Pop Pictures

     Pom

Our art team is called the Sur-lao art team.  It consists of 3 people: Pom, Oom, and Pond.  And all three of them are very Sur-lao.  This means they are very blur and very sur (as in surreal) and very lao (as in pitched too far towards the sentimental end of the emotional spectrum).  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  Whatever. 

Anyway, despite being overly Sur-lao, they still warrant their own journal entry today because they also happen to be the best art team any production could ask for.  What does an art team do?  Basically everything that involves objects and things that can be seen in the frame, excluding the actors and what they’re wearing.

For instance, here’s a list of stuff they did today:

1. Poured water onto a perfectly dry parking lot to match a rainy parking lot we had shot a few days earlier.

2. Ate half of several red bean buns because the actress had to be holding a half-eaten bun at the start of the shot.

3. Went shopping for a deer’s head, found one, then got kicked off the BTS skytrain for carrying it on to the train.

4. Bought an electric piano for the set, then spent all night playing it themselves (this is very very Sur-lao). 

5. Chose both dark and translucent curtain fabric to help the cinematographer control ambient light in the room.

     Pond

People often watch a movie and assume the director thought of everything.  In truth, the director just begins the story.  But everybody else finishes it.  So even though the above list sounds a bit ridiculous, it isn’t.  For what the art team is actually doing is defining the character’s personality by choosing the objects the character would have:  car, red bean bun, dark and light curtains, beds, deer heads, cans of beer, brands of cigarettes, electric pianos, laptop computers, posters on the wall, magazines on the floor, shampoos in the bathroom, and on and on and on…the list is endless.  Somebody’s got to think of all this.  That’s the art team.

     Oom

Cerise wrote us a letter from New York!   It was very sweet so we’re including part of it in today’s diary entry:

“I flew back to NYC two days after shooting and it was a shock to be back!  I miss the sun, the coconut drinks, and the massages!  Winter has begun and the fast pace was not easy to adjust to.  Also, being so busy for weeks, it’s kind of weird to all of a sudden have days to not do anything.  You almost don’t know what to do with yourself but Christmas came and soon I was drinking hot cocoa and opening presents!”

“I went to see my grandma for her big 90th birthday.  She lives in the country in Illinois.  It was 7F degrees that day which is about real f-cking freezing!  But there was snow everywhere and it’s a magical winter place to be.  I cleaned my room and found this, sometimes you can run into a famous person in NYC.  I’ve seen Slash, Bill Murray, and this time Joe Pesci in a parking garage.  He’s got the best autograph!”

Keep warm Cerise.  And see you soon!

Here are some photos from our latest “sniffing around” trip.  Over the life of a movie production, the team makes many trips to the shooting locations.  During the writing stage, it may be only the director as he/she gathers ideas to finish the script.  But once the production is officially under way, there follows many more trips. 

The early ones are called dom klin trips, which can be loosely translated as “sniffing around”.  This is for everyone: the cinematographer, production designer, costume designer, sometimes even the actors if they happen to be free.  Walking around sniffing the air is actually beneficial for everyone to get a feel for the place.

We take a lot of photos to see what the space feels like and what the possibilities are.  Sometimes a place we initially thought looked cool turns out to be problematic for some reason or another.  So it’s better to find this out during the sniffing around trip than an actual shoot when you have 50 crew members watching you squirm. 

This week we are doing the final preparation for the remainder of the shoot.  We have 9 days left.  But they are the most difficult 9 days of the production.  What makes a shoot difficult?  In a word…chaos.  That’s what you want to try and avoid at all costs.  Our locations are a night club and an airport.  That’s chaos, people.

She’s the leading lady for the second half of our movie.  And she’s a bright shining star.  Only nobody knows it yet except us because this is her first time acting in a movie.  Next year when she’s famous and we can’t afford to hire her anymore, we can look back with fondness and say “remember when she walked in and lit up the entire room?” 

A girl named Fern:

- you don’t want to not call her back or leave her waiting in a restaurant or any other bad-boyfriend type shit because she is a tae kwan do coach.  You ever see a tae kwan do coach who looks like that?  Didn’t think so.

- she loves to hitchhike around Thailand.  Hitchhike.  In Thailand.  You ever see a hitchhiker who looks like that?  In a horror movie right?  That’s what we keep telling her…girl, stop hitchhiking, it’s not cool at all.

- her favorite things to say in the whole wide world are “F@!@!@@!!!!” and “A!x&&!S*%” and “H!@##?<>!!” and other stuff like that.  She’s French, except she’s Thai.  The sweetest Thai Franco whatever you ever met.

We love her.

