About 5 months ago, after our last action video, I finally decided to work on a short film. Since all of our videos are in action genre, I thought of making a horror film. So I brainstormed myself with lots of ideas. I was busy then working as a technical manager in our internet cafe so it was delayed for a several weeks. Until the moment of truth came.
One night, I was browsing for some horror stories on the internet, and I crossed a Facebook fan page with lots of horror stories, so I read one. One story caught my attention, and it was really creepy. It was about a group of teenagers hanging out on a mountain, and the girl was left in the tent realizing that her friends are already dead.
I told the story to Ferdie and Kenneth and they were both scared! So I thought this would be effective. As soon as their scare was gone, I started saving money for it and looked everywhere for a nice place that would fit for the story. I already have some scenes in mind and imagined what would be the perfect shots for the expected film. I already asked lots of people I knew, because I was thinking it would be so creepy if a large number of people in the cast would play as ghosts.
Not all of my friends accepted the roles, so all that's left was my production team, so they were put on the set. From the expected 6 talents, the set consisted of only 3 talents, one lady and two guys. I didn't have the time and bread to set a perfect location, so we shot the first scene on the same location as from the Dubstep Arnis. I immediately started writing the script, and realized it was too short for a film. So I added some love story elements. We started at about 1 pm, and suddenly the rain poured! With no luck, the shoot had to put to a stop. After that, about two weeks had passed without any film shoot, due to one of our talents being busy on her work.
After some several weeks, we decided to shoot the film again on a rented apartment free of charge. The film shoot was about to finish just inside the apartment for the whole day, but the owner told us not to continue anymore due to some location problems. So the footage we shot became scrap, but I backed them up anyway for future references. After that, we decided to put one of our talents to a resignation due to her work, and the production was put again to a stop.
After several weeks, we decided to "really finish this once and for all" and gathered all of our classmates back in college and other people we knew, including some of our regular costumers in our internet cafe. We asked all of them to accept the cast but only two of them accepted. As soon as the two came, I immediately asked permission to one of my close friends to use their vacant lot for the shoot (it was actually a banana plantation, not really forest). So the original cast consisted of three guys and a lady. Suddenly, two guys never made it, so my girlfriend was forced to be on the set, and voila.. the horror film made it to the production.
Since the two guys never made it to the set, the whole script was revised for a number of times because only three talents were left on the production. I bought my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens at the perfect time, so I used and abused it for the shoot. We shot the film at 1 pm and ended at 6 pm including the dubbing session. As soon as we uploaded it on YouTube, we received many positive feedbacks, most of them were scared and asked us "Where's part two?" and we felt the need to make another one. Thus, the short film became one of four episodes of the whole web series. And, that's pretty much it!
Anyway, here's the finished video of the whole production process. Hence, making it the first episode of our web series.
Now, for the TITLE... this was the funny part. The production was a long process, but I wasn't able to come up with a title. After the editing of the first episode, I searched over the dictionary and the internet for a good English title. I asked Ferdie: "What's a perfect, one-word, scary, creepy and psychological title for a horror web series?" He just answered back: "Kawalan." - Filipino word for "gone", "nothingness" or "oblivion". I asked him why. He said, "Wala kasi ako maisip eh, kaya Kawalan." (I have nothing else to think, so I said "Kawalan".)
'Nuff said.
Want to see Episode 1 to 3? Watch it on my YouTube playlist.
No comments:
Post a Comment