The Justin Guber Institute

Pimpin' Off To Pusan

		Wednesday, 07 October 09 - 04:36 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

So for those not in the know, the last thing I did before becoming a hermit for a couple of months was a short film called 'Healthy Paranoia' for 15 Malaysia, a short film project where 15 local filmmakers created 15 short films about what we thought of our lovely country:-

And there's also a making of here:-

The flick was shot with the actual Minister of Health in the Ministry of Health itself and the dude was a pretty cool guy too. Amongst the other filmmakers involved were the late Yasmin Ahmad, Col. Kurtz himself - Johan John, the Suleimans, Benji & Bahir and a whole bunch of pimp daddies rollin' in the caddies.

When I took the job, I just thought it'd be fun to do a short film on a budget. Gig's a gig, right? What I didn't expect was to find myself with a sponsored trip together with the other pimp daddies to the Pusan International Film Festival in Korea.

Sweet.

Thing is, I thought since I have my 5D and haven't been doing enough with the damn thing, I figured instead of blogging about the experience I might as well video blog it. Of course, this depends on whether or not I find the time to edit and upload whilst I'm there (or whether I'm of sound health and mind during the trip to do so).

Regardless, here's part one:-

Wednesday is flight day. Let's see what bad craziness we get up to...

Experience This

		Wednesday, 12 August 09 - 06:37 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

I sincerely believe there are two types of writers, especially when it comes to screenplays.

The first type channels specific life experiences of their own into their writing - the names, faces, places and outcomes may be different to what happened, but the similarities to those real life experiences are there. Perhaps it's too exorcise whatever demons the writer may have lurking inside them, perhaps it's just because they're not too imaginative.

The second type writes purely from their imagination, either what they wish would happen or wish wouldn't happen in the world - the fantastical, the imaginary, the down-right weird. These are the ones whose ideas often start off with "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "imagine this..."

The best writers have both traits.

I reckon I've always belonged to the former - the type that writes about what he's experienced - but I've found myself turning more and more towards the latter.

The recent ideas I've been coming up with have been filled with large explosions, fight sequences, espionage, poker and Satan. And I'm quite sure I know why.

Because up until recently I've been blocking out my experiences for the past few years.

My original reasoning before this was that I needed to write something that made some dough or write something in Malay which makes me very nervous as the main thing I love writing is dialogue, but the fact of the matter is they're all just excuses.

It's strange - I've actually been complaining to myself that there aren't any personal experiences to write about when in actuality there have been plenty. I've just either not been able to see it from the correct point of view or simply didn't want to touch those experiences again with a ten foot pole.

It feels good to be able to look at things the way I used to again. It's incredibly refreshing, for one. The instability in some of my more human traits are still there, but they're no longer something I want to hide or repress. To accept life as is, the experiences life gives you, is a good feeling indeed, and I think I know what things to write about now.

Like my bowel movements.

Acting, or Something Like It

		Monday, 22 June 09 - 02:00 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

Howdy, campers. Once again, I've been MIA for work reasons - in particular, working on 'Cahaya', the upcoming feature film written and directed by Johan John where I was a producer, a role I've never played before. But the post on my role as producer will have to wait as I'm not in the mood to write about that yet. No, what's on my mind are the other roles I've been playing over the past six months... as an 'actor'.

My first steps towards being a filmmaker were in acting. Drama was one of my GCSE's and around the same time I started writing scripts, both for the drama class as well as for my English language class where the teacher allowed me to hand in scripts for my coursework as opposed to the usual assignments.

In university, same thing - started acting first in the drama society as well as teaching improvisation before writing and directing two of my own plays.

And then, of course, there was 'Ciplak'.

Since then I didn't really get any acting roles. I remember when I wanted to play the 'supercop' in the terrorist episode of 'Ampang Medikal' that I was directing only to have the executive producer tell me I wasn't 'classically handsome' enough to play the role.

Directing the second series really took its toll on me, both physically and creatively, and so I thought for the beginning part of 2009 I'd chill for a bit from the directing side until I figured out something to write that I'd really want to direct, and in the mean time do more writing and acting. On the writing side, there were seven episodes of season 2 of Ghost which I also directed an episode for (which was episode four). On the acting side, things have been a bit more... varied.

Around January I got a call from a friend of Reverend Ed's who was directing season two of 'Hartamas', a series on NTV7. One of the actors pulled out and they needed someone within the next couple of hours to play one of the roles - 'a real rocker dude' was the brief I was given. I didn't have anything on and rushed over where they duly dressed me up like this:

(I blogged about this shoot after I did it which you can find by clicking here).

The episode aired recently and I caught it on youtube which you can find by clicking here. It's a slapstick sitcom with some soap opera drama in there as well. What do I think about it?

No comment.

What I will say is this - watching the episode made me think about the acting roles I've been playing this year and I'm not sure what to make of it, though I can say the feelings aren't positive.

After this I was offered a role on a friend's telemovie, 'Puaka Topeng Putih' (you can click the title to see the trailer though I'm nowhere in it) where I played an emo guy who's brother is accidentally pushed off a cliff by a bunch of girls and one year later I get my revenge by wearing a white mask, wielding a machete and walking very slowly.

Sound familiar?

To save money they got one of their interns to double as me for all the masked scenes and I just turned up on the days my character had lines. Wasn't much in the script for me to play with as an actor besides cry at a steering wheel after hearing that the girls, all at least a good foot shorter than me, pushed my brother off a cliff. Their reason? He ratted on them to the teacher.

