ok, i feel bad leaving a story half told
so here are the highlights.
We started a two day series of interviews for the docu "Zheng He" tt we're filming for Discovery Channel (due Dec 05). The shoot started 830 am, National Library.
Outside NLB, a Bollywood filming was going on, full casts, crews, set and everything. i saw tall dark handsome hthrik roshan. except bollywood stars are fair, not dark. & I didn't recognise him, my AP Mich did.
Halfway through our first interview at the lobby, the bollywood director took a toilet break. on his way back, he walks over to our set, into our set, and into the shot, despite me tapping his shoulder, director waving and crew glaring. arrogant arse, he sO did it on purpose.. i should have walked in halfway during one of his dancing scenes. (oh yeah - for the first time in history this bollywood movie used chinese dancers. clad in black. wearing opera masks. weird.)
We rushed from this shoot to the next one at NUS, the wonderful director overshot by two hrs and we were so pressed for time everyone went without food until well into dinnertime. My poor crew, they were working hard and uncomplaining in the hot sun and all i could do was give them bottles & bottles of water.
Finally it ended. We'd made the driver from JB wait 3 hours, our new soundman two hours, and everyone starved til 6 before finally grabbing dinner at east coast.
3 hours behind schedule, we headed to msia at dusk via second link.
Reaching JB checkpoint @ 8, another obstacle. i had to literally fight msian customs to enter. we didn't have a permit for all the gear and we'd tried to get by without taking it all out of the van to show customs. i was one small malay girl among 5 big guys (crew&driver). as go-between & decoy, i got pulled into a room, interrogated n insulted. the guy held my passport against my will & was rude & intractable. finally we lugged all the bloody heavy gear for checking one by one, i shoved my forms at him & we got through. i was fuming at the rude customs but at least we got through, and i hoped coming back wouldn't be as torturous.
We only took one rest stop and the van was freezing but the ride went smooth and we got to the hotel in malacca at 1130. (according to schedule, we should have been there by 7). our interviewee had gone to sleep waiting for us. my producer was wrapped in a shawl sitting at the lobby and we wasted no time moving in the gear and retiring to our rooms. i was enchanted with hotel puri; it's a boutique hotel, supposedly one of the trendiest in malacca; antique furniture, garden restaurant, kebaya clad staff, artifacts (chinese and peranakan) on display.. what held me entranced was the colony of swallows that made their nests above the eaves of the doors in the back lobby. at first i thought they were bats; as i stared up openmouthed i saw the distinctively-shaped nests (yes the edible kind) and paired swallows occasionally twittering, and sleeping apparently glued vertical to the wall. amazing. 'yeah, u can get instant birds' nest here - just throw a rock,' cracked producer Tim. i laughed and went on to climb about fourty flights of steps to my room. (it was probably more like 8 half flights but i was tired and the carpeted stairs were steep).
next morning we woke bright and early. or just early, since it was too early to be bright (about half past six). i loaded up on the buffet breakfast at seven, still hungry from the day before. just as we were getting ready to go, it poured. 'what?!' went my director. 'call the meteorogical station and find out when this will clear,' suggested my cameraman.
i did. after explaining to the person, he assured me that it's a light shower and they predicted clear skies around 9 to 10, latest. 'then it won't rain the whole day after that?' i asked. 'ya, sure won't rain,' he declared. i suddenly felt quite silly asking a mere man for assurance on the weather so i just laughed, thanked him and hung up.
despite the drizzle we went for the shoot. today was a gerat outdoors day; we planned for temples, street scenes, bukit china, a river boat ride and interview onboard a boat that will take us to pulau besar, about an hour and a half away by boat. first stop was the temple that supposedly had something to do with zheng he. all that proved that was the temple's similar name and a small, chest high statue of the eunuch admiral zheng he in the temple's courtyard. it wasn't a big temple but we ran into permission problems; the lady told us we could only film the (empty) courtyard and not the temple proper. tim had to go to the big boss's office some distance away to expressly get his signed permission, and the crwe went ahead to film int he courtyard anyway. on the sly they went on to capture all the scenes they needed anyway (as if the woman could tell what the lens is pointing at).
