For the production phase of “Always There”, my role as a writer has been converted to that of a director, a transitional phase from the script to creating what’s gonna to be shown on screen.

As this is one of the first time and last time I have actually had a chance to take up this directing role, I made a lot of mistakes and at the same time learnt a lot of skills from the invaluable experience. I had been a sensitive introvert all along, seldom willing to impose and assert my opinions and ideas on anyone in the fear of offending people and hence I had been always behind the scene, creating a story and writing the script to the best of my abilities. Writing a script has always been more comfortable for me as logically speaking, the paper or the celtx will never back-stab or gossip about you if you impose too many ideas on them.

From my memory of the years in FSV, I have never tried directing as people around me has always told me that I have no talent or what it takes to be a director in the first place, hence I bashed myself and stuck to roles such as a storyboard artist and a script writer, in fear of offending people. I was very surprised that for this project, I actually have a chance to translate what I wrote on script into something vision for the last time in my life. In reflection to the entire production of “Always There”, I am incredibly thankful to my group mates, Ding Jie, Joel, Serene, Aileen, Peiyi and Michelle for putting faith and confidence in me for letting me give it a shot, something that has never happened in my three years of stay in FSV. I wanted to express in this journal that I appreciated the experience a lot.

The day before the production, due to the work load given by other “shouldn’t be named here” modules, we didn’t have time to do a proper location survey and location setup. When I was about to compromise the art direction and the location design, I suddenly thought of what I have learnt in “Directing for Camera”. Mr Boo has always told me never to compromise anything from the script, but learn to fulfill more than what’s required on screen. Directing for Camera has given me confidence that I can do things that may seem impossible for one person to do it in the first place. For my first MOS project, I actually transport and return equipments, get location permit, gather the talents and the props all by myself, something that I didn’t know I can achieve.

But for this project, I am glad that I have wonderful teammates who are willing to put in the extra mile to get the location set up to something that is appropriate for my vision. Right after the equipment unloading, I arranged a last minute Ikea trip at 7pm and told my art director and assistant director to get what’s appropriate for the set design. My editor, Joel also went along for the trip to lend some muscle power. It was a hell of hard work for the night where we get what we need for Ikea, get what we need from each of our house and transport all of them back to the loft. Our efforts paid off and alas, we get the loft decorated into something that looks like a home rather than a student hostel.

Above gallery records the last minute trip at Ikea, the setting up of props at the loft and the final product achieved. (All pictures are copyrighted to Assistant director, Michelle’s Facebook ©)

On the day of the production itself, I faced a challenge of directing three talents at the same time and I also did talent blocking for camera for the first and last time in my life. I realised that the blocking for camera is something that shouldn’t compromise the acting; blocking is always a time for the director to decide and prioritize the subject of a frame and the amount of action that is gonna be expressed visually within the limits of a frame. Blocking for camera sets film making and theatre directing apart.

Ever-since I have the luxury of showing everything in a frame with the use of wide-shots and master takes, I often made a mistake of taking talent blocking for granted. As a director, I often get carried away with the performance of the talents more than the technical issues such as blocking, line of action and framing. Through working with my efficient and experienced DP, I realised the importance and significance of character blocking and how I should design a blocking in a way that doesn’t make the performance look awkward and at the same time capture all the action within the framing limit given by the DP.

I also discovered that my style of directing is largely different from the other directors in my directing class. After incubating the talents with the back story and information about their characters, I would always straight away call for a rehearsal and let them interpret the performance of their respective characters based on what they know about their characters from the incubation and the script. I will never stop them halfway during their performance and will first let them perform based on their interpretation. After the rehearsal, I will then point out things that I hope to control and manipulate during the actual take. The things that I usually manipulate will be the facial expressions, the way they deliver their lines and also most importantly their line of action. Unlike most directors who instruct and direct, I have the proclivity to give actors their “freedom of speech” to bring out their acting potential to the fullest. I have always believed that their performance would be more innate and self-propelled if I gave them more space and choices to interpret the acting for the particular character.

From my experience on set while taking up roles of grip and gaffer during the two years, I have noticed that most of my directors often over-control and over-limit the potential of what their actors can do. They are often preoccupied in their own vision that they failed to realise that actors do not necessarily empathize or share the same vision that they have. You need to give them some space and freedom to interpret and perform based on their knowledge of the story given.

After all, my style of directing can always be said to be nonsensical and wrong by most people as I have the danger of losing control over the performance given by my actors, especially some who are still amateurs. Throughout the years, lecturers have always reiterated that directing is subjective and there is no right and wrong in it but yet, it’s an irony that my directing style has been criticized the most all the time. In my personal opinion, I strongly disagree to the fact that directing is something that can be marked as wrong or correct. Nevertheless I have always believed in developing my style in my own direction, something that I strongly believe would be the way that works in terms of getting truthful and natural performance. However, I also have to take note of the various ways whereby actors might give a performance that might ruin or jeopardize the overall vision of the film.

The philosophy of performance is not something that can be controlled or calculated like some of kind of mathematical problem or some science theory paper, it should be embraced, appreciated and also developed from within the heart and the soul. A certain amount of respect has to be given to the abilities of your actors and faith has to be placed in their abilities to act with the proper guidance that do not totally control and restrain their form of expression. Look at how Milos Forman place his faith and trust on those non-actors that he use for his films such as the Fireman’s ball. There are about over 50 of non-actors that are on set during the wide shot, do you have time to concentrate on each of their acting abilities and tell them that their performance is over the top or bad? There is more to story-telling or movie making than oppressive directing. Non-actors bring out flawed performance but at the same time, their performance is their innate way of personal expression, something that is valuable to the audience. It is tantamount to the freedom of speech whereby each individual has the rights to express and interpret things in their own way. Yet again, it should be guided by the director to a small extent to make sure that they are moving in the same path as the vision of the film.

I learn a lot from my experience in directing, in terms of guiding my actors and communicating my vision to them. I will always give them respect for their performance and never tell them what’s wrong or what’s correct as I have always believed, if you put in right or wrong in terms of acting, all you achieve is the mere scripted and artificial performance that is prevalent in local films.

In terms of group work in production, I felt that my team mates are very efficient and on the ball, something that sets them apart from the preproduction stage. I have always believed that our preproduction phase has been disrupted by an endless flow of projects and therefore it will seem unorganized and unprepared. Nevertheless during production, everyone has performed to their fullest potential and everyone is focused and enthusiastic about their roles. Even though we are doing last minute work such as the trip to Ikea, we coordinated and worked hard as a group to design and setup the loft in accordance to what we hope to achieve in our collaborative vision. I have always believed that film making is never about what the director wants, it is always a shared and collaborated effort, it is more of what the entire crew wants to achieve.

During the day of the shoot, my assistant camera man, my DP and my assistant director has been very efficient in terms of reminding me about the number of films we have left and keeping track of the shots we have taken. My producer and my art director are always there to help me with the wardrobe and costuming while I communicate with my DP about the framing. My sound engineer is always communicating with the DP in terms of the positioning. My editor is always there to help me keep track and take note of continuity with his DSLR. Everyone on set is actually doing something and although we over-run quite a bit, we managed to make full use of the time given and complete the shoot within a single day. I feel that as a team, we have been very efficient and organized during production, something that is a far cry from how we behave during pre-production.

Things we need to improve on should be the plannings and organization during pre-production, other than that, during production, I feel that everyone has put in their very best to execute the screenplay.