The Placard of Justin Guber

So yeah. To pass on the good word (as if my rants and raves in my regular blog, The Ballad of Justin Guber, wasn’t enough) and hopefully get some interest (or lack of) going, I’ve decided to blog here, on Friendly Friendster, about my upcoming debut feature film "Ciplak".

Written originally in 2001/02, the story charts the life of Jo, a Malay student studying in England who comes back every holiday to buy large quantities of pirated DVD’s of movies that haven’t come out in England to sell on the black market (don’t shy away, you’ve done it too).

On the last day of his final holiday in Malaysia before going back to college to finally finish up his degree and return for good, he plans to pick up his biggest shipment ever.

If it wasn’t for a nationwide raid.

At the time, I had neither the resources nor the pool of friends and like-minded individuals to pull off the script. Too many roles, too any scenes, too many impossible set-ups. I wrote it out of sheer frustration of being unable to write anything ‘Malaysian’ in a sudden bout of inspiration in a cafe waiting for Rauf in Desa Pandan. After I finished it, I put it away and never thought about it since.

Earlier this year I wrote ‘Celup’, a love story between a character very similar to Jo from ‘Ciplak’ and a typical Malay girl, who was to be played by Nazneen (see picture left), that I was going to direct and act in.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances that left me depressed, disillusioned and dissapointed, that got kicked to the curb too. It was at this moment of sheer frustration (the same type of frustration as when I wrote ‘Ciplak’), that I decided to go back to that script from long ago.

Looking back, it was poor in writing. The storyline’s plot was completely incidental, characters weren’t fleshed out and some set-ups were incredibly unbelievable. But the idea was still very strong, and I started to re-draft it. Within two-three weeks, it went from 50 pages to a 110 pages.

Character arcs were introduced and changed. New characters were put in. Whole plot devices were flipped around. After many sessions in Starbucks and many ice latte’s later, I had a workable script. Passing it around to those I hoped to rope in for the movie gave me great feedback. My friend in London, Saj, gave a bunch of comments that helped shape the movie even more (Saj will be coordinating the shoot of all scenes in London).

On October 1st, 2005, we began principal photography.

With my trusty Canon XM2 (that I used to shoot my last short film, ‘Some Like It White’) and my desktop for editing, I had my basic production equipment.

For my crew, I roped in my ex-drummer from Khaimano days, Ariff (middle person in the picture on the left), as Director of Photography (the dude’s a great photographer, so moving pictures shouldn’t be too much of a stretch).

To assist in the production and planning I got my girlfriend, Diana (far left person in the picture on the left), to come in as Production Manager.

For overall assistance, especially on the boom mic, I brought Blumps guitarist and Y2k roadie Ahmad in (far right person in the picture on the right).

For the cast, I had no intention of auditioning people. I wanted dudes and dudettes that I knew and trusted so that (a) I didn’t have any egos to handle apart from mine own and (b) in the event I fucked this all up it’d be less embarrasing.

Since Nazneen had been ready since pre-production of ‘Celup’, getting her was a cinch.

I’d just shot a music video for Y2k with Farah, Saiful’s sister, so I asked her to come on board too.

Since Tony’s always had me in front of the camera I thought I’d stick him there for a change.

My parents ended up casted as well as Hassan Peter Brown (who was to appear in ‘Celup’).

A lot of my other friends have also been casted as well, such as Saiful, Eddy, the Ben’s Bitches boys and of course, the dude that was there when I came up with the idea, Rauf (pictured right).

And, as usual with any shoot, things haven’t exactly been plain sailing. Delays, re-shoots, etc. We’ve shot about 4 days so far, with roughly 15-18 minutes of usable footage.

Some of that I’ve edited into a rough cut of the first 11 minutes of the film, which I’ve shown to a few people for feedback with some pretty good responses. Everybody laughs out loud at one gag in particular which I have decided is the ‘point of no return’ gag. If you don’t laugh there, you’re not gonna enjoy the movie.

I originally intended to finish shooting by the second week of November, but we’ll see. To keep things going faster I’ve been editing whatever’s been shot on the weekends over the weekday nights after work so that the final cut will go a lot faster. I’m guessing we’ll be done by the third week, if we’re lucky, and hopefully I’ll have a trailer up by then.

I’m hoping to get this movie into the Singapore International Film Festial first and foremost before hitting up the other festivals, with my eyes mainly set on the States and UK fests in particular. Hopefully this movie works out. I’ve got a lot of eggs in this particular basket and I’ll be damned if any of the fuckers break.

Fingers crossed, people.

Group photo from ‘Cravings’ cafe, one of the locations in Hartamas. From left to right: Nazneen, Ariff, Ahmad, Diana, Me, Rauf.

All photos taken from my Flickr page.

For full detailed and up-to-date making of rants, log on to The Ballad of Justin Guber.