After that was a role on season two of Ghost in one of the episodes which hasn't aired yet so I will tell you nothing for fear of the producers sending a SWAT team into my house to silence me before hacking into my main frame and deleting all reference to the role in question.

...shit, sorry. Been watching too much 24, got a bit carried away there.

The next role was a cameo in Johan John's movie 'Cahaya' where I played an asshole husband (pic on the right). I was hoping I'd get to cameo as a more interesting character but then again, I had a shit load of work to deal with as a producer so I doubt I'd have had time to put any work into a proper role.

Last but not least, there's the most recent role I've played which was in Jordan and Dique's short film. I got the call about it whilst I was still on the 'Cahaya' set, then when it was closer to the shooting date I found out what type of character I was playing:

An old religious man who catches two kids making out in a car and tries to stop them until an army of riot control police pop up from behind which is why I'm in the pic above on top of a car. This was probably the most fun to do, though a very weird choice of casting I must say. Never thought I'd be hired to play that.

Watching the 'Hartamas' episode got me thinking about all these roles - a stoned eighties rock drummer, an emo serial killer, a CENSORED, a jackass husband and an old religious man - tiny little roles peppered in with not much for me to really bite my teeth into and 'act' in. Sometimes it's the role, sometimes it's the script and sometimes it's just the way it is.

To be fair, all of the roles except for the short film one were for TV, which may explain why the short film was the most fun, but it'd be nice to do something where I can say "ok... this is gonna need more than just pulling a stereotype/archetype from out of my ass". I'd like to be able to do some theatre but doubt I'd have the time for rehearsals.

I'm not sure what to think of all this except that I'd really like the opportunity or chance to really act in something again. I know one of the simplest solutions would be to write something I could act in which I also direct, but here's the thing - the character I played in 'Ciplak' was one that was close enough to me for me to be able to pull him out at the drop of a hat. I wrote him that way because I knew I'd be playing him and I didn't want to be too swamped as a director. One thought is to write something for me to act in but get someone else to direct but I'm not sure what at the moment.

I miss acting. I miss getting into a character that's foreign to me, trying to figure out how exactly I should play it. I miss going through my lines, rehearsing, reacting to another actor and getting the ball really rolling in a scene. I miss that, and I hope I'll get to do it again soon.

And hopefully before I reprise my role as 'Gajah'.

Welcome to The Industry

		Tuesday, 14 April 09 - 04:05 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

I went for a film related meeting the other day and was introduced to someone in The Industry. She spoke at great length about how she could get the hook-up on any sponsor we needed for a film, full of confidence to the point of pomposity and not a trace of sincerity in her voice. After 3 minutes of listening to this woman speak I quietly SMS-ed my colleague at the table:

"Why am i getting the impression this woman talks a lot of cock?"

That's what it sounded like - cock. Tons of it. My ears were in an auditory sausage fest being slapped about by pre-cum glistening floppy phaluses. She rambled on and on with such superiority, every sentence somehow ending with a less than obvious hint of how incredible she was at her job. Not a trace of humility nor honesty. In the words of a Star Wars character about to step into the unknown, I had a bad feeling about this.

Welcome to The Industry.

A while back I went to a private event for some people in The Industry where I met one of the Big Wigs. I asked him how business was. He told me that after the failure of their slightly more 'intelligent' releases (and by 'intelligent', I mean by his standards) and bigger budget productions he was told by Big Wigs bigger than him that he is not to accept any pitches that were interesting, intelligent, original or different. They were to stick with slapstick comedies because that's what (they believe) the public wants and that's what (they believe) will help them recuperate their losses. Apparently going back to these 'intelligent' releases and figuring out what was wrong with them in order to make them work is not an option.

When he spoke of indie films, he already had in his mind a perceived notion of what an indie film looked like (beautifully composed shots of silence between two underacting individuals) and what kind of plot an indie film has (any plot that the public wouldn't understand that may or may not deal with something political, racial or sexual). He spoke about how they were the ones that were raking in the box office but regardless, he wouldn't invest in one. After that another Big Wig friend complained about the lack of women at the event and asked him to call some of those young and desperate female extras to come over to 'spice things up'.

Welcome to The Industry.

Two years ago I went to a film premiere in the hope of broadening my contact base in The Industry. The producer said a few words before the film rolled and compared it to a known American director in the genre they claimed they were filming in. After the first reel I was seething. By the second reel I was desperately trying not to fall asleep considering the director's wife was sat next to me but to no avail - it was the first time I ever fell asleep in a cinema. The horror I was watching on screen was so abysmal and terrifyingly crap that my brain refused to take in any more of it.

When I went out for a cigarette after the screening with an actor friend of mine from The Industry, we were joined by another from The Industry that my actor friend knew. I listened to them talk about the movie, wondering what they would say about it. Their eyes said what I was feeling all along - "this movie is beyond shit and showing it to the public should be punishable by death".

Instead, they talked about how local audiences, in particular 'regular folk', would like it. And the saddest part was they weren't wrong - the movie made decent bank in the box office.

Welcome to The Industry.

