24th February, 2003

Well the video was almost finished, but now we've decided to add some letterboxing to it... so that's going to take some time... but hey it'll be done by today.

Oh, and while previewing it the other night at Ced's place, he noticed something oddly familiar about a shot in the video. Okay, bear in mind that yes, we did loosely model the Tragic Vendetta video after the Justin Timberlake "Cry me a river" video... but only loosely! As in I didn't replicate any specific shots or anything... I just liked the idea of the guy stalking the ex without her knowing.

So imagine our surprise when we saw this:

Tragic Vendetta sequence: Jasmine walks along the walkway unaware that Ced's watching her from behind a column. As she walks past the column, Cedric turns around to look at her from the other side of the column.	Cry me a river sequence: Britney look-a-like comes home and walks towards the door unaware that Justin is watching her from behind a wall. As she walks past the wall, Justin turns around to look at her from the other side of the wall.

Not only that, but imagine my horror when I found out the Tragic Vendetta video also contains sequences that resemble those of a Cradle of Filth video... which I had not seen until now! Uh-oh...

17th February, 2003

Added more pics... see below:

11th February, 2003

Well, production has totally ended for the Tragic video. All that's left to do now is all the post production stuff... but of course before that gets underway I'm going to need to get access to a video-camera... and Tjinn's mom wants their's back. So until those fuckers at Sony decide to get mine fixed, this project has come to a bit of a stall. Because of the same problem, I can't exactly extract too many stills from our latest shoot... but here's what I got anyway:

Here are some shots that won't be used in the video, or ever in any video. On the left Ced does his best Kylie impersonation, and on the right he "raises his fist to the heavens".	Now here's another use for a skateboard. Not only can it be used as a Dolly or a destroyer of camera LCD's, but it can also be used as a mirror stand!
Jas poses with Pedro the Eyeball! Yep, our pal Pedro has wormed his way into another Deadpan production!	Production still #3 Here's a still from our mirror test sequence... featuring some kooky special effects and shit! (check out the pic above to see how this mirror was held up)
With the lightning storm chasing us off, we rushed out of the Spooky House, only to find people outside the gate. So we had to hang around the driveway until they leave so we won't be caught sneaking in and out.	After a long day's work, Cedric offers his thanks to his demon lords by building a Dark Altar out of my purple stool and some tealights.

10th February, 2003

The whole band went to a club today (which will remain unnamed because we weren't meant to be there), and we shot a substantial part of the video there. Once again, we were plagued by hiccups, but this time they're external. The guy that was to let us into the club slept in and turned up late. Which was a bad thing, since we couldn't exactly ask to stay longer should we need to as we had to "ninja, vanish!" by the time management turned up.

But we got everything shot anyway... and the rushes look good. Check them out:

We get our own fucking dressing room. Now is that classy or what? First, a clapper board... now a dressing room. We're really getting professional here.	I dunno why, but this shot here reminds me of the USS Sulaco from Aliens. You know, that big-assed space-cruiser thing? But hey, it's kinda cool, oui?
Cedric does his best Dani Filth impersonation. It looks really good in motion!	Unfortunately this shot will never make it into the video... well, it will, but you can't tell because this happens for one frame during a strobelight sequence.
Singer Jasmine (not to be confused with actress Jasmine) with 2nd guitarist Johnny... looking really lost in their music.	It looks like Tjinn's intense drumming made the stage explode, right? But no, it's just really bright lights.
Singer Jas headbangs together with Leonard the Bass player. At this point yes, I do admit that I can't tell the difference between a bass and a guitar. I'm not a musician, damnit! I'm a film-maker!	Here's Ying doing her thing with the ding ding thing that goes bling bling, to going with Ced and Jas' sing sing. Schwing!

From left to right:
Leonard, Johnny, Cedric, Tjinn, and Samuel.
Myself, Ying and Jasmine are the three up front without the corpse paint.
(oh and there's my beloved Clapper board!)

Yes I know I promised more information about the spooky house, but I can't find shit on the net... yet. When I do, you'll know about it. In the meantime, we're going back there to shoot on Toosday (hopefully for the last time!) and then to Ced's place to shoot some additional stuff on Wednesday. Hopefully that'll mark the end of production, and I can look forward to locking myself up in my room to edit 2 hours of footage into a 5 min music video!

7th February 2003

Production of the Tragic Vendetta music video began today! After a lot of initial hiccups such as the female vocalist sleeping in and deciding not to turn up at the very last minutes, and not being able to recover a mirror required for a crucial sequence... not to mention turning up at the location two hours behind schedule... we were able to shoot quite a few sequences.

