Bida Complex Shooting (It's a Wrap xD)

As much as I'd like to talk of the experience in detail, I'm too exhausted to blog. Imma try to remember what to discuss while it's still fresh. I hate my memory.

Day 1 was the most exhausting day evar. The schedule was extremely hectic. Yay for Uncle Mulong who lent us his car; and yay for cars that turn into dollies. Yay for the Tudtuds who had to put up with a bunch of noisy college students who thought they were filmmakers. Hehehe. Lol for expressions that get imbedded into the dialogue (Lololololol). Guada claimed that if one closed their eyes and listened to the direction and instructions flying about, it was almost as if we were at the set of a porn movie. Dumdumdumdum. At one point, for a "facial shot", DP, in her blue stockings and cute little shorts stood over Guada to shoot her face. And yes, we have pictures of that ;)

Day 2, everyone was late, and I couldn't blame them given we went home at almost 2am the previous day. One of the PAs told us his nosebleeding from the previous night turned out to be leukemia. On the way to USJR in Colon, Producer told us the theater was in Basak, not Colon. As the taxi detoured towards the new location, he called back and told us to go to Colon. April fooled we were. We were able to drag in a bunch of high school students to extra as the audience. Later, to light up a street for a mugging scene, one of the PAs did monkey magic by climbing over her roof to let an extension cable through her window for our lightbox. We chose that particular street because not many vehicles passed by. Within 20 minutes of shooting, taxis kept passing by, so we'd have to stop til they were out. The crew noticed that the same taxis were passing by, as well as the same groups of people. Same thing happened when we transferred to Nick's irl house's corner to shoot the money shot (*wink wink*).

This is unrelated to production, but I got news that one of my mom's brothers had died from a cardiac arrest that morning. I think it should be sad for someone to die on April Fool's Day.

Day 3 was lax in contrast with the previous days. We shot at UP, so after taking shots of Sir Anton's class where Nick got his face bruised up by 3 pretty girls (masochist much), we took filler shots around campus. Yay for the Tornillas for bringing pizza xD. We moved to Colon to take more fillers. Outside Tuxedo pension, we almost couldn't shoot outside because a horde of YFC ILC participants were checking in. We ended early because Guada had RL matters to attend to.

Day 4 was full of happy accidents. This was the day we were to shoot everything we couldn't for the previous days. We went back to UP for dialogue scenes. DP had left, since it turns out she still had an exam to take on Saturday, so cinematog was left to me and Producer. After UP, we went hunting the bowels of Jones for the location of the "movie house". It kinda took us a while before we found the Enovlink Training Center. Then we went back to UP to take more fillers, and then to Talamban for the supposedly hardest scene in the movie. Surprisingly, it only took about 15 hours, instead of the 2 hours I had imagined it would take. My list of movie magic cheats is growing. xD. We did the Haunted house scene, shot the manananggal, and travelled back to Lahug to hunt for the next outdoor scene location. Everyone was exhausted, so to save time, we were stopping at a shed to shoot a taxi scene. Unfortunately, there weren't any passing taxis to hire. When we finally got one, Guada and I got in the taxi to shoot. Suddenly, what seemed like a guild of men in blue outfits with acronyms on their uniforms were surrounding us. The crast and crew were caught off guard, so off guard I wasn't able to capture it on tape. I thought we were going to jail. The Mugger still had Guada's knife, and Nick was already taking his shirt off and showing the police that his nipples were harmless. As soona as they saw me with the camera, they left. lulz. I thought they were CITOM in darker uniforms. Producer said they were something more sinister...
We moved back to Nick's irl house for the last (and most important) scene. As soon as people got on the sofa, they all started snoozing. I let them sleep while I reviewed the tapes. Then it was time to shoot.

Amazingly, it actually started raining, in the rain scene. Happiest accident right there xD

We ended at 3am.