This is The Industry where I've been making my living for the past year. I have seen wave after wave of terrible actresses who get bigger and bigger roles based solely on their perceived beauty. I have seen countless producers who claim to know their shit when in reality they couldn't connect two Lego bricks together without an instruction booklet, a video tutorial and someone next to them telling them exactly how to do it in single syllable words. I have shot page after page of scripts so disturbingly terrible one wonders what kind of retarded monkey boy signed off the check to pay these hacks. I have pitched my ass off and later discover that apparently I'm too young to be a director. I have had my scripts either rejected for being too intelligent or rewritten to the point that I wonder if it's even ethical to have my name on the cover and where the fuck is the local screenwriters guild to protect me during instances like this in the first place. I have had my award winning feature film referred to as a 'short film' more times than I'd care to remember because apparently if it's not shot on film it's not a feature regardless of how long it is. I have seen fights escalate on set to the point of blood spilled and I have worked with some of the most irresponsible jackasses in the world.

I have seen all this and plenty more and I welcome it with open arms.

I can't imagine doing anything else. I'm making flicks and shooting shows and writing scripts and playing psychos on screen. Do I seriously want to go back to nine-to-five, shirt-and-tie, memos, faxes and pointless abbreviations?

The crap gets to me, it really does, but fuck it. I welcome it, arms wide as a whores thighs at port during shore leave.

And do you know why?

Because I'm keeping all these experiences and I'm remembering every single one. And one day I'm gonna make a film about all this so don't get on my ass if the mirror shines a little too bright because, like they say, "siapa makan cili dialah rasa pedas" ("whoever eats the chilli tastes the spice").

Keep on acting like jackasses, bitches. You'll get yours one day, and I'll get mine.

Preaching the Word

		Tuesday, 31 March 09 - 09:13 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

So last Sunday I found myself waking up at seven in the morning. For the past two weeks I'd been used to sleeping at five or six in the morning and waking up at around three or four, but Sunday was different. I had to be awake, alert, sharp and full of pep.

Because last Sunday I had to be on student time.

A few weeks before hand I got a call from a UiTM student, asking me if I was willing to give a talk together with two others of the film world for a workshop on making short films. It'd been about a year or two since I last spoke to UiTM students and I'd been planning a workshop myself so I figured it'd be a good testing ground.

So there I was, driving out to the Puncak Perdana campus of UiTM in Shah Alam on a Sunday morning, trying to stay awake with the aid of two cans of coffee, a shitload of cigarettes and Mos Def playing on the CD player.

The second I got there I met up with someone who I'd written to via e-mail, I think maybe even spoken over the phone, but had never actually met in person till now. The one and only Hassan Muthalib:

This is a man who's been involved in the Malaysian film industry for many, many years and a joy to talk to. The man's a walking encyclopaedia of film theory.

Also present was uber-editor and filmmaker Akashdeep Singh:

(Pardon the bad photoshopping. Trying to save pic space on this blog).

Whilst Hassan talked about film theory and Akash talked about how to get your ideas on screen (and he also showcased a cool little way to jot down ideas) I spoke mainly about the joys of DIY and being independent, showing them videos of different DIY techniques, how cameras that most in the film industry here would consider not good enough for film being used in not just indie productions but Hollywood productions too (such as Crank 2, shot with the Canon XHA1 and Canon F100). I showed them how I made my DIY depth-of-field adapter, how others have made their own steadicams and how regardless of what techniques and equipment you use, none of it is worth nothing without a good, solid story, honest and straight from the heart.

I think they dug it. I hope so, at least. Either that or I spoke English too damn fast.

After that there was the workshop:

Here the students had an hour to brainstorm a short film idea and present it to us. The ideas were great but there was one thing that bugged me: they were told they had to present their ideas in storyboard form.

This didn't make sense, as far as I was concerned. It didn't make sense to Hassan either (Akash had to leave before this part, unfortunately). To me, the most important thing of this 'pitching' session was to be able to convey their story in a way that we could understand, but they got so caught up in the storyboards they'd get too confused or pre-occupied with them. Story is story, plain and simple.

The whole thing was hella fun and I had a great time with the students. Apart from the whole pitching thing, the other thing that bugged me about the session was that these kids weren't exposed to as much as I felt they should be exposed to - other directors, other ways of shooting, cool ideas, all the many possibilities available. I felt it was important that they knew there was more than one way to skin a cat.

It made me realize how blessed I was that I was exposed to all these things that made me the filmmaker I am today. I got a chance to learn so much that has helped me get to where I am and the whole experience at the college energized me even more to get my damn workshop going, because how cool would that be? Tons of young punks, going out there and making more new and interesting movies in crazy ways that the old guard would never even dream of. Impressive, interesting, personal stories that demand your attention, grip you by the cojones and drag you across your seat like a cinematic teabagging.

Thanks, UiTM, and I hope I'll be seeing y'all real soon (especially if any of you guys take up the internship I pimped out).

Acting: The Art of Waiting

		Thursday, 12 February 09 - 01:23 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

It was almost six in the morning and the wig fell off from the back of my bandana. The hair and make-up being (I say being due to the persons gender being, shall we say, nondescript) was tired and sleepy but now the being had to stir and fix the huge head of fake hair scalped from some strange being from days gone past. The streets of KL were orange and the crew were fixing a car rig to the last director's Mercedes. Inside, one of the actresses was fast asleep, waiting her cue, whilst another actor had gone past the point of no return and was professing his love for NKOTB.

"So," I thought, "this is what it's like to be an actor in Malaysia."

Four days ago I got a call. Kitty was resting on the sofa and I hadn't much to do.

