Howdo

Well once again it's the weekend, and finally I have some time to sit down for 20 mintues and get everybody who cares back up to speed. A lot has happened in the last 2 weeks, and make no mistake about that, in fact I'm quite unsure where I should begin.

So Craig has gone back home now, the month bascially flew by at an amazing rate, I rekon he had a good time here, we did plenty of stuff, went plenty of places and still had a suitble amount of relaxation time. He generally went and explored the myriad bizarre activities on offer in KL whilst myself and Van were at work. It's hard to get bored in this city.

As for myself I've been working very hard, trying to get my head around all this producer malarchy. I've had to build a functioning team, get the best out of the guys already at my disposal (who are turning out to be very useful indeed and keen to get stuck in). On top of that I've had to plough through lots of old newspaper articles and compile decent stories about these Malaysian criminals, make them into a usable and interesting tale that can be told in 5 minutes. Once the rough story has been ascertained, then I have to try and find people to interview, one's who are related to each case and willing to talk about them. Next up we confirm the interview, go to them and set up everything (I am lighting and sound man as well as interviewer and the one who writes all the questions). I've got Vanessa as my interview camerawoman and she's doing a brilliant job at no extra cost. After the interview my PA Genevier gets the un-enviable task of listening to all the interview tapes and transcribing them.
Next in line I have to take the transcripts and make the wordage from 2 interviews into a coherant storyline, before I take all this to James the American Editor.

As if this wasn't enough I have to sit and direct the edit with James, making the dialogue into a proper show. As we find out what shots we need then I send my other very excellent PA Reuben out to film as much location footage as he can. At this point in the edit Vanessa is busy making amazing motion graphics from newspapers and still photographs which generally make the whole thing a hell of a lot better.

It's a long and slow process, but I do get total control of absolutely everything, it is basically what I see that makes it into the final version. I am pretty bloody proud of what we have managed to produce thus far, and the Americans who payed for the whole thing like what I'm doing too. So who knows, perhaps this could be a very random step into the world of documentary making for me as a career. Who knows. I suppose it all depends if they are crap or not innit.

The show are going to be broadcast in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Phillipines for sure, who knows if we can make them well enough they might even make it to America and the UK - after all I think that the Crime and Investigation channel is a worldwide satellite station. Who knows.

As for leisure time, last weekend myself, vanessa, craig and vans friend Cheng all went to Genting Highlands for Craigs last weekend. Genting is a very odd place, an old hill station in the clouds, it's a big hill/small mountain in the Tittiwangsa mountain range north of KL. The place is now an emourmously enourmous casino complex, with the worlds biggest hotel (apparently - there is however no such thing as a trades descriptions act here) called the First World Hotel. I've been to Genting before (for Vans birthday last year where I got very drunk and made a fool of myself) but we stayed in her parents appartment that time, which is half way up the hill. This time we managed to stay in the hotel, because Chengs dad very nicely got us a free room big enough for the 4 of us, up on the 13th floor. Proper nice.

The "city" of Genting is essentially a place specifically designed for separating people from their hard earned cash. But it does this very well.

The main bulk of the complex (aside from hotel) is a giant indoor theme park, with another even more giant outdoor theme park behind it. The indoor theme park is basically a Las Vegas rip off in minature, complete with mini Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Petronas Towers, Statue of Liberty (bizarrely riding a motorbike), Venice et al, and lots of indoor (if slightly tame) rollercoasters. The whole place is a psychadelic explosion of neon and garishness, a proper eye bender. See attached photos for more confirmation.

All in all the weekend there was a success, because the last night the 4 of us hit the Casino. briag was on some major good luck streak and came away with 4 times the amount he originally converted into chips, as well as his origional steak. I was a bit less lucky, essentially losing all my money, until I had only 3 chips left. At this point I said, "right Vanessa, change our luck, place a bet and win for gods sake".

So she did and won 4 bets in a row, trebled my original steak and basically payed for the whole weekend with that. We all came away with more money than we had when we left KL. Woohoo!!

This week was a mad one too, because Thursday and Friday we went on our first work related field trip, shooting on locations in the north of Malaysia.

First thing Thursday morning our intrepid team got in the car and drove to a small town called Bentong (about an hour or so north of KL), shot some stuff and drove all the way up to Pulau Penang to conduct a whole afternoon of interviews with a brilliant man called Dr Sundramoorthy.

We did the interview at Universiti Sains Malaysia, in the old school colonial guesthouse where we all stayed the night - sadly no photo cos we were so busy we forgot to get one - on campus. It was a proper place to stay the night cos it was built as an army barracks building back in the 1930s. Reall old school colonial asia, with wooden slats on the windows and art deco ceiling fans, all that stuff.

After the interview Sundra took us all out to eat very tasty Penang quisine - Pulau Penang being very famous for it's food and we all got a very very well earned sleep after that. What with beign awake from 5am and finally getting to bed after midnight.

Yesterday was a fun filled day of driving from location to location. We started by filming an ex leper colony (which later became a penal colony) just off from Penang. Then we hopped back into the car and drove north to the state of Kedah, which is very flat and full of rice padi (Kedah being the ricebowl of Malaysia) and borders onto Thailand. A few towns around Kedah were very useful locations and we ended up in some very random very remote Kampungs there. some locals had a jolly good laugh at us, because I have purchased a wheelchair for the purpose of moving camera shots, a very cheap and easy way if getting some interesting tracking shots for the documentarys. Imagine a vey rural village where very few whiteboys ever go, then imagine his chinese girlfriend (apparently crippled) being wheeled down a dirt track with a camera in her hand and her white boyfriend laughing maniacally. That should make for a bit of entertaining gossip down the coffeshops, it certainly got a few stares.

Lots more driving, this time to Peraks capital Ipoh, where we filmed a mental asylum (and no, wasn't booked in there, thanks for asking though) and finally we cruised back to KL.

All in all a bloody long journey, but loads of fun for all.

Right, that should get you all up to speed.

all my love Timbo.

p.s Happy birthday Joseph, I hope Craig gets the presents to you in one piece. Have fun young man.