Sorry I forgot about the pre-production journal so I’m posting it now.
Hope it’s still counted as having my journal written(:
This time round, I’m the art director for Inquisitive Mind. A lot of weird feelings along the way during the pre-production process because maybe I’m too used to being the producer for past productions, somehow when I get the props, costumes and everything else, I think a lot of the budget but because there is a change in the producer now, who is Benjamin and director, Kenneth, I realise different people have different ways of handling the way they manage things. While I’m always calling Kenneth or Benjamin up, they are quite okay with the budget until I think they may find me very annoying. For instance, I can tell them “Sorry I paid for the mask and then realise it’s very expensive, it’s $13″ and they will say, “Very cheap what…”. But I guess it was hard to switch from the role of the producer to art director and not keep in mind the budget because the look of the props is the more important thing now but somehow I will be thinking of the budget.
As the art director, I was supposed to decide the set design for the locations but since we have only 2 locations in total, the classroom scenes and the warehouse, the main concern was of course the warehouse because Kenneth wanted the interviews at the classroom scenes to look as simple as possible so there are no major issues for the classroom scenes. The more challenging one would be the warehouse because we only manage to sort of confirm the warehouse at a later date but luckily it turned out to look somewhat like what I wanted it to be like.
Every single day on the week before the actual day of production, I was somewhere trying to purchase and find the right and suitable kind of props, set dressings and costumes for the shoot. I bought the Masked Man’s long sleeved shirt, the latex gloves, the mask, Jake’s buttoned shirt, grey pants, working shoes, knives, boards. However, I wasn’t able to find the kind of ropes, cap and jeans that Kenneth wanted so Sabrina was very kind to buy them for our shoot while Benjamin bought the jeans. (:
One day before our shoot, I cried a lot of times because I was frustrated as I felt that whatever I was doing, it seems like “it’s your job”. Maybe it is but I was hoping there was more gratitude because I was rushing everywhere, everyday, somewhere. I’m not complaining but just speaking very frankly of what I’ve learnt. I need to be more observant if I want to stay in this line because in the future, when I need to buy some weird stuffs but yet very specifically described by the filmmaker, I would need to know exactly where to get them. True enough, Singapore is small but when I’m someone who can even get lost at Suntec not knowing how to go Esplanade, it’s hard for me to know where to get stuffs especaially when time is running short and you don’t have a lot of time to think. But all the same, I’m thankful I managed to get all the stuffs just in time for production.
On the same day, the day before production, I was told that they were unable to get a make-up artist and so being the art director, naturally I have to go and take up this role. Make-up artist sounds like a cool word but if it’s just those pretty make-up with mascara and foundation, I can easily help but not cuts, slashes or blood. I was really really scared, nervous and totally unsure of my capability to mix the blood myself, buy the correct make-up stuffs to pull off a realistic look. All the same, I am very very scared of how the scene will turn out to be.
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