The shooting for the second half of High Society has begun in Bangkok.  Whether consciously or not, we have always avoided shooting in the city.  Coming from the school of low-budget filmmaking, shooting in the middle of Bangkok poses a lot of technical problems.  Most places are too loud to record dialogue, cynical urban folks charge more for location fees, and the mass of people/cars/dogs/planes increase the chances of unforeseen stuff screwing you up.  Compared to this, shooting in the countryside where wind and insects are your worst enemies, seems like a breeze.

Bangkok however, is still Bangkok.  Though it comprises a relatively small percentage of land area and population (once you discount all the upcountry labor), it occupies a huge space in our consciousness because of its political, economic, and cultural importance.  Okay, that previous sentence sounded like something out of Wikipedia.  Maybe a better way to put it is…this is where it’s at yo!  So for us, finally making a movie that not only takes place here, but is about here, is a refreshing change.  Practical problems aside, how do you represent a city that’s inherently unrepresentable?

After the first day of shoot, that has become the main challenge.  We’ve begun in an office location on Sukhumvit and man - shout it out across the land and let it be known - shooting in an air-conditioned office is the shit!  Practical problems seems to still be on her New Years vacation because our first day has been entirely smooth.  The place is nice and comfy, the walls seem to be sound-proof, and there’s an amazing crab fried rice restaurant right down the street.  What more can you ask for?  The question now is will our footage reflect what it really feels like to live here?  That’s the thing.

Phuket is screening in the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival which runs from January 29 - February 6.  It is the largest short film festival in the world.  People who have been there say that audiences line up for tickets in the snow and the 500-seat cinemas are always filled up.  And these are not film professionals, these are normal Clermont-Ferrandian citizens on a date or a family outing or whatever. 

The festival also includes a film market.  Most places in the world have a hard enough time drumming up interest for a feature film market, but in France, land of Louis Lumiere, people are so film crazy they even buy and sell short films.  So for one week out of every year, freezing Clermont-Ferrand, tucked away in the geographical dead center of France, becomes the world capital of short films.  Ahhh…Les Francais.

Phuket is screening in International Competition program 10:

http://www.clermont-filmfest.com/index.php?m=134&c=178&n1=c&n2=2&n3=%20&annee=0&id_prog=100000040

If anybody happens to be there, you really have no excuse to miss it, because its showing SEVEN times in seven days!  That must be another record.

Thank you to everyone for a wonderful year.  See you in 2010! (uh…next week)

Our current projects:

2010 High Society

2010 Eternity

2009 Phuket

2009 Bangkok Blues (part of Sawasdee Bangkok)

The final days of shooting (days 8-9-10-11-12) took place at the Bangsak Beach Resort.  This is the last remaining hotel that was struck by the 2004 tsunami and this December 26 will of course mark the fifth anniversary of that tragedy.  The town of Khao Lak has moved on, all the old ruins carried away by bulldozer.  But memories linger on for much longer.

Every new location we go to, the entire crew lights incense and says a prayer to the spirit of that location.  And nowhere was this more meaningful than at the Bangsak Beach Resort.  The place is haunted with memories - the Christmas decorations from 2004 are still hanging from the ceiling.  So to step foot into such a place, you first need to ask permission.

Films are all about memory.  What else is the act of filming something?  Throughout the first half of the shoot, we all seemed to be working with memories:  memories of youth that inspired the script, memories of places that we once walked, memories of joy and tragedy, and now memories of shooting this film together, taking shape in our minds as the days pass.

Beautiful things are all around us - you just have to open your eyes and see them.  If there is anything to be learnt from the movies, this may be the greatest lesson of them all.  So now, as we wrap the first half of High Society and prepare to take a break, these are some of the small but beautiful things we have seen.   Or another word for them - memories:

Have a good Christmas and New Year’s Holiday!

(Hi-So Diary will continue after the holidays as we begin preparations for the second half of the production)

Did we tell you that we got good-looking people in our movie?  There’s a reason why movie stars are movie stars and me and you take out the trash at night.   It’s because when you put good-looking people in the frame - the. shit. just. look. good. 

For example, here is me and you hanging out in bed checking emails:

And here is the same frame in the land of good-looking people:

Now here is me and you hanging out in a hallway at 3am:

And here’s the same frame in the land of good-looking people:

And finally, here is me and you just looking stupid in an actual frame:

And here is the same thing in the land of good-looking people:

You see?  So this entry is dedicated to our two lovely stars, Cerise and Ananda.  Not only are they great actors and nice people, but they also don’t look nothin’ like me and you.  Thank you guys!  You’re the best!