A RATTY Coincidence

1996 was a turning point of a year for me as I finally came back to my beloved "teh tarik culture", Malaysia and after 7 years of my life that was spent in Los Angeles. I remembered joining this production house as my first job as an in house director. My first project was a Chinese New Year project called Balik Kampung'97. That year was the year of the RAT... and 12 years later, the lady boss called me to helm a Chinese New Year project and this time, it is called A Heavenly Chinese New Year as the hosts mainly are located on top of KL Tower and also on top of Eye On Malaysia. My recollection of making Balik Kampung'97 was not a good one as my first experience with a local production house was mind and body shattering. It was disorganized and poor communication. I was thrown into this project once I joined the company and the management promised me that everything was under control. Hmmm.... I should have noticed the problem from the beginning... Well... I was young at the time and I wanted to make a difference as this FILM GRADUATE from Hollywood. Har!! Har!! Man... I was so naive... ;? Firstly, I was given this Production Manager who seems to be very nice in the beginning but later he will become a nightmare to the production. He disappeared from the production during the 2nd day of the shoot and when he did come back some days later, he created havoc in front of the talents and the crew. I had to pull him to one side and chased him out of the set. Secondly, the script was still being written when the shoot was a week away and when it did come... it was in Chinese!!! Yep!! I am a self confessed banana. I can't read Chinese except for my name and those ultra simple characters like, 'I', 'You'...errr I guess that's it. On the big day when we had close to 20 celebrities to shoot, I had a long night before that as we shot until 2am and that day began at 7am. That night I requested for 3 cameras as there were a lot of things to cover in this big bungalow where the CNY celebration was held. I was given the 3 cameras but I did not have monitors to look at and no walkie talkie to communicate with my cameramen. I ended up like a fool running around to all the cameramen, telling them what I wanted. We were still shooting after 10pm and I was at the verge of breaking down. I called upon Brando Lee to assist me in completing the shoot and we finally finished shooting at 2.30am. This time out, I was quite happy that everything ran quite proper with very minor hiccups as Jenn and I were essentially steering the whole production. The hiccups came from the production house and we are still affected by them but Jenn and I are pushing forward to do better and greater things ahead. The bitter taste is best forgotten.