Here are some pics:

Here's the three cast members after putting on their makeup at Cheok's place. If you ask me, they should make this pic their album cover, cos it reminds me of this INXS album cover.	Well, someone decided to chain up the gate, so we sorta had to climb under a drain to get in. Jasmine looks kinda like Sadako here, with the long hair and white dress.
Here we are at during a smoke-break at our base camp, where we dumped all our shit.	Jasmine touches up Samuel's makeup, I mean, "corpse paint".
Production still #1 Jasmine walks up the big hill to the big spooky house.	Production still #2 Cedric hugs Jasmine in front of the big spooky house.
Cheok (our roadie of the day) composes a haiku while we set up for another shot.	Since the sun's already set, we can't do a walking away into the sunset shot so this will have to do.

We've still got another day of shooting to do at this house, to be done sometime next week... and this Sunday we got a club booked out to shoot on their stage. Check back for more later, including some trivia about this spooky house that we decided to shoot at!

25th January 2003

(Tammy and Jo as seen through a semi-fisheye lens)

Tammy, Jo and I were waiting in line to get our copies of Avril's album signed, but we ended up bailing and instead the two girls went around pretending to be magazine reporters to interview the crowd waiting for Avril. We started picking the dorkiest guys and the most teeny-bopper of the girls, and got them interviewed on camera.

Honestly, what went from really offensive anti-Avril questions began to drift towards really humiliating questions for the poor fans. Tammy at one point just asked this dude wearing a cadet corp. uniform: "So, do you touch yourself when you think of Avril?"

From there it went further downhill. We openly mocked the fans for wearing their Avril gear, and made them say shit that I would never be caught saying on camera... and woah we got a few of them to sing too. Hahahaha... watching fat guys in Avril-ish outfits singing their pop-idol's... oh whoops... I meant to say "rock idol's" songs... that was classic. Oh, when I asked about the coinslot shot from the Complicated live vid, a few of them were a bit too quick to respond "Yes I've downloaded that one and seen it lots!"

Anyway, it's going to come as a shock to them, but they're not going to appear in Deadpan Magazine or FHM or any magazine anytime soon... but they are going to be in our Nice and Decent video! In our little anti-Avril segment... hehehehehehe

Yep, we're evil and we're going to hell. We're humiliating children and teenagers for our own amusement... sorta like R. Kelly. So we made it a point to donate some money to charity that day to compensate for our vileness...

So the Nice and Decent video is still on track. We hit a bit of a hiccup the last couple of weeks, but we're going to go right back into it.

"I like Avril's cos she's real and she's hardcore!"
(I'm wearing a tie so I look more like her in the hope that she'll fuck me.)

12th January 2003

Went into the studio when Meza Virs was jamming there today, to listen to their live sound to draw some inspiration for the video clip and to meet the band. Also got a shitload of metal music videos from Cedric as research... will be watching all of those soon enough.

Anyway, we've got a few ideas tossed around and some concepts decided upon... now for the fleshing out. And time's not on our side either... late January is when we've planned to shoot, and that's creeping up pretty quickly... just like Super Bowl XXXVII! (sounds of cheering and excitement ensues)

More info when it comes!

10th January 2003

Today Hanxiang (aka the N-D-double-D... Nice and Decent DareDevil) and I got a replacement battery charger for my camera to replace the AWOL charger... so Deadpan Entertainment is now back in business! And can we just officially announce that we're going to start work on producing a video where we run around creating chaos in Singapore, by doing crazy stunts and annoying the shit out of tight-assed middle-aged asian women (like the one who gave me shit after *she* bumped into *me* at the train station). Tentatively titled Nice and Decent, it's gonna be just mindless amusement for the masses

.

The first stunt we did was Hanxiang our NDDD leaping off a 2 storey drop into a stone driveway. Way cool :] Stick this on with our prior jumps over the Koi pond gap, and... well, we've got two things down! More to come soon! Check it out on the Coming Soon page.

7th January 2003 <- used to say 7th December 2002, but nobody noticed... hopefully

Deadpan Entertainment is now collaborating with metal band Meza Virs to bring you its first proper music video for their song Tragic Vendetta (click on the link for the song in mp3 format), from their upcoming EP. I haven't really spoken to their lead singer/writer Cedric yet about the concepts for the video, but we agree it's gonna be something dark and urbany. Yep, there's strictly NO dancing around in the forests wielding broadswords and battle-axes in this video (sorry, Fabo)... we're gonna keep it real and in da hood.

So in the next week or so we're going to go out scouting for locations in Singapore to shoot and shit, while we go over exactly what we want the video to look like.

Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know, and if you're around in Singapore and wanna be a part of the crew just holler and let us know, cos you know we could always do with extra help to hold a boom or work the clapper board while I laze around and sit on my cute compact ass. Also, if anyone's interested in acting in the video, holler as well. I'm sure one way or the other we'll be able to write in a part for anyone who wants to be in it.