meantime i was fascinated with the zheng he statue, small as it is. (apparently, they had a big six foot statue of him built but quarrels erupted cos the buddhist population didn't want him put up, him being a muslim eunuch, so finally they failed to put it up. i guess it's crumbling in a storeroom somewhere.) now this particular statue in the temple, i found particularly interesting. he had an expression that could be seen as benevolent or cruel, depending on whether u see the curve of his mouth as a smile or a sneer. his eyes were just stone but they seemed to see right through me. i got a good feeling just looking at him, i duno why. i'll post pix up later.
the crew finished at the temple in record time and we went up to the adjacent bukit china, which the temple was said to be guardian of. the name simply means china hill in english, and it's the site of 10,000 chinese graves, the biggest outside of china. legend went that china sent a royal princess to marry melaka's prince as tribute, and her retinue and followers were all interred in the hill. the oldest graves dated from the ming dynasty.
now, i'm usually a freakish scaredy cat when it comes to graves. just passing by one can send my skin crawling, even in bright daylight. bukit china was different. we climbed up, first on about a hundred narrow steep stairs (this time i'm not exagerrating), then on the hill ground itself (there was a black stone path but the camera obviously strayed from this to get nicer wider shots of the graves.) i caaught up with the director and told him the woman at the temple said to make sure not to go to the left but rather just the right side of the hill. he asked me why and i shrugged duno. of course he didn't heed me one bit; in half hour the crew had gone deeper into the hill off the path and i had no choice but to follow.
but i didn't feel ominous at all. it was a glorious blueskied sunny day after the freak rainfall. the grass was green, the trees shady, a cool seabreeze blew and i could see the straits of malacca from the very tip of the hill. i trailed the crew as they moved, taking production shots with my own camera. i also took lots of pictures of the scenery and graves. don't ask me why; i just liked the place. it was peaceful, restful and quiet and i found myself thinking, i wouldn't mind being put to rest under the bright sky and above the blue sea, to wait out my time for the afterlife, when my turn came. i shook my head free of the thought but continued to enjoy the hill.
an hour passed and we packed up to leave. i let the crew ahead while i waited for my director to finish a call, in case he couldn't find us to follow. ten minutes later he joined me and we went up the black stone path, which the crew had ostensibly taken ahead of us. 'This is a big hill,' i remarked, after we had gone ten minutes and the path still stretched ahead of us. How big it was became apparent, when ten minutes later, we came to a part of the path that looked pretty familiar.. in fact it was where we started. "Uh oh, are we lost? Wow, now we can say we had an adventure; we're lost in the cemetery with ghosts nipping at our ankles!" joked director peter. "Choy!" i muttered under my breath, aghast at this angmoh happily mentioning such things among the old graves. "What?" "Nothing," i gritted my teeth in a warning smile and went ahead. Finally we decided to try trace our route without using the path. after a minute when i really thought i was good and lost, we saw the stairs and gratefully took them to the bottom. Not five minutes later, the crew rang my handphone and asked us to pick them up - they were lost! they'd gone round and round and are now at some main road right at the other side. so we had to get the van and drive to pick them up. interestibly, at that side of the foot of the hill, there was a small fenced in plot crammed full of headstones - a malay grave site. it was locked shut and there looked to be an usually large number of headstones for such a small area, half a football field. i hazarded that it might be where a previously exhumed gravesite had shifted and mass burried old graves in order to save space, i dunno..
hmm. so much for highlights. i've just stopped and scrolled up to see how much i've written cos my wrist was starting to go numb. i guess i'll stop here for part one. next i'll continue the second part of my 'business trip' - the boat ride to pulau besar..
