Press Coverage

The SUN's VOX: MARCH 11, 2001
Cheap shots

A young director recounts his tryst with new-fangled, 'ultra low-budget' filmmaking

The first feature film by James Lee opens this week proudly sporting its 'ultra low-budget' tag. Snipers is the second digital film feature to be made locally, by the young man who played the lead character in the first, Lips to Lips. Making a film for RM1 5,000 was never easy, even with a helping hand from Lips alumni Amir Muhammad, Huzir Sulaiman and Vernon Adrian Emuang. Lee reveals the realities of spending low and aiming high:

One-shot

'I had already made four short films on Video 8 [an analogue tape format] - mostly about gangsters - before writing Snipers at the end of 1999. 1 wanted to see if I could make a movie that people would want to sit and watch for one and half hours. This is a one-shot thing, though. I don't think I will be able to pull off songething like this again.'

Goodbye Dolly

'Even though my budget was RM1 5,000 [in comparison, Lips to Lips had a budget of RM200,000], I was still too ambitious early on. After working with Lips to Lips where they had very good machines, I.thought I could reproduce the same kind of quality. When I first came up with the script, I had visualised many shots with all kinds of techniques - dolly shots [shooting with a camera on a platform wheeled along rails], handheld, etc. Very soon I realised that, I couldn't afford those methods, and since I couldn't afford a cameraman, I did the cinematography myself. I don't have any technical training in filmmaking, so a lot of things didn't come out right. And my hand was shaking badly. In the introductory scene for [one of the three lead characters] Steve, a retrenched businessman-turned-maniac who finds a sniper rifle, I wanted to do a close-up of his eyes just as he wakes up, and slowly pull out to a topshot of him and his 'wife' in bed. I tried to do this by attaching the camera to a monopod, standing on a chair, and slowly lifting it up. It ended up looking very comy.'

Shoot no blood wan?

'The death count for my first script was a lot higher, but I had no special F/X to use. I couldn't show gunfire, smoke or even blood. In their place, I used camera tricks and the like - not showing the barrel of the gun, [making] the victims fall in a 'strategic' way. Anyway, gunshots are already stylised in movies. Real bullet wounds - depending on where you're hit - [are] usually j . ust black dots, and victims don't fly [by] one metre [after they're shot], they just drop on the spot. And blood seeps out very slowly. Now, I'm beginning to put aside the technical aspect. I want to concentrate more on script ideas and actors who I think I have neglected for a long time.'

New! Improved!

'I had most of the actors improvise their lines because my writing sucks! My script was merely a guide to what the scene would be about... some scenes I even had no scripted dialogue. But I feel the end result is good because the actors would come up with dialogue more natural to themselves, and improvised scenes have more energy to them. Because the actors were doing this for free, I usually shot during weekends when they were not at their day jobs. I'm really honoured to have these actors work on the film. Some are experienced, some firsttimers, but they were really committed and that's the one thing that kept me going.'

Nosebleed with Godzilla

'It pissed me off, doing all the things outside of just directing the shoot. Planning, calling people, getting the location, praying it didn't rain, organising and carrying props, borrowing cars from friends, looking for sponsors. I had lots of help from [Assistant Directors] Rina [Tung] and Godzilla [Tan], but they could only help me on the set, because they had their day jobs. it got to the point that I had a nosebleed after not sleeping for nearly four days straight.'

Ah Beng Returns

'In June, I'll have finished my second full-length film called Ah Beng Returns. The whole movie is in Chinese dialect. It's a stylised, cartoonish gangster flick [again!]. Total cost? About RM5,000. It's shot very cheaply and very fast. Nearly every scene is completely improvised. And I'm acting in it, too. Because I don't have a cameraman or crew, I just set the camera, and flip the LCD display around to check if I'm in the shot. It's fun! It's quite a stress-reliever after the pressure of working non-stop on Snipers for four months and living on borrowed money. It may turn out crap, but I'm very happy shooting it.'

No need so complicated

'Back then, my concept of a movie was being very fussy about the technical aspects, a nice shot, well-lit to give the right mood; but now I realise [you don't necessarily need] all that to make a movie. All you need to make a movie, which I learned from [Jean-Luc] Godard, is a gun and a girl. For me, all you need is camera, actor and idea. It depends on what you want to do with it at the end of the day.'

Interview with Vernon Adrian Emuang, executive producer -> Next