R O S A R I O

Ideas take birth silently, slipping under the skin and growing like cancer. This film started much before I had known I was making it. When I first saw Dennis playing in the tunnel, he didn’t strike me particularly special. But there was something that told me to come back to that tunnel. I began frequenting that place more often. I didn’t know it precisely but I could feel that I was being drawn to his music. It began to live inside me. Often I would come back home and listen to the number he played.

Then one day, I stopped by. We began chatting about his music and he gave his brief history – his name, religion, place of origin etc. Then I would say hi to him whenever I passed him. During one of these conversations, the idea of a film emerged. It came from him automatically. We both looked at each other for a moment after he said those words.

I began shooting next week. My starting point was his house, which I only visited once. I didn’t want to cause too much inconvenience and the idea of taking my camera into his closet sounded perverse. So I hesitated to shoot at his place. But the filmmaker inside me told me not to miss this opportunity so I took a few shots anyway (I didn’t use any of that in my film). I took those shots just to assure myself that I had started making that film.

I shot the rehearsal session with Dennis and Charles. It was a fun shoot. They sponsored a drink for me and I got to listen to some really nice music while shooting the film. The shoot gets really interesting if you have a 50mm lens that can open as far as f/1.8. I got some really good shots and began to get a hang of the project.

I went to see Dennis on a couple more occasions – one was during the rehearsals with Charles and one other friend who played bass and the other was the date of performance after the Christmas eve at Charles’ place. They had invited friends and family for the musical night. My approach to that shoot was very fluid. I had decided to record the entire session on my zoom h4n which I put on the stereo mode using built-in mics. I began shooting their performance and realised in the first few minutes that I couldn’t shoot on tripod at all. I had to go handheld all the way and simply trust my instinct to get the shots I wanted. I plan my shots in advance so that I could give myself some direction on the occasion. My plan usually goes for a toss somewhere in the first 10 percent of my shoot. However, this has not been a deterrent for the planning exercise in my project. Planning your shoot gives you a clarity and assurance in your approach. For indie shoots this is a priceless asset.

After 3 days of shooting Dennis performing and rehearsing, the project had reached a matured state that I could plan to shoot him perform in public. I had originally planned for a 2 day shoot based on the footage I get. I went on location early in the morning and set up my camera to shoot his entry. I had not planned to shoot that entry at 50 fps but I ended up doing it all the same (and what a happy surprise that was during post production !!). My method was simple, shoot various lengths but more specifically, shoot enough slow motion footage. I knew it was going to go well with his voice. The old school raspy rock n roll. Slow motion gives a nice vintage feel to it. I even thought about doing the film in black and white (which was not a good idea).
I shot enough but I didn’t know whether it was enough at the time. I didn’t know where to stop. Most of my shots were not planned at all and I didn’t know how they would look. I thought I should set my camera down and come back another day. So I put my camera near his collection box and waited for someone to put money there. A hand appeared in the frame shortly and I racked focus to Dennis, he looked at the collection box, then he looked at me and thanked the passer by. There was an indefinite vulnerability in that moment. It was subtle and precise. It was perfect.

Next week, we went to the Toa Payoh garden to shoot his interview. It was a beautiful day. It has just rained. The light was just about perfect for an afternoon shoot. Any outdoor shoot takes a heavy toll on you and this was no different. I had started at 2 pm in the afternoon and went as far as 8 pm in the evening. I wanted to make sure this was my last of shoot in the project. I knew I had enough material to tell my story. Dennis’s music has already started building a narrative in my head and if I had my way I could have finished the shoot in the next week.

But that was not to be.

I had to wait almost 6 months before starting the post production. I had moved to another job in between. When I resumed the edit, I had almost forgotten everything about the project, all the ideas I had, all the music I had planned and all the conversations I had with my creative producer. In a way it was good that I started the project from the scratch. It benefitted my story that I had very little awareness of the project. I didn’t recognise most of my own shots. I had to go through the footage several times for them to make sense to me now. I listened to the tracks I recorded and realised I had several options to start the film, so I let the material tell me a story. I had no story in my mind. After I had seen the footage a couple of times, a story began to emerge in my head but I hadn’t seen any of his interviews yet and that was the crucial part because what I had to say was to be supported by Dennis’ thoughts too. So I began to sift through his interviews. It was a tiring, cumbersome process, one that took an excruciating amount of time to finish. By the end of seeing all his interview, I had found the exact arc of my story. Then I began editing.

The first cut came out really good. I was truly confident that it would clear the acid test of satisfying my creative producer. As it turned out, she wasn’t so impressed. She pointed out some serious flaws and I wondered how many times it happened that I had simply overlooked those flaws !! So I began polishing the edit but nothing seemed to satisfy her at all. She suggested some more shoot to improve the beginning. It was not able to catapult the audience into the story. I went out in the night to shoot some footage of the tunnel and city lights. I had always planned to use a moving escalator shot in my films. This was going to be my chance.

I put the new footage into the timeline and voila the edit simply rocked. I showed it to my creative producer and she got really excited about the film now. She suggested some minor changes to the end after which the edit looked really tight. I made few very few color grading changes. Most of my changes were to give a nice s-curve to all my footage to punch the contrast a little. The end was still a bottleneck though. We wanted a slightly different treatment to the end shot. We wanted to keep it undisclosed until the very end, which I achieved after further polishing the edit. It goes to show that no matter how clear you are about the edit, you still have to go through umpteen rounds of edit to make it shine with perfection.

Some technical details:
Camera: Canon 7D
Lenses: Canon 18-135mm, Canon 50mm f/1.8
Sound recorder: Zoom h4n
Post Production: Adobe Premiere Pro 5.0, Adobe After Effects 5.0