We started a two day series of interviews for the docu "Zheng He" tt we're filming for Discovery Channel (due Dec 05). The shoot started 830 am, National Library.
Outside NLB, a Bollywood filming was going on, full casts, crews, set and everything. i saw tall dark handsome hthrik roshan. except bollywood stars are fair, not dark. & I didn't recognise him, my AP Mich did.
Halfway through our first interview at the lobby, the bollywood director took a toilet break. on his way back, he walks over to our set, into our set, and into the shot, despite me tapping his shoulder, director waving and crew glaring. arrogant arse, he sO did it on purpose.. i should have walked in halfway during one of his dancing scenes. (oh yeah - for the first time in history this bollywood movie used chinese dancers. clad in black. wearing opera masks. weird.)
We rushed from this shoot to the next one at NUS, the wonderful director overshot by two hrs and we were so pressed for time everyone went without food until well into dinnertime. My poor crew, they were working hard and uncomplaining in the hot sun and all i could do was give them bottles & bottles of water.
Finally it ended. We'd made the driver from JB wait 3 hours, our new soundman two hours, and everyone starved til 6 before finally grabbing dinner at east coast.
3 hours behind schedule, we headed to msia at dusk via second link.
Reaching JB checkpoint @ 8, another obstacle. i had to literally fight msian customs to enter. we didn't have a permit for all the gear and we'd tried to get by without taking it all out of the van to show customs. i was one small malay girl among 5 big guys (crew&driver). as go-between & decoy, i got pulled into a room, interrogated n insulted. the guy held my passport against my will & was rude & intractable. finally we lugged all the bloody heavy gear for checking one by one, i shoved my forms at him & we got through. i was fuming at the rude customs but at least we got through, and i hoped coming back wouldn't be as torturous.
We only took one rest stop and the van was freezing but the ride went smooth and we got to the hotel in malacca at 1130. (according to schedule, we should have been there by 7). our interviewee had gone to sleep waiting for us. my producer was wrapped in a shawl sitting at the lobby and we wasted no time moving in the gear and retiring to our rooms. i was enchanted with hotel puri; it's a boutique hotel, supposedly one of the trendiest in malacca; antique furniture, garden restaurant, kebaya clad staff, artifacts (chinese and peranakan) on display.. what held me entranced was the colony of swallows that made their nests above the eaves of the doors in the back lobby. at first i thought they were bats; as i stared up openmouthed i saw the distinctively-shaped nests (yes the edible kind) and paired swallows occasionally twittering, and sleeping apparently glued vertical to the wall. amazing. 'yeah, u can get instant birds' nest here - just throw a rock,' cracked producer Tim. i laughed and went on to climb about fourty flights of steps to my room. (it was probably more like 8 half flights but i was tired and the carpeted stairs were steep).
next morning we woke bright and early. or just early, since it was too early to be bright (about half past six). i loaded up on the buffet breakfast at seven, still hungry from the day before. just as we were getting ready to go, it poured. 'what?!' went my director. 'call the meteorogical station and find out when this will clear,' suggested my cameraman.
i did. after explaining to the person, he assured me that it's a light shower and they predicted clear skies around 9 to 10, latest. 'then it won't rain the whole day after that?' i asked. 'ya, sure won't rain,' he declared. i suddenly felt quite silly asking a mere man for assurance on the weather so i just laughed, thanked him and hung up.
despite the drizzle we went for the shoot. today was a gerat outdoors day; we planned for temples, street scenes, bukit china, a river boat ride and interview onboard a boat that will take us to pulau besar, about an hour and a half away by boat. first stop was the temple that supposedly had something to do with zheng he. all that proved that was the temple's similar name and a small, chest high statue of the eunuch admiral zheng he in the temple's courtyard. it wasn't a big temple but we ran into permission problems; the lady told us we could only film the (empty) courtyard and not the temple proper. tim had to go to the big boss's office some distance away to expressly get his signed permission, and the crwe went ahead to film int he courtyard anyway. on the sly they went on to capture all the scenes they needed anyway (as if the woman could tell what the lens is pointing at).