"Hello, is this Khai?" said the voice on the other line. I replied with a yes and asked who it was. It turned out to be a director friend of my vocalist who was shooting the second season of a TV series and at the eleventh hour one of the cast members pulled out.

"We need someone to play a real rocker dude," was his description of the role.

I hadn't acted in a while. During the last TV series I was shooting there was a part I wanted to play, that of a cop in a hospital. I told the executive producer that I wanted the role as a cameo for the episodes I was directing.

His reply was, and I quote, "but the character needs to be classically good looking."

"Oh! So you're saying I'm ugly?!"

"No, lah... but this character is going to be flirting with Alia and it has to be believable."

Ok. So not only am I a hideous fucking Chud, I also have no chance with an actress like her. Thanks for the compliment, buddy.

My hopes of acting have pretty much been shot down for roughly the same reasons, and this was an opportunity to act again, which I hadn't done in a long time. Hence, I agreed.

I'd heard talks of the show, and from the information I had gathered I knew it was pretty youth oriented so thought that the role would probably involve me being some emo-rock dude or something - hair to one side covering half the face, dressed in black, etc.

I then arrived on set, got into make-up, and ended up looking like this:

Okay...

My character's name was 'Gajah', and was the equivalent of Silent Bob to the other actor's Jay, silent and in a world of his own, swatting flies with his electric fly swatter. They rolled for a take, I swung up in the air on my cue to swat the fly...

...and broke the fly swatter in half, the top part flying towards the cameraman and boom guy, barely missing them together with the 42" plasma TV.

And so it went. I was to appear in two episodes, and in the second episode I had quite a bit of dialogue, including a moment where I had to sniff one of the other actors for no apparent reason. I had worked with some of the cast members in the last TV series I shot so it was a bit of a reunion. Food was your typical crew food on a local movie set, and I hogged the chicken as usual.

And what did I discover, being on the other side of the lens? Two things:

The first thing I was amused about was how a lot of the more seasoned actors seem to have two modes - the 'daily bread' mode and the 'true actor' mode. I had seen some of these actors in independent productions before, and knew how they could act, be subtle, be good. This was their 'true actor' mode.

That mode was not to be seen on this set.

Instead, you get the 'daily bread' mode - a whole different style of acting, a method that you'd call 'TV acting'. So often people berate the acting style on TV for its over-the-top-ness but here's the truth - if people didn't want them to act that way on these shows, they wouldn't be acting that way, because God knows they can act a whole lot better.

Case in point of this was when we were shooting at Central Market. My character and his 'Jay' are out on the streets, busking. A blind man playing a flute is earning more dough, so my 'Jay' grabs his money. The blind man turns out to be not so blind, gets up and yells blue murder. Everything was, as you'd call it, done in the 'TV acting' stylee.

Whilst we were shooting this scene there were a whole load of on-lookers. One of them was an elderly woman with some groceries who had no idea were shooting and thought that someone really was stealing money from a blind man. She was a regular old woman, probably from a working class background (for want of a better term) and when she realized what it was she stuck around to watch...

...and laughed at the scene every time. She was loving it. It pegged me on to just how different tastes are between different social groups. Though the script seemed so incredibly low-brow to me, that's me. The makcik watching the scene would love every second of the show.

(There can be further argument about this - how non-exposure to things a bit more 'high-brow' or 'intelligent' is unavailable hence its appreciation cannot be nurtured, etcetera etcetera, but let's not get into that know.)

The second thing was not so amusing. In fact, it was downright tiring, and it's given me a new found sympathy for actors.

I discovered the waiting.

The waiting is not fun. Between scenes, between set-ups, you just wait. You could go through your lines, but it's not too hard to remember. My main fluffs were mainly due to Malay not being my first language. Though I can speak it, reading from a script proved to be a bit tricky because a lot of times the words wouldn't roll off of my tongue properly. Just certain words, but if I got stuck on the word, it would fuck me up. Most of the time I'd get the script 5 minutes before I shot the scene.

It's those moments when you're waiting that just outright kills you. It makes you want to be a diva and demand crap because it feels like eternity. You read a book, you take some photos, you go for a walk, but you're still waiting, and sooner or later you have nothing else to do except wait.

The waiting is a killer. Hollywood has trailers. Lucky bastards. We have stools and a makeshift ashtray made from a cut open plastic bottle filled with a bit of water.

So the question remains: would I do more acting? Six hours from now I'll be back behind the lens, shooting the current TV series I'm doing. I love directing, regardless of all my complaints, and I have complaints about acting too, but it's what I started out doing before going behind the lens and I wouldn't mind doing it again.

Only this time I shall bring a portable DVD player.

And maybe some porn.

Credits and Whores

		Thursday, 11 December 08 - 01:36 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

 So a month or so back I was editing an episode of a tv series I directed where, and lets be honest here, the script was so bad it makes Batman and Robin look like Glengarry Glen Ross. Regardless, there were moments I was proud of, little diamonds embedded in the huge pile of manure that was the episode, and God knows I worked my ass off on it, shooting till the wee hours of the morning dazed and confused trying to keep it all together.

Even editing was an ordeal, my computer being pushed to the llimits thanks to format and codec wars between companies making the footage a bitch to work with on my PC set-up, quad-core be damned (and no, this still won't turn me to the dark side of the Mac). Sure, it was a whore-job, purely for the money (and whore jobs are the only jobs i seem to have been able to get throughout the whole of this year) but there was an element of pride there, a bit of heart and passion in the whole thing.

