Cosplay Video Shoot Take Two

Well, that was pretty sudden. I received an SMS from Kazuki to redo the video last night during family dinner. There had been an error with the video we made (aside from the lousy quality). They needed full-body view and what we gave them was mostly half-body view.

It's a good thing I didn't washed the costume yet. I went and dug out the outfits from the laundry and quickly hung them to dispel the mild stench.

Half the day was pretty gloomy with rainfall from 9am till 4pm. The video shoot was scheduled to begin at 5pm. Good thing it stopped before that or the pitter patter of raindrops would really ruin the sound.

Ah, yes. We couldn't get the Equator today, so no spacious soundproof room for us. BOO!!

Anyway, today, we had more people. Besides the 4 of us from yesterday, we had Eric, Alvin, Gim, Ruben (my cousin), Max and his 2 sisters. The additional cosplayers were my cousin, Gim and Max. The other 4 were the camera crew.

This time, we had other problems. The high-definition camera from yesterday was no longer there and as I have mentioned before, no spacious, soundproof room. AND we had to take of our shoes, so a complete display of our cosplay was not possible.

We first went to a Japanese learning centre in Tanjung Tokong. It was still a pretty good place and we had a bigger green screen today, so we could remove all the background stuff. However, the place was borrowed on a whim and we had to leave at 8pm. We were making too much noise anyway. We then went to Kazuki's place to finish up.

There, we finally finished the the video and made a lot of improvements. Max was a good director and the cameramen were pretty helpful. However, me and Max agreed that the work was terrible, since we weren't in character at all since we were only given lines but not the story. Animax wrote the script for us, by the way. So we were all just dummies reading lines with barely any emotion or action. Yes, it's still bad.

After all that, we were all starving. Somebody gave the idea to use hunger as a driving force. "Finish the video properly, then we eat!" And went to eat we did, at Sri Ananda Bahwani...in cosplay. Surprisingly, not many people were bothered (Well, some were in the beginning). And I think I heard some kids scream "Hey, mom! Cosplay!") The Chicken Mahsala Chapati was nice. Max recommended it since I didn't know what to pick.

There, we chatted for a long time, listening to Max's trip to Japan. My Japanese teacher had told me many stories of Japan, but from the viewpoint of a businessman. So it was pretty nice listening to stories of Japan from an otaku. And it's a whole new world compared to Malaysia.

We keep saying that anime in Japan would obviously be of a whole different level. What we didn't know was how big the difference was. In an RPG, we'd be around lvl 5. Japan would be about lvl 90+. Here's something. Otakus have a hierarchy in Japan. I would be somewhere on 2nd or 3rd lowest level. Sigh...

Oh, and about that guy Max. Remember the Count Dracula dude during Disted Ball 2008? That was him! YES!! He decided to go with a bang for his final year in Disted. He is now a home tutor, and aiming for that job in Japan. He's already very close to achieving that dream.

After dinner and chatting, we took a group pic and finally said our goodbyes. I really made some good friends these 2 days. It's really really unfortunate I'll be leaving before I could really get to know them. And can you believe it!? They said they were gonna do a farewell outing for me on Tuesday! I only met them for like... 9 hours.

And once again, my cousin has demonstrated an incredible skill to make friends wherever he goes. I'm sure Frog remembers that very well!

Sigh... well, better continue packing. And I have a briefing tomorrow.