Goodbye Rehearsals

After finally getting the synopsis, the powers that be decided that Thursday would be the last of the rehearsals. It was a vaguely maudlin affair in that after hanging out with the actors all this time, it was a bit weird to know we weren’t going to be seeing them anymore. But it also means that my evenings and weekends are once again mine.

Not that this means much, since it means those evenings and weekends will be spent writing scripts.

Firing Of The Gun

The producer hauled us in and gave us the filtered totality of the comments from all the other Powers That Be, and the changes were surprisingly not as a bad as the other writer and I had feared. Most of our stuff survived intact, at least for the outline.

Now we have to write it.

We’ve divided up the chores once again by character. So it looks like we’ll simply write out each episode with only the parts that our characters occupy. That takes place over the weekend and the first half of the week. In the second half, we spend a couple of days meeting up and integrating each episode so that we can submit to the producers/directors/God knows who else and let them dissect it and get back to us with changes.

So guess what I’m doing the next few days?

Synopsis Fun

So we finished it the synopsis.

It took all day, and we ended up missing the rehearsal for that day, since the mandate was to get it finished on that day. Whether it was any good or not was another matter entirely, but oh well…

Long Day Part II

First and foremost, I am 100% legal once again. I went down to the Canadian High Commission and picked up my nice, shiny new passport, which means I can get legally married because I have an official document of identity that I can flash to prove that I exist.

Then I went down to the office of the company that’s producing the mini-series. The original plan was to spend a couple of hours there with the other writer, integrating our two separate outlines into one. We spent nearly all that time just tweaking and adjusting the outline for episode ONE. At that point it was pretty obvious we weren’t going to be able to finish this anywhere near in time to make it down the rehearsal space, so we made the call and decided to ditch rehearsals today to get it out.

We didn’t. We were there till well after 9 pm, and in the end we only managed to get three of eight episodes outlined to our satisfaction. So we’re going to go back in at noon tomorrow and see if we can’t finish the rest of it before the seven o’ clock rehearsals start, and if we don’t make it, we just stay there until it IS done, because they say they want to see it, and they want to see it TOMORROW.

They just didn’t specify when tomorrow, so we’re telling ourselves that as long as it comes before 11:59 pm on September 28th, it still counts as tomorrow.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I still have more games to play…

Looooong Day

I thought it was just going to be a quick meeting in the afternoon to talk about the mini-series, and that the rehearsals were cancelled for the evening. I am a complete idiot.

The meeting lasted for a few hours. The structure I wrote and the structure of the other writer still need to mesh, but at least something was there for the Producer and other Powers That Be to look at. It went pretty much as I expected, with things being hacked out or changed left, right and center, but then I wrote my end with the somewhat pessimistic “let’s pretend” point of view that I had to write the entire series with ONLY the characters I’d “picked” at my disposal, and none of the other writers. So, it was grossly inflated and quite a few things were thrown in just as filler, I knew it wouldn’t last, and I didn’t expect it to.

After that, it was down to the rehearsal space a couple of hours early, and then the rehearsal itself. It was NOT cancelled, because the Powers That Be, now that they had a semblance of structure provided for them, wanted to finally tell the actors what the plan was. And once they knew what the plan was for them, their characters, and their arcs, they wanted to dive right into it.

It was, I think, something of a success. They tried one character, one of the ones I’m writing, and the actor assigned to it more or less nailed it. He was my comedy element, and he understood what I was going for, so it was a kick to actually see the character come to life like that, and have it be not half bad.

It ran a bit longer than usual, and when I came home, the Fiance had surprised me to with two games I’d had my eye on; We (heart) Katamari, and Indigo Prophecy. Which sort of begs the question, WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WRITING THIS AND NOT PLAYING MY NEW GAMES?!?!

Excuse me…

Fearful Actors

Today was vaguely satisfying in a mean spirited sort of way because we finally got to see the actors sweat a little.

Now that every actor has gone through the motions and more or less found a character, it’s time for the improv sessions to move into the next phase. What that next phase is is actually sort of up in the air because the chain of command is not entirely established, so we don’t know who can green light what, or how far anyone can go. The actors also stopped and started thinking about story today, rather than worrying simply about performance and when they did, they arrived at the same conclusion that the other writer and I came to days ago; how the hell is this all going to work?

I know I shouldn’t be taking such evil joy in this, but after seeing the same look of concern light their faces that has been on mine for the last week, I feel somewhat cheerier knowing that I’m not the only one sweating bullets right now.