So when the episode aired and it was credited to a different director and editor I was, understandably, a wee bit miffed.

Currently I'm writing a different tv series which is someone else's concept and story, and the whole process has been nothing less than frustrating. I was told from the beginning that every draft I write will definitely go through a lot of changes and I could understand that, but when you see the final draft and only a handful of your scenes actually make the final draft it tends to make one wonder whether it was changed for the purposes of the tone and story and series style in general or it was changed because it was shit. Right now I honestly don't know whether it's right that I get credited for the scripts because not much of it is my work.

All this whoring has gotten me into a funk of unprecedented proportions and the Guber is not liking it one bit. I just realized I haven't written a single script of my own material this whole year ("Breaking Up..." was improvised and "London Calling" was written last year). Sure, there was the short film i did at the beginning of the year, "The Writing on the Wall", but that was written for the purposes of the event, it wasn't a story I had a burning desire to tell from deep within my fast food encrusted bowels.

Yes, the whoring pays the bills and keeps the Guber well filled with munchies, but it's beginning to really get to me in a way that I never thought it would. I thought I could keep an objective view of things when working on other peoples stories but it's not as easy as I thought it would be.

Especially the whole 'credit' thing. Am I being a diva for thinking that it ain't right? Sure, I won't get any crap from critics for the unbelievable shittiness of the storyline, but there are parts that I am proud of, and what little praise the few decent scenes will get will be directed to someone else.

Sigh... but Guber still needs to get paid,and hence the whoring may have to continue. Every pitch I've done this year (and there have been quite a few) hasn't even been responded to with a "we'll let you know", they're either flat-out ignored or dubbed "too clever".

Yes, it's a bitch post. An emo rant of subdued proportions. Shit's getting to me, there is no doubt there, and the fact of the matter is it shouldn't. The fires need to be stoked, and the stoking apparatus must be dusted off and poked at my belly, for it is a fine belly of supreme girth.

Yes! The belly needs to be poked and stoked! Poked and prodded and pushed to regurgitative limits! The year is almost at an end, and something must be done. Something epic and moist with frilly bits! These are the bad days, the all or nothing days, they're back!

LET... US... FUCK...!

Star Before Story

		Wednesday, 19 November 08 - 02:57 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

So for most of this year I've mainly been working on other people's scripts and stories and the experience has been, for the most part, akin to having one's balls smothered with Deep Heat and stretched across a tennis court for hedgehogs to roll around in.

And if you're a female and want to know what that pain is like, replace the word 'balls' in the above paragraph with 'labia'.

The problem, which has become more and more blindingly apparent as I continue to work in the local television industry, is that story, in its essence, is not considered an important part of the creative process, which is akin to saying blueprints are not considered an important part of the process of making a car.

(Take note, local manufacturers. Except the dudes that made the Kelisa. I love my Kelisa.)

As a writer, you can imagine how much this realization makes me sick to my stomach, but it is true. Story and plot come second fiddle to items such as crowd-pulling stars, and in a country that is known for not having much budget to do anything spectacular on screen, you would think that story would come first, but no.

Sadly, no.

One of my favorite examples of a situation in television where it is understood just how important the story is to the enjoyability of the show is British television. Sure, of recent years the budgets for British television have very obviously gone up, what with the likes of mass CGI use in the recent Doctor Who season and the incredible art direction and cinematography of Life On Mars, but even then, story still comes first. Back when Doctor Who was shot on flimsy sets with very dodgy looking props people still tuned in because of the stories, the characters. British TV never had the budget of American TV and even with the slicker programming of recent years they still don't have the budget of something like Heroes or Prison Break, but they understand the importance of story and it is so evident in their work. If anything, we should be following their example of good writing as opposed to trying to be like American television.

And even then, local television won't go as far as American television does. You don't see many high-concept television shows like Lost or Dexter on local television, do you?

And in a way I can understand that - there's so little money and so much fear on making back an investment that taking a risk with a concept that may go over the majority of peoples' heads is quite scary. I don't think one should be scared of producing a high-concept TV series but I can understand why one might be, and it's saddening because instead of coming up with a brand new concept producers would much rather do something that's already been tried and tested. And even if the concept hasn't been tried and tested here, at the very least it's been done in other countries and the story sells over here, hence showing a market for it.

So fine. If that's how you want to play it, fine. Do the generic stories, the ones that you know people will tune in to. Fine. Don't take risks with archetypes, don't mess with tried and tested formula and structure, don't try to subvert the genre, fine.

But does that mean no effort should be made to make the story gripping? Exciting? Enjoyable? There are very simple rules in scriptwriting that, at the very least, keeps the story going, no matter how generic. Simple rules of structure that ensure that the story, though maybe not told well, is still told and understood.

But even that doesn't matter. Why? Because at the end of the day, it seems that what producers find more important is not how many people enjoy the show, but how many people watch it, and therein lies the biggest problem with the local film and television industry.

Nobody cares about whether or not the viewer enjoys the show as much as how much profit is made out of the show. Whether the product is good or bad is secondary to whether or not people come and watch it in the first place. Draw them in, get the bums on the seats and don't give a flying fuckola whether or not they're enjoying themselves and immersing themselves into the story.

And for some strange reason that I cannot fathom this doesn't disillusion me as much as it should do.

