Friday

Today, Jy and I met early at Potong Pasir Mrt. Today the group was split up again. Jy and I were to do the recce-ing and Betty and Sholleh to meet Betrand. Jy and I were to find the exact tree we wanted and take the measurements, then tailor the swing to it. However, halfway through we had a call from Betty who told us that Betrand thought that the location was not green enough and certain pictures that we had shown him had spots/patches of brown that would not look good on the P2 camera. As such, Jy and I were sent to recce seletar resevoir or some where near there.


Thereafter, Jy and I first took a short break at Macs and then used my NEW PHONE which had wifi to look for golf courses and call them up and ask if we could shoot there as a golf course was the only place we could think of with really flat, green green grass. We also tried sourcing for pianos that were out of tune or had their internal wooden frames/spines broken. Because that would be a cheaper alternative for us to rent rather than a full working grand piano. Besides, we did not need the sound on set. The piano piece would be pre-recorded in the studio and then effects would be added to it to give it a really majestic feel. But all the companies we called up did not give us at least one optimistic reply. Most of them said that they did not have or still charged us at expensive prices.


After that, Jy and I took a bus down to Nee Soon Camp, according to the directions Betty gave us. It was really difficult to find the location! First we took the bus all the way to night safari, Mandai and missed our stop then, we got down at the wrong bus stop and had to walk a very great distance before we reached where ever we were going. Betty told us to go to the executive golf course near Nee Soon Camp but we had no cue where it was. By the time we reached Nee Soon Camp, a guy directed us to the golf course behind Nee Soon Camp which turned out to be Seletar executive Golf course. After walking a great distance again, we reached the golf course and it turned out to be a waste of time. The trees were not suitable, the grass had two different colours which came in strips (light green, dark green, light green, dark green).


However, we found a not so bad location opposite golf course. It was SLA state land. (singapore land authorities) The place was a park like place with a few lamps along the way. The grass was short and green. The trees were pine shaped and not bad looking. Overall, the place was not bad, but lacked the "endless greenery" feel and not at all enchanted. By the time we got out of the place, we were at The Bottle tree park at Khatib mrt station.

-Andrea

Wednesday

For today, sholleh, betty and I went to school for consultation about our progress so far. Turns out the blocked script we had wasn’t in the right format, so we’ll be changing it and showing it to Bertrand on Friday. Another thing is that after our consultation we realised that betty’s neighbour was too old to play the part of the girl, and that instead of finding a male lead to fit the girl, it should be the other way round instead. So now we’re back to looking for cast, except that we’ve lowered our age group to about 9-12 years old, depending on the rate of the kid’s puberty.

In the afternoon andrea and I got the wood for the prop swing, a 50 by 20 cm jelutong wood, 2.5 cm thick. We got our friend Gaen from PID to help us with the drilling of holes and lacquering, so by Friday night it should be ready, so that’s one good news. We did research on how to build the swing, and judging by the look of the picture on the site we found, it should be quite a nice swing.

However, later on we realised that the piano that we originally had planned to borrow from Yuan Ming’s cousin is now under servicing, and will only be back in 2 weeks, meaning we have to find a replacement for it. Andrea and I have a back-up plan for that, to approach esplanade. We had went there previously on Tuesday to look for a suitable concert hall for our shoot, but in the end, the number the receptionist gave up always went to the answering machine. However, there, we found a grand piano seating in the middle of the esplanade library, looking untouched, so we’ll see if we can go back and ask to borrow it on Friday. Hopefully, with some luck and divine intervention, we’ll be able to do it.

-JY

Tuesday

JY and Andrea recced the esplanade and called the lady in charge of their concert hall to ask if we might borrow it for our shoot. Our back-up plan is to use Andrea's church building, as she had already asked for permission from her pastor, but offical permission was still pending). The concert hall at esplanade was really grand and perfect for our shoot. However, as the hall was huge, we were afraid that filling up the hall with audiences would be tough. JY and I also found a lot of unused grand pianos at the esplanade! Hopefully we might be able to borrow one if we tried asking.

Afterwards, JY and Andrea came up with the logistics we needed as well as a scene summary sheet to help us with the shoot. Sholleh and I, on the other hand, called up the various drama and music schools to look for the male lead. I also called up Christofori again to ask about the status of our grand piano’s sponsorship of rental. The woman said that the paper work would take a while to process and it would be difficult for the management as none of us were students from Christofori music school. She suggested however that they would help us with free transportation if we had our own grand piano. We then came up with a back-up plan that was to borrow Yuan Ming’s grand piano and then get Christofori to transport it for us.

-Betty

Monday

Overall, we had managed to work on and finalize the script. We also sorted out how we would shoot it and the jobs we would be doing. Today, Andrea played the piano piece that she composed in the audio room for the rest of the group to hear and comment on it. However, the group felt that the tune lacked a climax and the tune was not catchy enough. As such, the piece was scraped. The group then managed to engage other piano players to help create the tune as a back up plan.

Later on in the afternoon, the group went to Kent Ridge Park and Hort Park to recce the place and check if it was suitable for the piano scene. The place was scenic. However, the location was sloped and was not suitable for a grand piano.

So far,

The locations we have recced are:

1) Loyang Ave

2) Potong Pasir

3) Kent Ridge Park

4) Hort Park

5) Punggol

6) Fort Canning Park

As a group, we decided that Potong Pasir was the most suitable. As it was a big land filled with lush greenery. However, we realized that there was much traffic at Potong Pasir. Although the trees diluted it out, still we knew that the camera mike could still pick up certain sounds of the traffic. One of the ways to work around the problem was that when sound on set was not required, we would replace it with the surrounding sound of another nature park. Another way was to shoot those of the scenes that required sound on set at another deeper in area or a totally different location.

Later on, we also spotted another problem. Although the land at Potong Pasir looked flat, it was actually very uneven. As we are using a grand piano for our shoot, we needed it to be placed on a flat ground such that the piano would not be strained and go out of tune. One way we could work around it was to put a wooden circular stage on the grass to lay the piano on during the piano scene. Another way was to find a totally different location for the piano scene.

Also, for one of the scenes, a swing was required to be built. Jin Yu brought the rope for the swing to start building it earlier so that we could have more time later on in production week.

The requirements we had for our casts had changed too. The female lead we had cast was too tall and exceeded our requirements. However in all other areas, she was perfect for the role. (Fair skinned, able to play the piano, pretty) As such, we changed the criteria for the male lead as finding a primary 6 student was also very difficult and impossible as most parents wanted their children to focus on their PSLE. The male lead’s requirement was changed to a 14-15 year old boy, about 160 or less in height and could play the piano.

A rehearsal/bonding session was arranged to be on Saturday so that the actors (mainly the boy and girl) could get to know each other and would be able to act more naturally around each other during the shoot.

- Sholleh