The first draft

Based on readings and the interviews, we drafted a story. It started with a question: what is the story? The story is about... a temple. First we arranged the events chronologically and marked areas that needed further explanations. Next we decided on how to tell the story. Where to begin and where to end:

Point A ------- moving to ------- Point B.

What events will move the story from point A to point B? The sequence of events have to be logical.

We do not have much to work on but enough to string a story. In some areas, we added possible interviews to add flow to the storyline.

Today, we completed the first draft of the film and gave it a working title: Kuil.

Painting the elephant pink

The interview with Ustaz Azrul, Section 23 surau chairman today, went well. We had a general idea on the residents perceptions about the relocation of Section 19 temple to the area. Azrul also talked about the cow-head protest and the unruly dialogue session at MBSA hall, which he had attended.

(I couldn't get the Section 19 temple association chairman. He is out of the country on a business trip. We have to make do without him for now.)

After the interview, we discussed about what Azrul had said:  “Ini bukan isu agama, bukan isu kaum. Ini isu politik.”

How? Sheridan grinned.

We are not doing a political documentary.

It is like having an elephant in the living room. And we are going to paint the entire room to match the elephant, so that we don't have to see it, he said.

We are writing about the people, I said.

Hahahaha. He laughed. Elephant in the living room. Hahahahaha.

In my mind, I saw a pink elephant lounging in a pink room.

Without walls, use placemats

Time is running short. We are juggling with our day jobs and drafting a proposal for the Freedom Film Fest 2010 competiton. Although the deadline is two weeks away, we have to complete it by May 12 because I will be leaving for Indochina the next day.

We have to complete a PDF form, write a proposal including a brief introduction on the writer/director, a summary of the film, working schedule, and (here's the catch) the treatment.

Treatment? Sheridan asked.

A half-script, like 'how would you like to treat the film?'. Writing a treatment for a documentary is not quite the same like a fiction, I realised. While in fiction you can control the narrative and get the characters to say the exact lines, a documentary treatment is merely an anticipation of what the subjects would say during interviews or the turn of the events much later.

If we ever get to do the film we will have to adjust the treatment accordingly. But for now we have to visualise the film. We should have a wall or at least a whiteboard to help us draft the scenes and storyline, but since we floated from one cafe to another for discussions the only space we have were the dinner tables.

I have to get placemats and colour-coded sticky notes as tools to lay-out the scenes.

Recce: Looking for the visual dynamics

Yesterday, we interviewed Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad at his office, visited the temple at Section 19, the residential area at Section 23 and realised that our perceptions on the temple issue was complete garbage. Fit only for the landfill. Alamak.

Khalid gave a run-down of what happened during the elections right up to the protest, the townhall meeting and the update on the temple relocation process.

At the Section 19 temple, the geography of the issue hit home. Sri Maha Mariamman temple was just across the road from rows of double storey terrace houses.

We spoke to a devotee and a resident there. Both offered contradicting insights on the issue.

Next stop was Section 23. As it was drizzling we only saw the proposed site for the temple and the playground and community hall from inside the car.

This was our first recce, it gave us a feel of the place and the visual dynamics to film the story. Without seeing these places we wouldn't be able to create the visual path of the story. Writing for print, the visual aspects would not have mattered as much.

By the end of the day, we knew we had to re-examine 'our story'.

I am not doing a political documentary, I re-affirmed my stand to Sheridan.
I know, I know. But how? He asked.
Talk to more people.

On our list we have two names one is the chairman of the Section 19 temple association and the other is the chairman to the Section 23 surau committee.

I dare not imagine what our findings will be. Still, I feel it must be interesting.

Initial research

A story is built on events, things that happen and how they happen.

I began my research by reading Sheridan's analysis on the cow-head protest, one of his last pieces written for New Straits Times before he chose to became a freelance writer.

This paragraph struck a significant ring:

“The most important question in Section 23 temple controversy is not just whether anyone in the cow-head incident will be punished but whether  the 211 residents who attended a townhall meeting with the Selangor government on the matter were a cross-section of the Malay majority.”

