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Idle Dreams News 16th August, 2005 Yesterday, we finished shooting all of Javad's scenes. Tomorrow he'll be winging it back to Washington to continue on his big journey to becoming a high-priced soul-less lawyer, so let's wish him all the best on that endeavor and remind him not to let his camera and photography get rusty and shit. In the last couple of weeks, things have been really hectic with all kinds of stuff. Pete & Dave arrived to help out with production, and we've shot just about the entire movie except for a couple of miscellaneous scenes with Adele, aside from that, we just have to record her lines and we'll be all set for the long drawn out task of editing it all together. In the meantime, check out some rushes:
Steve and Ali discuss their dreams while looking at the Merlion
Ali at the cafe
Pete and Dave's cameo at the CD store
Steve signing an autograph for yet another punk kid
Steve and Ali walk along the streets of Tampines 31July, 2005 Production has began on Idle Dreams, starting on Thursday night. Over Thursday and Friday night, we've shot more or less most of the movie, leaving only smaller scenes like the CD store and the cafe (which will be done tonight). Running around with a tripod and a camera following behind my two leads for about 3-4 hours at a time is pretty tiring, but hey we gotta get it all done, right? So it's been all good so far. I haven't had a chance to go over what we've taken as Javad still has all the photos. Apparently the background was always more in focus than the subjects, but hopefully that can get fixed up in photoshop somehow. So anyway, I'll post up some pics when I can. 22nd July, 2005 Here are some more location shots:
 20th July, 2005 Yesterday we all met up again to go over the script and things are going along smoothly. Adele's really getting into the swing of her character, Javad's a really natural Steve, and all's well! Power98 FM called back regarding us getting a shooting permit for the interview scene... They'll let us know their final answer in a week or so. Last night I went location scouting around town, and found some pretty nice locations. I thought I'd put them up on the site just so we can all marvel at how pretty they are.
Yes that is a PMS poster in the bus stop image. Another cool thing that I want to do now is to replace all the ads and posters in the shots with images and artworks donated by my friends, or we can just doctor up some fake posters featuring Jo in a Triumph ad or something :] 14th July, 2005 Well today I shot another test video, this time checking out how a dialogue sequence would look using stills. It's pretty simple... just something between Munky and me... But check it out anyway.
12th July, 2005 I was playing around trying to test out that "Living Painting" effect... and I made a little video with my sister to test it out. I think it'll work. It's a bit rough, and there's a lot of detail lost in the video compression (which sucks but I'm not going to post a 300meg high res avi on the site), but overall I think it might just work. Add a lot more frames into it, focus more on facial expressions, play around with the color correction a bit more... and I think it's going to look good. Anyway, here's the sample video if you wanna check it out.
I'll shoot another test, this time involving dialogue, when I see the 2 leads for rehearsals this Friday. 11th July, 2005 We have our two leads! We're now totally set in our endeavor, and things should be full steam ahead now... especially since last Friday was my last day at work! I am now officially unemployed, and I'm working on Idle Dreams full-time. Anyway, here are our two leads:
--- In other news, I was faced with the whole technical difficulty of lighting all the really dark urban landscapes that I've been scouting around for the movie. And the solution I've come up with is to shoot the whole film as a series of still photographs, assembled together to be like some kinda living painting. The whole film will look something like this:
I think this will be a really nice and pretty look for the film. I know it's pretty difficult to try to imagine what the film will look like if it's a series of assembled stills, so I'm going to go and shoot a test scene with Mainey tonight or something to show you what the end product will look like. --- Oh! The 3rd draft was completed today... so here we go! 23rd June, 2005 I'm going to turn in my resignation today. After 4 months of working there, I think it's time to call it quits as I can't spend 49 hours a week kissing people's asses AND work on a movie at the same time. My supervisor didn't take too well to it though when I informed her of my intentions last night. She kinda went haywire, to say the least. Honestly, I'm confused. The speech I got from her more or less told me that she was expecting me to make Video Ezy my career; that it was more or less expected I work there for life. Who the hell can make a living there when they pay $6/hr? Isn't that more akin to a summer job, versus a full-fledged career path? Well, there's something else to add to the script... --- Javad's working on a timeframe as he has to be back in Washington by the 18th August, so we're now going to be working on an accelerated schedule to get his scenes all shot and done. 17th June, 2005 So much has happened since the last update! Dave has a confirmed flight inbound on the 2nd August and he'll be around until the 28th, so there's a production period right there! Still working on the 3rd draft of the script... sad to say aside from note-taking and brainstorming no actual rewrite has occurred just yet, even though it's been 3 months since the 2nd draft was completed. I blame both my job and World of Warcraft for my drop in productivity. I put a casting call out in a local arts forum about a week back, and unlike the first time I did it where the only reply came from Wes (now our new cinematographer), I've now got a few actresses showing interest in playing Ali. That's right! A few, as in plural! We'll be doing some auditions maybe next week, and hopefully we can confirm Ali soon. As for the other lead Steve, my old pal Javad has verbally committed to playing the part! It's going to be sweeeet! He's a bit nervous about the time commitment and the whole acting thing, but I think he'll do just fine. Nate was nervous too when he did "Amy", and I think he did a great job. Oh, and for the record I was officially rejected by the SFC for my grant application. Check this out: Dear Andrew, 4. It is our firm belief that we would be better off funding another derivative So basically I've got to include some additional dialogue about the inadequecies of the SFC now... Oh well. 4th March, 2005 The second draft of Idle Dreams is ready! It didn't quite make 85 pages, but I think it's still a nice respectable length for an indie movie. No feedback yet so far... so we'll see what people think of the new stuff. 2nd March, 2005 Well, I had that interview with Video Ezy yesterday, and I'm now awaiting a callback from them. In the meantime I have an interview with some video production house (conveniently located down the road from the place where I go to get bootleg X-Box games), so now I'm putting together a little sample VCD of my work to show them tomorrow. I'm thinking of showing them Version 3, Mountains, Tragic Vendetta and the Deadpan 2003 Promo. Still no word from the SFC about my grant application, so keep those fingers crossed. In the meantime, the 2nd draft of Idle Dreams has expanded to a more respectable length of 83 pages! Hopefully I can reach 85 pages, and then I'll be able to release the 2nd draft for my critics to go over and lend me some feedback. Then maybe after that I can start going around location scouting. I've also started work on a second script, which I could use to maybe apply for another grant from some other Film development organization. Tentatively titled Patient Zero, it's a piece about how moody depressed people who suffer from denial and think they have their shit under control can spread their negativity virus over to their friends and how it will eventually lead to a wave of bad vibes sweeping across the city and causing everybody to resent each other and listen to Linkin Park. Yeah, it'll be like Outbreak with angsty teenagers! 23rd February, 2005 Well the big exciting news is that Deadpan Entertainment is now going to embark on it's first feature length film! The project is tentatively titled Idle Dreams, and we're all quite confident about it. So confident that Pete & Dave have offered to fly over to Singapore to help me shoot it. For me that's a major morale booster so I'm totally waaay stoked about this project. Currently I've completed a first draft which I've sent to the Singapore Film Commission in order to apply for a scriptwriting grant, and I'm about halfway through the 2nd draft... which should be completed by the end of next week barring any major emotional breakdowns. I'll put up more about the project both here and in the Coming Soon section... well, soon. --- In the meantime, I've started looking around for work already in order to save up enough cash to fund this project. Put an application into Video Ezy today, so let's all hope I can finally land that dream job of jockeying a video store! In the meantime, I'll just send out my resumé to EPSN and MTV and hope for the best...
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