MSR: Feature - MuHu Son Goes Acting

Life's like a drama, without rehearsals you never know what will happen next. You've just got to keep acting your role out in front of the endlessly rolling camera, which is why people tend to comment on how difficult life actually is.

Living your own current life is tedious enough, but living someone else's life? Yes, that's right! Acting allows you to enter another character's life by stepping into his shoes and walk around the fictitious world created by the scriptwriter. (Always thought about how nice it would be if you could just be someone else hmm?)

Here I am, thanks to Minghui, at ADM (School of Arts, Design & Media) for her team's cinematography assignment shoot as one of the cast!

Here's a little breakdown on the characters & plot:

I play the male protagonist, Alex who is an honest & down-to-earth scholar cum court official in the ancient dynasty era of China. Due to a recent promotion, he moved to a new mansion in Xiang Yang together with his virtuous and demure wife, Nancy. Both of them entertain their house-warming guests Coop & his Lady, Celine, by playing Mahjong in Alex's mansion. Coop is also a Court Official but of a inferior rank, however he's wealthier than Alex, thus the constant sense of sarcasm and mockery present in his tone of speech towards him. Celine is always out of the situation, often absorbed in her own personal world and owns a 'bimbotic' demeanour.

Nancy confirming her roles with the Director while Alex's trying to enter into his role

Another angle shoot of the same (Camera-man's practicing his angles hmm?)

The shoot began in the morning with only Alex & Nancy for the team to focus on their takes. When I thought it was going to be a quick session since the scenes appeared to be rather brief, I didn't realize how wrong I was! It took the whole morning and continued further when the other two casts arrived in the afternoon! I started to feel for the Mediacorp drama actors who had to endure for a longer drama series project filming.

All of us commence building chemistry with one another for better role-immersion

The technical expertise that Minghui's team utilized stood to impress and amaze me. I've never realized how complex a filming session could turn out to be, especially with all the lightings and angles that were so sensitive to the contribution of the desired effect that the team seeked for. The details involved served to be extremely delicate, everything was well-thought out prior within their mental image before realizing them in physical form on set.

The 'tree' that was supposed to be outside the window

The sound-crew and the camera-crew working on set

Alex trying out a set of modern drums during his break

In all, I've learnt a lot from my participation and shall be looking forward to such projects in future. Hope the MSR readers too, have enjoyed this feature post and attained enlightenment in this field of profession!

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Photography Credits Due: Licheng

MSR Managing Editor

MuHu Son