The Codec Wars

		Tuesday, 14 October 08 - 12:29 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

The fairly recent advent of high definition video into the world of production was something I at first embraced wholeheartedly. After seeing the footage of various cameras and features shot with them I told myself I would never shoot on miniDV again.

I have learned to swallow those words.

 At the beginning of the year I had a couple of projects that allowed me to shoot and edit in the HDV format - HD's little brother, if you will. I shot a short film and a music video on the Canon XHA1 and a TVC on the Sony HVR-V1U. Both cameras were tape based and I was capturing the footage myself using Sony Vegas.

...and I think I just heard the 'click' of dozens of readers opening a different website, annoyed that this post has nothing to do with frothy shaven panda fucking, which said readers would have no doubt have typed in google to have lead them to this page.

You fucking pervs.

All those projects worked out fine and I enjoyed the new high-def resolution.

Yay for HDV so far.

Recently I shot an entire season of a TV series shot on the Panasonic HD camera with the P2 cards which saves the video as data directly as opposed to recording it onto tape to be captured later. One of the episodes is a bit more... out there than others and I really wanted to edit it to ensure that it comes out like how I envisioned it.

At first I thought the whole idea of tapeless recording was a God send. Now all I have to do is pick up a hard drive of the footage and edit away.

Balls.

This was when I realized how much the technology is in its infancy - the corporations are having their format wars, or more specifically, codec wars.

A codec, for want of a better explanation, is like a little piece of code (duh) for compressing your video. HD has a lot of information, so these codecs are used so that the files aren't so goddamn huge.

The problem is this - different camera manufacturers are coming up with different codecs, and if that didn't make problems worse, Apple and PC based softwares are also having their own little turf war, with one editing software able to handle one type of codec better than the other, and so forth.

Or, in my case, the codec just won't fucking read on my PC.

For the past week, till now, I have gone above and beyond the call of duty just so that I can open these goddamn files but it's not fucking happening. I've scoured the internet for help only to find softwares that I can't afford and numerous other annoyed individuals just like me, pissed at this codec war which has less to do with which codec works better but more to do with the marketing of the cameras and the software. This is beyond Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, beyond VHS vs Betamax and certainly beyond smooth peanut butter vs chunky peanut butter.

This. Is. Bollocks.

Mac users, I'm sorry, I know how much you love your day-glo white bubble boxes, but I'm a die-hard PC guy and I refuse to be swayed to convert to a completely different computer system because of this. And for once, this is not because I'm being stubborn about it.

I refuse because it simply shouldn't be this way.

Standard definition formats are usable throughout. All softwares, all systems, all cameras, there's a pretty simple way to fucking get around to editing the stuff. With the advent of HD a whole new war of codecs has begun and, unlike the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD battle of recent, this will not end so easily because it's not a matter of sales that'll push the fight to the winning side. Apple users will remain Apple users and PC users will remain PC users (unless people from either side decides to defect... fucking turncoats).

I swear. One of these days I'm gonna just edit actual film for once. On a fucking table with a pair of scissors and some selotape.

Down with the Woo

		Monday, 22 September 08 - 07:45 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

Like all hot-blooded males throughout the world, I love a good action film. I can watch Die Hard on loop and Rambo IV was balls-out mental fun, even though the plot was drivel. During the formative years in my teens when I really started to feel like I wanted to be a filmmaker, there were many filmmakers at the time that influenced my decision. Besides the obvious ones that I keep mentioning such as Scorcese, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino and P. Ramlee, there was also one Hong Kong director who's filmmaking style influenced me greatly at the time - John "slow-mo-bullet-fest" Woo.

When I saw 'A Better Tomorrow' I thought to myself, "wow, this is action". When my other film geek friend kept raving about how violent Reservoir Dogs was, I passed him 'A Better Tomorrow 2' and said, "that isn't violence. This is violence."

'The Killer' blew me away, 'Bullet in the Head' was surprisingly touching, even though it was pretty much a Chinese 'Deer Hunter', and 'Hard Boiled' cemented the fact that no one was cooler than Chow Yun Fat.

Of course, things are different now, and the whole balletic-bullet-fest that was his trademark has since been aped to oblivion and even John Woo hasn't done anything like it since 'Face/Off', the closest Hollywood came to putting out a proper Woo film before fucking it all up with 'Paycheck'.

Nowadays, action has gone in the direction of the realistic - shaky, telephoto-ed cameras a la Bourne and even when doing a death-defying act it's presented in such a way as possible via free running or some other such acrobatic feat.

But I've always wanted to shoot some Woo style stuff, just for the fun of it. I've always wanted to do an action film because, well, it's an action film. Action films are one of the few genres that really can only be presented in the medium of film. Whilst you can imagine a stage adaptation of 'Reservoir Dogs' or 'Rumble Fish' (and I have seen such adaptations, both good), it's a bit harder to imagine 'Die Hard' on stage.

Or 'Shoot Em Up'.

When I was offered to direct the second season of a local TV series focusing on doctors' love lives in a hospital, they also asked whether I could direct the last episode of season one because I may be more suited to action.

Action? In a medical drama? Yes. Below is a behind-the-scenes video I edited together from video footage on my Canon powershot G9.

I heard that a lot of doctors were pissed at the lack of realism and technical errors in the show. Well, if they were pissed at that, wait till they see this episode.

Hehehehe...