meantime i was fascinated with the zheng he statue, small as it is. (apparently, they had a big six foot statue of him built but quarrels erupted cos the buddhist population didn't want him put up, him being a muslim eunuch, so finally they failed to put it up. i guess it's crumbling in a storeroom somewhere.) now this particular statue in the temple, i found particularly interesting. he had an expression that could be seen as benevolent or cruel, depending on whether u see the curve of his mouth as a smile or a sneer. his eyes were just stone but they seemed to see right through me. i got a good feeling just looking at him, i duno why. i'll post pix up later.
the crew finished at the temple in record time and we went up to the adjacent bukit china, which the temple was said to be guardian of. the name simply means china hill in english, and it's the site of 10,000 chinese graves, the biggest outside of china. legend went that china sent a royal princess to marry melaka's prince as tribute, and her retinue and followers were all interred in the hill. the oldest graves dated from the ming dynasty.
now, i'm usually a freakish scaredy cat when it comes to graves. just passing by one can send my skin crawling, even in bright daylight. bukit china was different. we climbed up, first on about a hundred narrow steep stairs (this time i'm not exagerrating), then on the hill ground itself (there was a black stone path but the camera obviously strayed from this to get nicer wider shots of the graves.) i caaught up with the director and told him the woman at the temple said to make sure not to go to the left but rather just the right side of the hill. he asked me why and i shrugged duno. of course he didn't heed me one bit; in half hour the crew had gone deeper into the hill off the path and i had no choice but to follow.
but i didn't feel ominous at all. it was a glorious blueskied sunny day after the freak rainfall. the grass was green, the trees shady, a cool seabreeze blew and i could see the straits of malacca from the very tip of the hill. i trailed the crew as they moved, taking production shots with my own camera. i also took lots of pictures of the scenery and graves. don't ask me why; i just liked the place. it was peaceful, restful and quiet and i found myself thinking, i wouldn't mind being put to rest under the bright sky and above the blue sea, to wait out my time for the afterlife, when my turn came. i shook my head free of the thought but continued to enjoy the hill.
an hour passed and we packed up to leave. i let the crew ahead while i waited for my director to finish a call, in case he couldn't find us to follow. ten minutes later he joined me and we went up the black stone path, which the crew had ostensibly taken ahead of us. 'This is a big hill,' i remarked, after we had gone ten minutes and the path still stretched ahead of us. How big it was became apparent, when ten minutes later, we came to a part of the path that looked pretty familiar.. in fact it was where we started. "Uh oh, are we lost? Wow, now we can say we had an adventure; we're lost in the cemetery with ghosts nipping at our ankles!" joked director peter. "Choy!" i muttered under my breath, aghast at this angmoh happily mentioning such things among the old graves. "What?" "Nothing," i gritted my teeth in a warning smile and went ahead. Finally we decided to try trace our route without using the path. after a minute when i really thought i was good and lost, we saw the stairs and gratefully took them to the bottom. Not five minutes later, the crew rang my handphone and asked us to pick them up - they were lost! they'd gone round and round and are now at some main road right at the other side. so we had to get the van and drive to pick them up. interestibly, at that side of the foot of the hill, there was a small fenced in plot crammed full of headstones - a malay grave site. it was locked shut and there looked to be an usually large number of headstones for such a small area, half a football field. i hazarded that it might be where a previously exhumed gravesite had shifted and mass burried old graves in order to save space, i dunno..
hmm. so much for highlights. i've just stopped and scrolled up to see how much i've written cos my wrist was starting to go numb. i guess i'll stop here for part one. next i'll continue the second part of my 'business trip' - the boat ride to pulau besar..
posted by daa | 12:47 am
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