Shooting 2 Films in 1 Week (Part II)

Pidi, a short filmmaker and an IKJ student whom I often met at film screenings and Konfiden's Short Film Festival (which both of our films competing), asked me in late December if I'm interested in joining him making an omnibus (compilation of short film) about New Year's Eve. The only restriction is the film must be maximum 2 minutes long. . Well, I've never made a film that short. My shortest film is about 8 minutes. But I liked the challenge so I said yes.

It turned out that the deadline is mid January. By January 11, I still hadn't written anything for the story, and I only had 3 actors to work with and no crew. I didn't think I can made it. But when I forced myself to write, an idea came up after a couples of bad ideas. And it was to make a very short thriller.

So after shooting a part of in3cities on Thursday, I planned to shoot Happy New Year, My Love on Saturday (I was about to shoot it at the night, while in the morning I still work on the story. It was crazy). But at the last moment, I decided to shoot it the next day, after church.

So on Sunday, we (four actors and I) gathered up at the main actress' house at Sudirman Park apartment, and we shot the single scene (yes, the movie has only one scene) there. It was quite confusing since I myself didn't really sure about the story yet, and we made some spontaneous change on the script, after some brainstorming.

The supposedly 2 minutes film shot within 5 hours (from 4 to 9), but most of the time we're not shooting, but deciding on how to shoot the scene. And we ended it with an unhealthy KFC delivery dinner, and a gulp of red wine (it was a property of the scene. We had poured it so we're not wasting it).

I spent two nights (after hours) on Wednesday and Thursday to edit the film. The bad news is, I can't make it to be under 2-minutes run time. The rough edit is 2.5 minutes and I can't make it shorter. So, I hope they can make an exception.

Yesterday, I sent the film to Yogyakarta to be compiled with other short films about New Year's Eve. And now, I'm trying to upload it to Youtube so everyone can watch. I'll post the link soon. Just wait!