Are Malays largely racists? I don't think so, but that is just gut feeling, which also tells me there is more to the temple controversy than what was reported by the media.

At the height of the controversy, I was working on the controversial death of Mariam Johari and the plight of her family to fly her body home from Seoul to Kota Tinggi, so to a certain extent, I did miss out the high drama of the cow-head protest, the townhall meeting that ensued a week later and the aftermath of both events.

I have reservations about reading all the newspaper reports, watching YouTube or blog postings, they are after all secondary data, an interpreted version of the truth. What I really need is fresh opinions on the issue almost a yeaqr after it happened.

The best way to dig out the real story is to go to the ground and talk to the people. Top on our list is Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad who seemed to be the person who had promised the Section 19 residents that he would relocate the temple during the 2008 General Elections and attended the chaotic townhall meeting between the Section 23 residents and state government on the relocation of the temple near their residential area.

Actually Khalid is all that we have for the time being.

Forming a partnership: collaborating

Collaborate is a fancy way of saying working together, but the word gets stickier when we have to define the shared responsibilites while making this short film.

It is your story.
No it is yours too, he said.

Yeah but it is your idea. We are telling your story.
No, we are telling OUR story, he said, demanding me to claim ownership to the film.

At first I just wanted to help with the proposal and later, well, he could always find a crew.  Largely because I wasn't keen on the subject. I believed the cow-head protest and the townhall meeting was a case of village bullies trying to be heroes, but Sheridan described the incident as a mini May 13. Both of us are gripping at the edge of two extreme ends of the spectrum.

Sheridan is a political writer. I, on the other hand writes just about everything from mangoes to Mawi, excluding politics. Can we actually agree on a story?

That aside, we have to agree what collaborating entails:

• We will write the story together, meaning we have to agree on how the story is told, frame by frame.
• We will take turns directing and filming. If one person holds the camera, the other will hold the interview and decide the shots.
• We will choose the music, the graphics, and share the general workload of getting interviews, becoming runners and getting supplies.
• We also have specific roles: Sheridan handles the financial side of things, I take care of compiling materials, from scedules, treatment, storyboard to script ie admin work.
• and Sheridan will keep the make-up kit and therefore touches up the interviewees.

From here on, we have to answer the most important question: WHAT is the story?

Bumblebee is not an option

No.
He wouldn't listen and rambled on about doing a short film.

No, I don't want to, but Sheridan Mahavera had conveniently left his ears elsewhere and chose to ignore my replies.

He said the Freedom Film Fest organisers would give grant and technical support to film a documentary. All we had to do, he rushed his words, was to send in a proposal.

And when is the deadline for this proposal?
May 17, he said.

WHAT? It was three weeks away.

And the subject will be?
You know, the temple in Section 19 (shah Alam) the one with the cow-head protest.

WHAT? I'm not doing a political documentary.

I stood up and walked away from our table. He was acting like a kid in a toy-filled megastore who is fixed on a Decepticon model. You either buy the toy or buy the toy. You can't reason with a kid like that. After some pacing, I return to our table and looked at him squarely. The only way to deal with this was to throw questions. Create doubt. Buy time.

It dawned on him the many aspects he did not factor in: storyline, concept, visual dynamics, research, and above all the acutely short time.

Collaborate, he said.

I threw more questions at him. I realised he had no inkling the kind of cliff he was leaping off from. Should I turn this writer away and watch him sink or swim? Delicious thought. But by then I saw something else painfully familiar to me: the burning desire to tell a story, it resonated in his voice and deeply etched on his face. From another point, he was offering me an adventure, to tell a story in another medium. I have written television dramas but this project would put journalistic writing to a non-linear medium. That too, was a delicious thought. Why not?

It was just a proposal, he said. I consented with a long list of conditions.

I felt I had just agreed to buy the kid the fancy toy. Problem was, I would prefer a Bumblebee.