Okay, so I’m evil…

The Writers Talk Too Much

This is the general impression I am beginning to form after a few days of this “Watch rehearsal, comment on what you have seen” stuff that’s been going on with the mini-series. At least, I think I talk too much.

The documenters have been taking me and the other writer aside and telling us that they’re really glad that we’re am sounding off about our opinions–and more tellingly, our concerns and anxieties–about the project, because it would seem that everyone else is entirely too self-aware and self-conscious. This, at first, was a shock to me until I reminded myself that it is, after all, Singapore, and even here, the most extroverted of all professions–that is, acting–still can be all too full on self-censor mode when they know that this stuff is going on record and could potentially be used in some unforeseen witch hunt run by God knows who in the government at some point in the future. The end result being that a lot of the stuff tends to run more “nice-nice” with everyone talking about how great everyone is, and how great everything is going, and how great the process is working out, and that things are just… great.

I on the other hand sit in front of the camera and say, “I think I’m screwed, and here’s why,” and start off with a laundry list of anxieties.

Oh, and today I saw a baby dropped off a bus.

Yes, that’s right, an actual human infant got physically dropped from a bus to the ground.

I take a bus home from the rehearsal space because it’s too far to walk, but too close to justify a cab. So while I was waiting, there was an east Indian couple with a stroller for two kids. As their bus pulled up, the mom grabbed one kid, the older one, while the father took the younger baby and collapsed the stroller. The mom went up, and the dad followed. I was sitting there watching how clumsy and ungainly he was trying to carry that big stroller under one arm, and carrying his baby in the other, and I was amazed that he didn’t drop the kid.

So of course, he went and did.

He was at the top of the bus, and was fishing for his wallet for the bus fare. As he swung over, the kid literally leaned right out of his grip and fell to the first step of the bus, banged against that, fell to the second step, slid off and dropped to ground on his or her back.

Everyone was stunned, because we couldn’t believe we’d just seen someone drop a baby.

Then this old couple standing right in front of the baby jumped in to pick the kid up (Who wasn’t making any noise) and then handed it to the dad. He picked up the kid and then the mom looked as if she was about to get off, when the dad ferried her back into the bus, and followed her in. The bus just drove off as if nothing had happened, and everyone looked at each other like “Did we really just see that?”

You see some odd things on these streets sometimes, man.

DVDs, Wedding Stuff & Outlines

In what is an unabashedly geeky moment of pure SF Joy, I saw the review on IGN for the Battlestar Galactica season 1 set. I was expecting the review to be good and it was. But what’s more important is that the review means the set is now available for shameless mass consumerism, and that means it will be available in Singapore at some point in the near future, and I want this set BAD. I haven’t wanted a DVD set for a television series this badly since Babylon 5, but then from what I’ve seen, Galactica has the potential to equal, and perhaps surpass what I saw in Babylon 5, so I’m a happy little nerd bouncing around the island hoping that some day reeeeeeeeeeal soon, I’ll be able to walk into the store and see that DVD set up there so I can squeal like a pig and roll around on my back until the foaming at my mouth stops.

In other news, yesterday the Fiance and I met up with the Solemnizer. I’m not sure how the others work, but this guy wanted to meet up with us and have a little talk first, to discuss the wedding plans, who we were, why we wanted to get married, how long we’d known each other, and stuff like that. He also needed to meet us so that he could sign some form saying that he had legally and voluntarily given us his operating number as a Solemnizer so that we could file for the marriage registration online, but have black & white proof of his having given us the number when the time came to pick up the physical documents. We also ran into his wife, the JOanne from my previous hunt, who wished us luck and once again expressed her okay-ness with the rather bizarre set of circumstances regarding why she was unsuitable for the wedding.

And of course, the mini-series continues apace. I’m hoping to have the outline (Or at least my end of it) done by tonight. The rehearsals have been going to some very weird places, but as it’s for the benefit of the actors, and to give us some idea of what their character is like (and because everyone is aware of the HUGE difference between television and stage work in Singapore and what is acceptable in either medium) we don’t expect to use everything, nor could we really. Some of the stuff they do is either well into the red zone, or financially impossible to pull with the budgets of local television. It’s really a shame. They’re generating some very nice moments, and there quite a few character pieces I’d love to use, but they are just impossible to pull off because the humanity they portray is in direct contrast with the reality that the broadcasters are obligated to present.

It’s inevitable, I think, that the final product is going to be grossly watered down. I just hope that the people in charge are aware of that, because it’s something me and the other writer always have in the back of our heads, and we also know that the company that’s providing the equipment for this has had enough experience with the Singapore broadcasting system to know what they are going to say “NO” to when they see the scripts and episodes start rolling out.