This was the first time I ever shot a 'proper' action sequence and the first time I had a pyrotechnics crew. The first shot we did was when one of the bad guys shoots at a cop and a doctor, missing and hitting a wall, blowing chunks out of it. The pyro dudes set up the charges, then we stood behind the plywood wall, about five or six feet away, watching the monitor. After rehearsing the flow a couple of times (because every squib costs money), we rolled and I called out, "Action! One! Two! Three!"

The next thing I knew, there were a couple of explosions and we were covered in plywood. Coolness.

The one thing I never anticipated though was how long it takes to shoot an action sequence. We had three to four cameras running at the same time so that we wouldn't have to reset and get reverse angles and what have you, but even then it took a while.

Step one: block out the shots so that the camera operator knows what to do and the pyro guys know where they can put their charges and hide their detonators.

Step two: whilst their setting up, rehearse the shots with the actors. The John Woo jumping sequence took the longest and I kept showing the guy, physically, how I wanted him to jump, to the point that the whole of my left side ached from constantly jumping in mid air onto a stretcher, but with every rehearsal I could see the guy was afraid of hurting himself with the jump. Sigh...

Step three: rehearse again with the pyro guys and camera operator with last minute touch ups on lights and stuff.

Step four: bang!

Each 10 to 15 second shot would take on average anywhere between one to three hours to get, and I had 15 to 18 shots in the whole sequence. And a bunch of other scenes to shoot on that day as well! Aaargghh...

In the end I think we got it all, and next week I start editing the episode. Should be interesting.

Or mental.

Or both.

A Question of Professionalism

		Sunday, 24 August 08 - 08:06 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

Three to four years ago, I was blogging at 20six about how I wanted to be a director. I wanted the grab the bull by its bollocks and do what I've always wanted to do since I was a kid - filmmaking.

Cut to today, and as I sit here typing this I wonder whether I'm even cut out for the job, whoring myself for some piss poor excuse of a script so badly written Uwe Boll would reject it.

The whoring isn't something I've been wrestling with in my conscious too much, though it does bug me from time to time. I was originally offered to write this pathetic attempt at storytelling under the supervision of another writer, and made the decision then and there, after looking through the story notes and character sheets and doing up  rough first draft and seeing the comments made, that I could not do this job without changing my credit to 'Mike Hunt', and even then, it would be an insult to the gag. God knows I needed the money but I couldn't continue with a clear conscious.

When they offered me the job of directing it, I was even more in debt than when they offered the writing gig, and hadn't had a paying job in over five months. But the reason i took the job wasn't only because of desperation and a hunger to eat something decent. It represented a challenge that almost taunted me, in a way. It would give me a chance to prove myself in the mainstream world. It was also a lot easier on my conscious because I'm one of the few people who believes the writer is a smidgen more important than the director. I can live with being called a crap director (and, to a lot of people out there, I am, and have been told so) but to be called a crap writer would insult the almighty fuck out of me.

Coming from an independent background, I'm used to continuing on in the face of faeces flying furiously from afar. When you're used to doing a lot of low to no budget filmmaking you figure out very quickly the shortcuts and ins and outs, so putting up with the most poorly managed shoot imaginable didn't seem too daunting for me.

Until now.

I've tried to make the best of a bad situation, day in and day out. If you've ever met me in the past few weeks and asked how the shoot is, you'd know that things are never going swimmingly. But the events of today have really made me wonder - am I cut out for this life? Am I meant to be a screaming, egoistic asshole of a director to get anything fucking done around here, to get a little respect? Is that what's expected of me? Am I meant to lose my temper on a daily basis, throw a tantrum, have chairs fly left right and centre? Is that what I have to do to get respect around here? Is that what is expected of a director, a leader?

Because I don't believe that. I refuse to believe that that is how a director is supposed to act, I flat out refuse. I hear so many stories of local mainstream directors with egos as big as an elephants left nut and they produce the most unwatchable shit imaginable. I have always believed that a leader should be able to do everything he expects his followers to do, nothing more, nothing less (I think that's an Alexander quote). I strongly believe in leading by example, and whilst it works for a large percentage of my team, there's that 10% that aren't getting the picture.

And then there's those occasional looks. Fuck the looks, an actress flat out asked me today whether i realize, as a director, i have the most power on this set. But as much as I'd like to believe that, I know it's false, because this isn't my production and I feel about as revered and respected by the producers as a fart in the wind.

I took on this job to increase my job scope, get my name more out there and scope for potential crew members and actors and actresses for future jobs, but after the events of today I wonder what those who I'd like to work with again even think of me. Do they see me the same way the numerous so-called bigwigs in this country see me? A young, inexperienced filmmaker who made a short film or two with an English/American accent with no connections?

I wanted to make my name in this line of work by my work, not by sucking reams of cock, but even though I haven't got a mouthful of jizz I still feel like an underpaid whore. I wanted to refrain, as much as I could, from publicly bad mouthing this job and making any comments about the script, and tomorrow I'll probably be a lot calmer and continue as normal and 'assume the position', but I've had it up to here with the everyday crap this job entails and currently couldn't give two fucks and a doggy biscuit if the producers catch wind of this post and decide to fire me.

Siapa 'Mereka'?

		Tuesday, 03 June 08 - 02:53 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

Right now I could be in England. I really could. And, godammit, I could've done with some time away to relax (though I'd probably just end up shooting extra footage for London Calling instead). The offer was there, but I didn't. Why? Work comes first. In particular, a pitch at one of the major studios here in KL for television ideas.

