Me and my classmates had to shoot a short film for our Film subject assignment. The group members and i all agreed to adapt a story i wrote for a previous assignment. It was about a hopeless romantic guy who’s single and somehow ended up going on a date with a pretty woman who turns out to be a demon and later got haunted by her his whole life. It’s a scary story but honestly, who doesn’t love horror nowadays.

Skip to the shooting part, we went to a few places to do so; A bus stop, Sufi’s house and even a rented condo.

So here comes the funny yet shaking my head part, we went shooting at one of the members’ house, Sufi’s in the first place. But then someone in our group, not dropping the name, got us into trouble and we couldn’t proceed to shoot out few last shots. So we all agreed to invest some money in renting an affordable condo for a night at Jalan Klang.

I was also in charged of the costume and makeup so i planned out costumes for them to wear and i even did the ghost makeup for Kulin.

There were a few issues we had to face that day. One of them was there’s a scene which involved a candle light dinner at a fancy restaraunt situation. But it was too late for us to do it that time. So we set up the place ourselves in the condo! We used the furniture there and brought it up to the bedroom by the huge window as it has a beautiful city scenery outside.

Then, there’s also a scene that involved a birthday cake with a candle on top. And again, it was too late for us to find one. So what we did was we bought cake-like sandwhich from the Family Mart nearby and a candle for house blackouts at a convenient store nearby. The candle was a little to big for it too like a cake candle so Kulin and i cut it small using a knife there.

The shooting took time until around 4am that night. It was a really tiring and stressful yet fun process for us.

The presentation day came, we showed the whole class our work. They were happy about it and even the lecturer. FYI, we were mentioned as the best work out of other groups! How cool is that. We felt really satisfied and the grateful.

As our film lecturer, Sir Maxwell would say;

“No problems can’t be solved by a producer.”

-Sir Maxwell

Honestly, each one of us has a producer in our souls as we all helped each other to solve the problems and managed to work together well. I was really in shooting this short film and looking forward in doing more in the future.

First of all, i volunteered to be in the costume department for Prosa Mania. Honestly, i had to because i sympathized my friend Tiqah, the head of costume team, as nobody would want to work together with her for some reason. I got to be her assistant, along with 4 other members.

We had to plan out and draw a few drafts of costumes for the show. We had to send them to the one who’s in charge of our production, Sir Adika and ask for confirmations from him. We had to plan out costumes for actors such as:

• Kampung Enggang characters
• Kota Tambar characters
• Realistic world characters

Though our drafts kept on getting declined until we got to the 4th draft. It was a little confusing and stressing us out as we had to make new culture costumes for Kota Tambar characters.

The king wearing Floral shirt and jeans? Fantasy characters wearing modern world rock outfits? Those were some of the tips that we’ve been told by Sir Adika and we have never been more confused. I visualised that it would be the typical fantasy ensemble as Kota Tambar is an imagination world of one of the characters in the story, Syafiq.

Then, we went to go search for costumes at the Costume room. It was a really fun work until we had to bring all of them out and keep it in the changing room at the Experimental Theatre.

As the show time came, I wasn’t really able to help them manage the costumes for the actors as i was also involved in the Musicians Team, i was one of the vocalists.

All in all, it was a successful job and everyone was happy about it including Sir Adika. It was a really fun task for us though we did have issues to deal with but everyone stayed commiting and helped each other. I look forward to work with costumes again. FYI, i’m also into fashion and fashion forward person so that’s probably the reason why i find joy in it.

Hey, it’s me Faris 🙂 Although some people love to call me by other names; ccfar, sick adolescent, and even amad? Honestly, just call me whatever you want. I’m major in music and vocals to be specific. Sadly, i am yet to be skilled in playing any musical instruments. But lately, i’m also into film so who knows what course i’m going to continue pursuing in the future.

So as we were all expecting a usual slow (just kidding) yet informative lecture that evening, we were randomly asked to take a piece of paper and a pencil. He then told the whole class to draw 10 things in 5 SECONDS EACH! It sounded quite impossible to us and it still does. The things that we were asked to draw were:

• an ice cream
• a cat
• a bicycle
• a turtle
• Doraemon
• Fries
• Roller Coaster
• Durian
• minion
• Waffles with ice cream on top

“No great things can be made and achieved instantly.”

The 5 seconds was a little too quick for us to have and we all drew things that probably doesn’t even look like the ones that we were asked to draw supposedly hahaha. But it was fun and if anything, we all learned one thing from that lecture; great things take time to happen and achieve.

As the rehearsals went on at the Experimental Theatre, we all never stopped on helping each other and share new tips with everyone to spice things up and improve our performances. David helped a lot for the vocalists. He managed to help everyone including me, to harmonize and give vocal tips apart of giving us parts to sing. But generally, we all helped each other on making our vocal performance the best one yet that ASWARA has ever seen. We, the vocalists even did some private and separated rehearsals for other musicians members to perfect our harmonisations and vocal projection as it was a little too loud to do so when the other music instruments were playing.

12 JULY 2019- The day that we’ve all been waiting for has finally came. Although, it got me really worried and concerned during the earlier of the day as we were all soundchecking on stage. MY MIC HAS ISSUES!! It had delay and i repeat DELAY, not a reverb or an echo. As i produce any sound to my mic, it will be heard on both the house speakers and monitor speakers with 0.01 second delay. It wasn’t a major problem for them but it was for me as it was disturbing and led difficulties for me to sing on the right tempo. To be honest it has actually been happening for a few days when we were rehearsing but i avoid being vocal about it because i didn’t want to trouble the technical team until i felt really bothered by it.

But the thing is, my mic was the only one with issues and it had me overthinking and having thoughts of if i was sabotaged by somebody. Maybe i really was sabotaged, by someone who’s envy of my light buttery toned voice and worried it could outshine them on stage, who knows right? But on the last soundcheck before the show that night, a MIRACLE happened. I finally got a mic replacement and it has no delay at all. Thank the universe and god, i was really happy about it and i finally had the good mood to perform.

The night came and it was time for us to perform. The theatre was full and tickets were succesfully sold out on both days of the show. We all felt excited yet nervous inside because at that point anything could happen; bad or good things.

THE CROWD: *applause and cheer happily*

Finally it came to an end. It was really a joy to all of us and everyone did a great job at what they were doing. In the end, we all got positive feedbacks about it. My friends who came loved it, the crowd loved it and even the lecturers were happy of it. Overall, it was a great experience eventhough there were downs we all had to go through but we all stay commited to it and gave them a great show.

So i happened to be one of the members in the #MusiciansTeam and I’m also one of the vocalists among 5 others in ProsaMania Reboot (2019). But before it all started, we all had to go through an audition on May 2nd 2019. As a singer, i was asked to do a few things to be qualified, which are :-

• match pitch
• sing a song with a duration of 1 minute
• harmonise on a song with one of the judges

I didn’t find it hard although it’s still a nerve wracking moment for me. After a few day passed by, i was told that i got the part to be one of the singers for the show and i still remember how happy i felt during the moment.

23 MAY 2019- We had our first meeting with the whole musicians team. Everyone had to brainstorm and give contributions based on their majors. We then were put into groups for us to work on specific jobs and to make everything go smoother and easier. I was teamed up with Waris and Acap. We had to create a song for Kota Tambar ensemble. We managed to finish only after Abang Sabri, our leader helped us with it hahaha.

28 MAY 2019- After all the meetings and rendezvous, we got to start with the practices! The first day of rehearsals, We’ve all been introduced with the songs that each groups all been working on earlier. Although, not all of the songs require the singers to sin and the ones that require are :-

• Prosa Mania
• Impian
• Kampung Enggang
• Raja Serakah
• Biru
• Ribut

Some of the days we even had our rehearsals went on until almost 12am. But all in all, i really had fun working with the team. Although there were down moments and issues happening, we all stayed commited and sticked together.