Oh well…

I Am Supplementary Bonus Material

Over the last few days as this drama project has been going on, there have been several meetings, and two rehearsals. At all of these events, there was always someone with either an expensive DV Camera, or a full on, broadcast quality video cam that would shoot the proceedings. All of this, I was told, was for documentary purposes.

I just found out that the documentary is going to follow the show.

To be more precise, the mini-series is geared for an 8 episode run, with the time slot being one hour. However, the reality is, a one hour time slot is actually only about 45 minutes of actual content, the rest is commercials. So they’ve decided to shoot for 8 half hour episodes, followed by 15 minutes of documentary footage about the creation of the show.

One of the really bizarre things about this is, me and the other writer kept getting taken aside and asked about our opinions of the show and what our dramatic/narrative potential is going to be like. I have, of course, no idea what any of the answers to these questions would be, and so just make it up on the spot and hope it sounds at least reasonably intelligent, or, failing that, reasonably pretentious, as that’s what most people will expect anyway. That’s done mostly because it would scare people to think they are giving me money if my answer always comes out, “Beats the hell out of me, I’m clueless here.”

Still, it’s pretty amusing to think that after each episode ends in this series, at some point people will have to deal with me waxing pretentious about the creative process, when in fact, it really IS as simple as, “Uh… I’m just making it up as I go along, and hoping it holds together.”

Now I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t ask about getting some this stuff burned to DVD or something…

Oh, and speaking of movies and supplementary materials, for those of you who are local, or not local and just curious, some guy who works at Amazon has compiled a list of movies that he has had returned to him from Singapore by the government. If you’re even remotely curious about what movies are considered too evil to be viewed by humans in Singapore, here you go.

Solemnizers Are Not Called “Jo”

I still get kind of freaked out by the Singapore title for people legally empowered to marry others off. I mean, “Solemnizer”… It sounds like a professional mourner or something. Somebody that stands there with a dour face and makes deep, throaty grunts with a quick nod or shake of the head and a penetrating gaze that looks into the pit of your soul and says, “You’re going to die soon.”

However of course, that is not the case. Well, it might be depending on your outlook of marriage. I suppose if the impending nuptials are run by an angry father who wants to make sure his carefree daughter gets married BEFORE her belly starts to show visible signs of pregnancy, then such a ceremony, with resentful party guy and devastated good time girl would be a solemn occasion indeed, and no one would be especially happy with that day of days. Of course, that’s not our situation, so to me, having someone be all solemn to officiate the wedding just strikes me as weirdly baroque, and something that would better fit in an Anne Rice novel with people bemoaning–or outright challenging–destiny and the cruel fates it has in store for everyone.

So anyway, today my search for a Solemnizer finally ended. I had about three pages worth of listings on people who were licensed to do it, and I went through it in rapid succession with many, many, MANY “No’s” because it seems like quite a few people require this same service on this particular day, or the people who perform Solemnizations had decided to leave the country on that particular day. As I kept scratching off more and more names and feeling the noose tighten, I finally managed to luck out with a nice woman on the other end who, contrary to all previous expectation, was completely available, ready, willing and able. I promptly signed her on and told the Fiance “We got one!” only to have her horrified reaction a moment later when I told her the woman’s name was Joanna.

This apparently is not on, because my future Mother-In-Law has an extremely phobic reaction to people who’s names begin with “JO”. I don’t know the full details, and I’m not even sure I want to know, but apparently after a consistently bad run with men and women who have “JO” in their name, my mother-in-law to be has more or less refused any and all interactions with people that have those two dreaded letters in that particular order, and so there was NO FREAKIN’ WAY, that she was going to allow her daughter to be married by such a hideous person.

Right.

So I called her back and told her we needed to cancel on grounds of Warding Evil, which she graciously accepted, albeit with a lot of puzzled laughter. The Fiance was apologetic about the whole thing, but we got saved when the woman called back to offer that her husband was also a legally empowered Solemnizer and his name was Gary, so that’s all right then, isn’t it?

Apparently it is.

So after a couple of days of frantic searching, we now have someone that is willing to marry us on the appointed day at the appointed time. We just have to meet up with him so he can discuss a few ceremony-ish things, and sign the approrpiate forms that can be submitted to ROM (Not the Space Knight, but the Registry Of Marriages) and then we’ll be all nice and legal for October.

My only concern now is that the person who was arranging the venue for the ceremony itself was a woman named Jontel. But oh well, I guess we’ll just see whether that’s just cause for a trauma in the future or not…