Knowing I was giving up a trip back to the other motherland, and desperate to get something sold so that I can afford cake, fine beverage and DVDs, I spent most of the past few weeks making sure my presentation was the canine's testicles, but was still stumped - I've got telemovie ideas a-plenty, but it would be great to produce a TV series, something insanely cool and fun for me and my peeps to shoot and fill our pockets with much moolah and pixie dust.

There were quite a few types of TV shows I've wanted to do, but each time I think of one the budgetary and social constraints kill the idea where it stands. I've always wanted to do a sci-fi series, or something paranormal, but could we come up with the effects? Or an action-packed series: could we pull it off?

At six in the morning on one particular day, I came up with an idea. I loved it, and what's more, I knew that with the combined footage that myself and the boys had, I could feasibly cut a trailer which would help sell the story...

...which I'm not going to tell you. Yet. Nor am I uploading the trailer. Yet. I would love to, but there are a number of reasons why I won't yet. The first being the fear of someone stealing the idea, the second being that none of the actors in the trailer know about it. Sure, there is a disclaimer in the trailer because I have no idea whether I can get the actors and actresses or not, but I wouldn't want some confusion to suddenly come up on the net about how so-and-so's in some TV series and the person doesn't even know about it and then gets on my case. Thirdly, a lot of the footage was taken from TV episodes myself and the guys did so I don't know what the copyright issue is with that.

Fourthly, I don't want to jinx it.

Hopefully, this trailer will be uploaded here, but not today. What I can show you, though, is the concept poster I did...

I think one of you who reads this recognizes one of the pics in the poster because the person in question passed it to me because it is that person. Heheh...

But yeah. More on this as it develops... or gets developed. Or doesn't.

New Life, New Logo

		Saturday, 24 May 08 - 04:04 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

Designed by the wonderfully talented Helenasia, who's more than willing to take on offers for logo design. Go on, give her a go...

...at designing something for you, you dirty minded sods. This'll be the logo for what will be my new company. I hope... you liiiike.

Ok. Borat references are getting pretty dull now.

One Thing To Another

		Monday, 28 April 08 - 03:28 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

Before I get into it, just gotta say - the pic above was done with my good ol' powershot G9, using the auto-stitch function. Thing is, I didn't line up the pics properly and yet it stitched it together automatically as above.

Sweet.

But yeah, the pic above is of the audience at the Filmmakers Anonymous 6 screening where my new cut of 'The Writing on the Wall' was screened, along with many other films of much more artistic sense than my simple ol' stories which I won't go through here because you can find out about them at this link.

The crowd reacted pretty well to my short and even if they weren't gonna I had the Rollin' Sixers boyz with me as well as Ariff 'Menipulate' Aris and Helenasia. There was a pretty interesting Q & A after the screening where I was asked some cool questions and some slightly odd ones too. After that 8TV interviewed me, anonymously.

And, as I type this, I realize that I'm being incredibly dull and politically correct in this post. Truth is, I'm distracted as hell and tired too. I've got Angel season 5 on my TV which is kinda drawing me in even though I've seen it before. I'm tired as hizell because I was up since Saturday 4pm (and even then, sleep was only a few hours, on and off) till about Sunday 5pm, first working from 4pm till about 8am then off to Ariff's shoot for the first day of 'Menipulate' (will post pics soon) at 10am but by 5pm I couldn't hack it anymore and napped on a sofa for an hour (actually kinda refreshing) and continued working till 2:15am and now I'm blogging and... it's kinda tough.

The brain and eyes feel... fizzy. Out-of-focus. Everything was ok when I was working. Now that it's done, I'm feeling the pain...

Aargh.

I also discovered the words. The rumblings. I knew the words would start rumbling back to me. The words shouldn't bug me, but they kinda do.

Ahh. To hell with the Fucker. And fuck the words and the rumbles. I'm doing something. He's not.

And that's the be all end all, far as I know.

Filmmakers Anonymous Vol. 6

		Thursday, 17 April 08 - 03:24 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

 

Some of you might have already known that, during the Youth '08 Festival held in January, I took part in a little thing called Youth '08 - The Movies, where I went about during the festival with two other filmmakers - Mien Lor and Tan Chui Mui - casting and shooting a short film in less than three days, which was both interesting and pretty tiring.

I never uploaded the short film for a number of reasons, primarily because I wasn't happy with the rushed cut I did to make it for the screening on the final day and also because the music I used was copyrighted. That being said, I do like the story, a short little tale about someone figuring out what he really wants to do in life, as well as a slight ode to my old-skool hip-hop leanings (yes, fuck all this jigga-jigga-nonsense. Bring back Slick Rick and Kurtis Blow, dammit!)

Now Mien, as some of you may or may not know, regularly hosts a little screening of short films at Central Market called 'Filmmakers Anonymous', and she's asked Mui and me whether or not she can screen the shorts we did during the Youth '08 event.

I've got a new cut now, with new music I quickly did myself under my 'A Girl Named Jane' banner and if you're at all curious of this latest short, pop on over to the event. Even if you aren't, there's a bunch of other filmmakers too.

Filmmakers Anonymous will be on the 25th of April at the Annexe at Central Market from 8pm onwards. Entrance is free, and it'll feature films by Fikri Jermadi, Tan Chui Mui, Chi Too, Juliane Block, Isabel Taye, Nurina Malinda, Hadi Koh and the ol' Guber himself. More details can be found at the Filmmakers Anonymous website.

... More items are available in my News Archive