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Published: December 5th 2009
Filming in Cambodia
This was one busy week! The busiest yet in fact full of early mornings and long draining days of organisation, photo-shoots, finding extras and of course filming! On Monday, I spent the day with Jo and Anji organising the cast member’s contracts and making sure they were given the scripts and shooting schedules. Sadly, the script that was copied and printed out in Khmer wasn’t collated and bound so Sophea, Phanet, Sony, Somouin and Van spent hours putting them all in order for the cast and other members of the IDP team. My afternoon was occupied by Jo at Cade sorting out props and costumes for the film project which took an awful long time - longer than I expected even when most of the props and costumes could be found at our filming location in Ta Khmao. That night Anji and I watched “Apocolypse: The Second World War” on the ‘National Geographic’ Channel and I have not seen something so profound and hard hitting for a long time - I can see why it is an acclaimed programme.
Tuesday was again spent at Cade Advertising with Jo, searching for extra bits and pieces for
Moto
It has a built in radio and ipod system to listen to tunes - it's amazing! Dragon's den, I think hehe.the film and organising the breakdown sheet and trying to work around a schedule crisis as two of the actor’s were unable to make certain days. It actually worked out better than the original schedule! Solida took me out in her Lexus with her lovely mother who kindly said I’m a nice person because I smile a lot - bless her! We wandered around the Russian Market, which I’m definitely coming back to as the clothes are so nice and also extremely cheap! Solida also took me to Swensen’s for ice cream sundaes and honestly just two words describe them - ‘oh wow’. They are delicious and creamy and have those special sweet cherries and chocolate sauce to top it all off and I must admit that I did dream about eating more of them that night - they are the nicest sundaes I have ever had!
Wednesday 25th was spent working with Mstyle to produce a 2010 calendar for MSM. We went back to Ta Khmao to take photographs of a topless fisherman, a man in a hammock with a puppy and footballers. It was extremely fun and the models were very professional and easy to talk to.
Swensen's
Just look at it! Yummy!! The next day was a continuation of Wednesday where the final models were photographed for the Calendar - I can’t wait to see what the finished product looks like. Watching the photoshoot made me slightly envious of the models on set and one of my favourite shows ‘America’s Next Top Model’ as they get to have a lot pictures taken of them even though you hold the same position for a long time for different angles of the camera as well as the changing of ‘props’ and background. The pictures all looked absolutely brilliant and I can tell there will be a lot of happy customers. Solida’s restaurateurs then cooked up some crispy crickets which I did try and despite cringing because I thought they were staring at me from beyond the grave, I enjoyed. In order to get the strange (but nice) taste out of my mouth Solida and I went to Swensen’s ice cream parlour again for some well deserved treats before I headed home where the actors were having a read through of the script ready for filming on Saturday.
Friday 27th was spent in Ta Khmao with the costume manager, props manager, producer, Jo, Theanly
and Solida to gather props and costumes for the movie. It was a draining day but it was all worth it in the end. Not much more to say here so I will talk about the filming which started on Saturday 28th! It was definitely a real interesting start to filming, which had the crew using a JIB to lean out over a bridge in Ta Khmao for the opening scene which involves a tuk-tuk packed full of things (including some of the cast) and a fisherman - but that’s all I’m going to say! The cast and crew are all so talented, professional and extremely friendly and it feels as though we’re one big family who have been working together for years rather than days and I know that when the shooting is all done and dusted we’ll be sad that we will no longer wake up to see everyone for another fun and eventful day. Well… until the wrap party which we are definitely planning to have and will be very fun, I’m sure!
From this first week of shooting I have learned a lot about the film industry behind the camera and itis definitely something which
I enjoy as well as the responsibilities I have been given as costume assistant (sorting out the costumes for the actors and extras for the scenes being filmed), script supervisor (being in charge of making sure the crew and cast have copies of the scenes for the next day of shooting in both Khmer and English) and producer’s assistant (being a runner, helping to organise and write the shooting schedules and observing the shooting), all of which require me to be one of the first there and the last to leave - but I love it as it keeps me very busy and occupied and it’s so interesting! I even had a go at security on the first day of shooting which was basically telling the others in security to close in the road, in Khmai - “bong bat plou”. Solida’s sister Navy makes the cast and crew numerous iced coffees throughout the day, which are absolutely delicious and also keep us going in the long days of shooting. They remind me of Starbucks and are thereby helping to keep my addiction at bay - for now, until I start to want a frappe.... Also the food Solida’s family make
for us all is mouth-wateringly good Khmer food and I always look forward to it!
Among the brilliantly filmed scenes, there were a couple of incidents which meant we had to cancell the shoots and re-set the scenes. The first was that the people living at the house we are using as the main location didn’t mention that one of the inhabitants has brain damage after a motor accident and during the shooting he talks loudly to himself about us preventing him from going to the toilet (where our floodlights are) or walks across the set while the camera’s rolling talking to himself. Despite his interruptions, it just wouldn’t be the same without him. During our first night shoot there was a fairly dramatic incident as a man, who had been drinking since 4am that day kept driving up and down the road (extremely drunk) to prevent us from filming a night scene and in the end we cancelled it, especially when the police showed up and he said that he had a gun - even though he didn’t… Why?! Just, why? And then on another night shoot where we planned to shoot two scenes we only managed to
complete one as the next door neighbour of the other house which we film at, who had been drinking the very alcoholic rice wine since 4pm decided that he wanted to go to bed (as they go to sleep really early in the village; about 6-7pm) and proceeded to find everyway possible to prevent us from shooting, which included turning on the radio very loudly!
Anyway, moving on from the drama! There have been a couple of scenes which really stood out for me for obvious reasons! One of which involved a balloon flying into the sky, but as it’s the kite season out here the wind kept pushing it into the roof of the house, resulting in it having to be picked-up at a later date when there's less wind! Another one was a night scene which we decided to shoot in the day and we put up black curtain like material around the house and used lights inside to make it appear as though there was moonlight shining through the floorboards above the house - it was all very technical and looked so real too! Tell you what though, it felt like a sauna inside as there
were so many of us crammed in there it was so hot - but was definitely worth it in the end!
The infamous rabbit outfit is finally completed! We all can’t wait to film these scenes on Sunday.
In between scenes the cast and crew members took photographs of each other and being me, I managed to squeeze my way into quite a few of those pictures. I’ve also been invited out by some of the cast members who are apparently quite famous out here and the actress who plays the main character is absolutely hilarious and makes everybody laugh in between takes and the other cast members join in with her antics and have some of their own as well, particularly the Khmer riddles which are really quite fun. Amongst this, when running to retrieve things from the Ta Khmao office I ride on the back of the motos which is absolutely brilliant - although the novelty of tuk-tuks hasn’t worn off just yet and I prefer them - but the motos are just so much fun, especially when you’re carrying a bunch of costumes for scenes which we have time to include in shooting! I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy before in my life but I absolutely love every minute of it. I will never forget this experience and would definitely do it again and again and again!
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Carrie
non-member comment
Even busier bee
Glad that you are enjoying it all and being so very busy ! Thanks for keeping us up to date in the blog as it is really is very interesting to read about what you are up to over there. Lots of love xxxx