Production Diaries:
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
Recent Entries:
HUNDREDS GATHER TO PAY TRIBUTE TO THE LATE MAKO IWAMATSU IN CAGES!
Wed, 14 Nov 2007
A SPECIAL TRIBUTE SCREENING OF MAKO!
Tue, 16 Oct 2007
Perles Acquires Cages Distribution!
Wed, 01 Aug 2007
"CAGES" RUNS 4TH WEEK IN THEATRES!
Fri, 13 Apr 2007
IT'S MY TURN TO FLY!
Mon, 09 Apr 2007
"CAGES" SURPRISES MANY AS IT ENTERS THIRD WEEKEND IN THEATRES!
Fri, 06 Apr 2007
"CAGES" ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN THEATRES!
Tue, 03 Apr 2007
LOYAL FOLLOWING TO THANK, AS "CAGES" ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN THEATRES!
Mon, 02 Apr 2007
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Chance of a Lifetime
07/15/04
When I was offered the chance of a lifetime to go overseas for my internship I was truly elated and hyped. However, as a perpetual skeptical and rather down-to-earth person, I didn’t have very high expectations of what I would be doing during my time in LA. Hence, with bags packed and a grim determination, I told myself that I would make the best of whatever I am assigned to, be it making coffee or picking up the laundry. I would try to ‘work my way up’ and get the best experience humanly possible. One can imagine my surprise and extreme delight when I was told that I would be working on CAGES – not only did I get the chance to work on a feature film, I got to work on a movie that I could continue on back home! Now, what are the chances of that?
I met the director/writer, Graham Streeter on the 10th May 2004. A man of quiet seriousness, he filled me in on the status of the project and gave me a copy of the script to read. What awaited me was a powerful story about misunderstandings, misinterpretations and miscommunications in family/human relationships. It also spoke to me about being able to overcome self-doubt and learning to love without fear of self or rejection. What’s amazing is that this story is set in a lush and much-forgotten part of my homeland, a place where even I have honestly never been to.
I was assigned to work with Publicity and boy, was it an eye-opener! I used to be so focused on the aesthetic part of filmmaking that it never really occurred to me how important publicity and marketing actually is. Yes, a true artist wouldn’t care less about whether his film makes a profit of 100 times over. But without a very annoying factor, i.e. MONEY, a film will only remain as script and even if you spent your entire life savings and made a fantastic film the first time round, you would probably be too broke to make another. Thus I began to see publicity as a money-maker. It ensures and assures investors, hence ensuring money rolling in. Well, it was more like crawling, pulling and manhandling it in!
I learnt and realized many things while working on CAGES. Like how important human communications and relationships are, how a deceptively simple task of sending an email can turn out to be something tedious and extremely essential, how press releases are done, how easy it might look to hold and organize press conferences when in reality it isn’t, how anal some websites can get when you are trying your best to find information and ‘cut-and-paste’ details, how staring at the computer for a whole day can affect the way you watch television later and these days, I can never look at another magazine the same way again. Oh the list goes on but I wouldn’t want to bore anyone and this is just publicity – LA-wise.
Throughout my stay in LA, I got to meet the great people of CAGES, namely Alex, my Publicity super cool boss (spontaneous suppers and McDonald’s caramel sundae breaks). If every job on earth were this fun, there’d be much less work-related murders happening in the world. Bobby, the cheeky ETHAN; Zelda, LIZ with a surprisingly witty humor; dedicated TAN played by Mako; Frank, with his lovely dogs; Jessica, the talented girl with the gift of singing, writing and playing the piano and last but not least Daniel, Mr Com Whiz! Hope I didn’t miss anyone out!
Now that I’m back in Singapore, I continue to embark on this journey on CAGES and I can’t help but be amused at the differences between working here and there. When I was in LA, it was calm and surreal but here in Singapore is where all the action is – buzzing and throbbing with life. But that’s another story I’ll write another day after all is done and Graham shouts, “IT’S A WRAP!!!” on the final shooting day.
Jessie Wee
Cages Intern
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