Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_34 Curse Of The Were-Rabbit_ok

BEWARE THE BOMOH EFFECT
British writer-director Oliver Knott reports from Malaysia
I like to work very closely with the DP; on The Red Kebaya, it was a young Malaysian called Raja Muhkris. He had shot plenty of movies before, all Malay language and all distributed in Malaysia only; he had even worked with Oliver Stone on a few commercials. What is good enough for Oliver Stone is good enough for me. I was impressed.
At our initial meetings I really wanted to get over to Muhkris that this film was not exclusively for the Malaysian market. It had to be a movie, in technical terms at the very least, that could compete on the world stage. I already knew we had an intriguing story and script, but it also
500D was employed for the present day interiors and 64D for exteriors.
We found from our tests that the Eterna stocks worked extremely well dealing with varied skin tones. Muhkris’s overall idea was to try to get a low key high contrast look for the present day scenes and the oppo- site, i.e., high key low contrast for the period scenes. We then made a deci- sion to bleach bypass the ambush sec- tions for a more distinct effect.
On a personal level, where possi- ble, I much prefer to employ good old
feature in focus
I showed a short film I had made in England called Inside Out, shot by Scottish DP David Byrne, to Malaysian producers Andre Berly and
Ramli Hassan, and they were suitably impressed enough to offer me a deal to write and direct their next feature “film. I was able to draw parallels from my own life experience with their idea for the film and, instinctively, I knew that it was something I should do so I signed on.
had to be a movie that just ‘looked good’ pure and simple.
He assured me that if I could find the right locations, he could photo- graph them. I took that to heart and spent months looking for the right places; the right beach, the right jun- gle, the right rainforest.
It is very difficult to get clear weather conditions in much of Peninsular Malaysia. It is often quite hazy and you sometimes end up with quite an unintentionally diffused look to many of your exteriors if you’re not prepared to wait around for the weath- er to clear.
We didn’t have the luxury to wait around (who does?), but we lucked out hugely on the weather. We didn’t lose one single day out of 37 shooting days due to weather or anything else, which is pretty much unprecedented in Malaysia for a location shoot. The producers did, however, hire several ‘Bomohs’. These are local holy men who, for a few dollars, will bless your production, guaranteeing to keep cast and crew safe and keep the rain away. Sceptical? I was at first. Normally, when I’m gearing up for a movie I like
to watch as many films as I can. Sometimes it is easier to show a DP the kind of thing you are looking for instead of trying to vocalise a certain cinematic feeling or expression. Certainly it is easier to utilise this method when there is a language bar- rier. To be fair, Muhkris and his crew speak good English, but my Malay is pretty much non-existent.
Muhkris and I decided very early on to use Fuji stocks. I was very com- fortable with them as much of my pre- vious work had been originated on Fuji and I was pretty eager to try the new Reala and Eterna stocks. Muhkris had just shot his previous two fea- tures on Fuji so it was a united choice.
Quite a proportion of The Red Kebaya is set in 1958 and we really wanted the period scenes to have a different look and feel from the pres- ent, particularly several flashback scenes of an ambush of one of the main characters. We decided to use Tungsten stocks for the period era and Daylight for the present scenes: Eterna 500T for the period interior scenes combined with 125T without the 85 for the period exteriors. Reala
on the shooting of his first feature film, The Red Kebaya
Photos: on the set of The Red Kebaya; main: Samantha Schubert; above l-r: DP Raja Muhkris; Bob Mercer; Director Oliver Knott; Ramli Hassan awaiting direction
6 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture