12:29 p.m. - 2003-04-17
Report on Project Video (another boring one...)
Project Report
Lim Chu Kang: The Abandoned Town Project, a short video. (Approx. 13 mins).
Synopsis of the film:
Where do I begin to describe the film? To put it simply, it is a documentary of sorts about a deserted town in Lim Chu Kang. There are 4 parts in the film, loosely connected with no distinct storyline. Information about how the town came to be deserted is provided and there are also short interviews with some people associated with the place interspersed in the film, lending a more �human� touch to the eerily empty neighbourhood. The film begins with a demolition scene of heavy machinery destroying a flat, thus foreshadowing the eventual fate of our protagonist--- the Town.
Producer�s notes:
When I first read about the Lim Chu Kang Town estate in a news report, I was intrigued by how an entire town, consisting of HDB flats, wetmarket and shophouses etc� could be deserted, completely devoid of people. I was curious and excited. How could this be possible in Singapore? We are the most densely populated country in the world with more than 4 million people living in a small island. I�ve heard of towns being built (for eg. Sengkang, Jurong etc�) but I�ve never heard of towns being deserted. And how does a deserted town look like? I was quite curious. I imagined it to be like a scene from a post-apocalyptic world, where as unimaginable as it is, humans have disappeared. Thus I decided to explore the place and to do a film, either a fictional story with the town as the setting, or a documentary-piece about the Town.
Prior to making this film, I have had no experience in filming and editing using camcorders and software on home personal computers. The video projects I had to do in other school modules were equipment-intensive and involved the cooperation of a number of people in the various separate processes. Hence, making this film could be said to be a learning experience for me, a new way of making films. I could be independent. I wanted to see if I could do it, and also to have full control of the whole process in making the film.
During my first scouting of the Town, I carried a video camcorder along and shot some footage of the place. It was then that I realised the difficulty of shooting a video piece about the place. The Town is sprawling and made up of several buildings. There were no people (and almost no life) in the place. How was I to shoot it without boring static shots? The Town cannot move by itself like an actor; neither was it an impressive piece of architecture. Film is a visual language and the language I know by watching or filming dramatic shows (where people provide interesting action on-screen), was not very useful. There is no textbook about shooting a place by itself. The fact that I was not using performing actors to create a narrative in the Town also did not help. Thus, I was in a quandary.
My intention was to present the place to my audiences. To have the audience experience the loneliness; the sense of unfulfilment hinted by the absence of humans but mocked by the presence of their abandoned belongings (furniture, etc�); to present the Town as it is, before its impending doom under the trowels of the demolition machines. At one point, I thought of just shooting black and white still-photographs of the Town, as that might be much more easy and apt for my theme. However, I pressed on and tried to find ways to �liven� things up. The tutor advised me to find out the deeper reasons why the previous inhabitants of the Town had left and whether they had left voluntarily. I think he wanted me to produce a video with a point to make, sort of like a social commentary/critique trajecting wider issues about our society. (Perhaps about the use of land in land-scarce Singapore etc�). Thus, within these tensions, the video project was produced.
The film was shot and edited in the course of 4 sittings from 24th March to 11th April, hence the creation of 4 so-called parts in the film. The parts are listed here:
Part 1: Demolition of flats, in sepia tones (with subtitles).
Map of the Town (with subtitles).
Reaching the Town, view of hawker centre and wetmarket (with subtitles).
A music-video-inspired section; exploring a shophouse (with subtitles).
Part 2: On a bus towards the town, interview with the bus-driver (with subtitles).
Moving past the town, displaying information about the place, why it became such a state, etc.
Interview with a foreign worker (with subtitles).
�Hello� written in mud.
Dogs barking madly (with subtitles).
Part 3: Text: �If there were no one to affirm your existence��
Exploring the HDB flats
Playground
Glimpses of puppy, a manhole, wasps� nest, etc� (with subtitles).
Part 4: Interview with a subcontractor (with subtitles).
Pile of dirt blocking the steps into the Town (with subtitles).
View of flats, in sepia tones
Clambering onto Bulldozer, in sepia tones
View of flats and wetmarket, in sepia tones
The End: Credits
Approx. 15 seconds of black while music plays on
A note scrawled, �help!�and thrown out the window.
The end the end.
One of the main reasons why the film was edited in four sittings was because of my computer. There was not sufficient memory space for it to digitise the 70 or so minutes of footage I caught on videotape. I had to plan out the shots I want to digitise and edit, and later produce it as a part of the whole film. The whole process is quite tedious and hence I won�t go into further detail. (Suffice to say that my computer stalled and lagged a couple of times.)
About Part 1
The film opens in sepia tones with demolition works going on. This part is purposely shot with sepia tones as the narration was about the past; when I saw a flat in my neighbourhood being demolished, about two years ago, I think it was like using an eraser to erase a part of your memories. I wasn�t particularly upset or anything, maybe even indifferent. But, still, I have been living in my neighbourhood all my life and I can remember passing by that block of flats whenever I walked to my Grandma�s house. Now, it�s just a flat piece of grassland. Back to the video, I deliberately placed this scene at the start. This was because I thought that it was the foreseeable fate of Lim Chu Kang town and it would be a nice narrative effect foreshadowing the future. I wanted this to be at the back of the audiences� minds as they watch the other scenes showing the town.
The use of subtitles without a voice-over in parts of the film is due to the fact that I did not provide any narration or commentary while shooting the Town. Hence, during post-production, I mulled over whether to record a voice-over and insert it� however I decided not to as I tended to forget my lines or screw up. Regarding the subtitles, I wanted to inject a bit of my personality and also to provide my thoughts about the Town. However, after watching Tan Pin Pin�s Moving House, I realised that perhaps my subtitles are quite intrusive and will mar the viewing pleasure of the audience. Alvin, who has also watched the film, remarked that he found the subtitles irritating. Well, it has been a learning experience.
The use of subtitles was also due to another consideration: whether the audience would be bored by the images shown. I have already elaborated on this consideration earlier, that is, the absence of moving actors within the film and the images of buildings without anything to anchor the audience might be unsettling or worse yet, boring. My final evaluation on this is that there are several ways of doing this and I could have done it better.
The music-video-inspired part, where one of the shophouses was explored, also had a story behind the way it looked. The footage was actually much longer than the way it is in the final product. However, during post-production, I felt that the camera movements towards and about the place was too slow and would be boring. Hence, I cut it up into smaller pieces and edited the remaining parts. The end result was surprisingly good and does not induce motion sickness. I decided to put in the music sample from the video game Silent Hill 2 as I felt that the music had a pacing to it which is appropriate for the rainy mood of the visuals. In addition, at the back of my mind, I felt that there was a certain intertextuality created by using a music sample from Silent Hill 2. This was because the video game is actually about a guy exploring a strange eerie town in search of his missing wife. I felt that the association between the video game town and Lim Chu Kang Town would be interesting.
However, in highlighting the use of music by subtitles during the start of the music-video part, I guessed I had inadvertently spoiled the mood and intended effect for the audience. They would have noticed the constructedness of the video and be less receptive to the overall �feel�. My presence which was hinted strongly in using subtitles would also be a barrier for them in experiencing the Town directly.
About Part 2
Interviews were deliberately placed at the start of part 2 so as to introduce a change in the pace of the film. The music-video section was quite slow and dreamy and hence I felt that a change in pacing was needed. I initiated an interview with the bus-drivers as I was interested in whether they had any thoughts or anecdotes about the Town, since they drove the buses bypassing the place several times everyday.
The information I had regarding why the Town came to be deserted was gotten through an email query to the Housing Development Board. Mr. Dilip Anand, a Senior Executive Corporate Admin Officer at HDB, replied that the inhabitants had left the place primarily because there were fewer and fewer people living around the area. The Town was actually not a HDB town; it was intended to be a rural centre serving the needs of farmers and other agricultural families nearby. When they moved away, the rural centre could not be sustained economically. Hence, the Housing Board decided to implement the Selective En-bloc Redevelopment Scheme (SERS) on the centre.
During one of my visits and walks about the place, I chanced upon some of the foreign workers who lived nearby in the container-houses, and were hanging around the deserted neighbourhood. I decided to shoot and interview this guy as I felt that he might know quite a bit about the Town since he lives nearby and looks like he comes around quite frequently. I found out that the foreign workers would gather in the Town during their weekends or free time, probably because it was a much more open and airy space compared to their cramped housing.
The �hello� part where I wrote in the mud was intended to be a sort of greeting either to, or by the Town. It was like a personification of the place. I also shot the puppy and dogs barking as I felt that they were the �living ones� around the place besides the foreign workers and other birds and insects.
About Part 3
I inserted the text, �If there were no one in the world to affirm your existence, does it mean that you have ceased to exist? like a ghost perhaps�� because I felt that there was a relation in the statement to the forgotten town. I alluded to ghosts because of my earlier tryst with the dogs and also because of the invisibility of ghosts.
In part 3, I decided to edit my exploration of a flat minimally, with few cuts and no subtitles or music. I wanted to present the rawness of the place itself. I focused on the mud nests on the kitchen ledge and railings as I wanted to show the dilapidated conditions and the fact that insects have overrun the place when humans left.
In the second flat where I shot a childishly decorated home, I focused on the painted circles and drawings on the wall. In one of the rooms, I did a close-up on scrawlings on the wall as they resembled faces and figures. I am not sure if there were done by the previous kids or by the foreign workers but I felt that the scrawlings seemed quite ghastly and nightmarish.
However, I decided to add a playground shot after this so as to connect with the childish theme of the home. I also laid in a song by Aspidistra Fly (�merry-go-round, the kid waves every ten seconds�) as I felt that the sounds of children playing is quite appropriate. By the way, my movement in the film was blurred because I wanted to convey that as I was alone in the deserted town, it seemed like I had become a ghost myself.
I included other shots of various parts of the town as I felt that the film should be drawing to a close by then but I still have to show some other interesting bits about the place.
About Part 4
It was during my last visit to the place when I came upon the sub-contractor. Initially I had just wanted to go back to the Town and reshoot some shots but when I reached the Town, I discovered that it seemed muddier and the drains were covered partially with mud. Something was amiss. I looked around and saw the bulldozer. It was then that I realised that the Town was finally going to be destroyed. I walked around the place and shot a few �new� shots and then I spotted the sub-contractor. I decided to interview him.
In the film�s conclusion, I decided to switch to sepia tones. I felt that it would wrap back to the start of the film and also denote the passing of the Town to its place in history.
I also filmed myself clambering onto the bulldozer as a sort of admittance to my (indirect) involvement in the demolition of the Town. The bulldozer is a powerful symbol. It represents both destruction and construction. The Town would be destroyed and new buildings built in its place. The music played here is also from Silent Hill 2 (titled �promise�). I liked this song a lot and I felt that it was quite appropriate as although it starts out quite slow and sad, it starts to pick up and the overall feel of the song is like dying and being reborn. Well, that�s my interpretation of it.
After a lingering shot of the Town, everything fades to black.
After the credits, the music continues to play while the screen remains black for around 15 seconds. I did this deliberately as I wanted to insert a �hidden ending� into the film, much like those hidden tracks they had in some record albums. Thus, the film fades up and a note is scrawled with the word �Help!� and thrown out the window flimsily. �Help!� as in a cheeky cry for help by the Town, or by me since I could be fictionally trapped there. (like the character in the video game Silent Hill 2).
Overall thoughts about the film:
I felt that the film seems quite short and I am not sure if my original intention (see above) was conveyed clearly and successfully. I felt that my use of subtitled commentary in some parts had marred the film or disrupted the audience�s experience.
Nevertheless, I am quite glad that I have shot the Town. I had thought of waiting till the school holidays then to do a film about the place or with it as the setting. However, inspired by Goddess of the Neon City, I decided to plunge into the project. And as you can see, the Town is going to be destroyed soon. Parts of it had already been �intruded�. Hence I was glad that I had managed to shoot it before it becomes totally vanquished and forgotten.
The End
Appendix:
News report about Lim Chu Kang Town (published Nov 21, 2002.): http://www.spi-world.com/spi/about_us/publication/online/kranji.htm
