-day shoot in Ilocos Sur yesterday. I’m just recovering from the exhaustion and stress that I endured.
The shoot didn’t go as smoothly as I had wanted. So much time was wasted because we were plagued with logistical problems. Actors were not on location as scheduled, some costumes got left behind, and the lighting equipment took forever to get to location.
In addition, the site looked so different from the way it was before. It had been raining since we left last time, so the place was wet, muddy, and plants had grown everywhere! It looked like a completely different place! Oh and here’s the clincher — the hole, which was dry as a bone when we left it, now had water in it about 4 feet deep. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve rescheduled our last 3 days of shoot on May 16-18 so I’m leaving for Ilocos Sur again early tomorrow morning.
We’re working with a number of interns from UP this time because some of my original staff are no longer available on our shooting dates. They seem so enthusiastic. I think I will enjoy working with them.
I’ve made a couple more changes in the script since last week. I’ve decided to rewrite and reshoot the scene with the medium. We’re going to do it in Ilocos as well. Hopefully I can finally capture it in a way that’s worthy of opening the film.
So there. My fingers are crossed. I hope everything works out smoothly.
I’m supposed to be in Suyo right now with my team to prepare for our shoot on May 7-9. But I’m still here in Manila posting on my blog. That’s because a storm named Chan-hom is forecast to be in Ilocos on exactly the same days as my shoot.
PAGASA satellite image as of 4pm on May 6
I assembled the footages we have and I’m so numb from watching them over and over I can’t seem to look at them objectively anymore.
Yesterday I asked my friend and script consultant, Bing, to watch the sequences and give his comments. I desperately needed advice on how to rework the material given the limited time and budget.
Bing gave me some helpful insights and comments which confirmed some of the things that I felt the film needed, but also confused me at the same time. Well, I thought, that’s what teachers are for — to muddle your mind so you’ll think even more. Haha.
Now I’m back in the proverbial drawing board to come up with 24k script version number 8, trying to work with the footages that I already have.
Now that I’ve experienced it, I tend to agree with Bing’s opinion on directing a film: it can be tough, but it’s still more difficult to write a good script.
I finally have confirmation from all my treasure hunters regarding our shooting sked in May. Thank goodness. I don’t have to send someone plummeting down a cliff in the story prematurely.
I’m therefore back in the batcave, a.k.a. editing room. I’ve been working on the scene of the ritual and I’m so fascinated with the visuals that I want to put a lot of it in the movie. Now I have it running at 9 minutes, and it’s just too long. I need to bring it further down to maybe 4 minutes, but the audio is giving me a huge challenge because it goes from instrumental, to prayer, to instrumental, to singing, to instrumental. If I cut it to 4 minutes, I might have to do away with the live audio completely and use scoring, and I think it’s a shame to do that. So I’ve been stuck on this one sequence since yesterday. If I don’t have a solution by the end of this day I’ll have to move on and get back to it later.
Just when I was considering expanding Jojit’s role in the film, my PM tells me he hasn’t been responding for a week now to calls, text messages, emails, or facebook messages regarding the additional shooting days. I hope he’s alright.
I suddenly have to think of ways to remove his character from the rest of the sequences that haven’t been shot yet. My gulay!
Well, it’ll be hard, but not impossible. I’m sure there’s a good reason why he’s not responding, but I can’t take a chance on whether he’ll be available or not. I’ll probably spend the next week rewriting the script.
Maybe this is God’s way of telling me I don’t need those other sequences.
Wow. I hope this is the last major obstacle I’ll have to hurdle. I’ve had enough already.
So far so good. I’ve assembled about half the movie already and I can’t help but smile.
It’s rewarding for me when I review the sequences and I see that the cast have turned out good performances.
Being a former actress myself, I’m very sensitive about how the scenes are acted out. Perhaps because of that, I can be hard on some of the cast sometimes. I hope they understand that I just want to bring out what is needed to make their characters believable.
That said, I’d like to introduce the actors who figure prominently in 24k. I won’t go into details of their character, or their resume, as that will be tackled in our official website, but I’ll say a few words about my impression of them and what made me cast them in their roles. All of them, except for Julio Diaz, Read the rest of this entry »
I’m spending my holy week paying penitence by locking myself in the editing suite while my family is in Bicol for vacation.
I’ve been doing the rough edit of our footage these past few days. I have been on the lookout for a really good editor for this project (mind you, I have high standards in editing), but I am afraid that after our additional shoot I might not have budget for one. In any case, as much as I hate spending the next two months in the editing room, I have no doubt that I will make tutok the editing from beginning to end anyway so I might as well cut it myself.
There goes my social life again. Read the rest of this entry »