Some exciting news to chase away the gloom. Oliver, our dear Oliver, was recently headhunted and talentspotted! And there wasn't even a need to queue for hours for audition.Our neighbours, Jean and Richard, were helping Jean's sister in filming a short film for Arts Central, and required some extras to be passengers on a bus. So they asked if mum and Oliver could cameo? And of course, I readily agreed without thinking of all the hassle and inconvenience. Afterall, opportunity (to become a movie star) may only knock once in a lifetime.
The 2-hour or so filming for a less than 15 seconds(?) scene was done in the late morning of 24 October in the Sembawang area. I got mixed up with Sembawang Interchange with the long-gone Sembawang bus terminal, and were starting to panic when we didn't see any filming crew. Later, it came to my sense that there might be an interchange that wasn't in my 2004 edition of street directory. We managed to hop on a TIBS bus that brought us to the right place quite in time.
What impressed me was that the TIBS driver seems to know a lot of his passengers when they board the bus, guess they must be regulars. An old man, who did not board the bus at a bus stop, even gave a bunch of bananas to the driver for him to share with other drivers at the interchange. Apparently he has some banana trees in his yard, and often does so, listening to the conversation of the driver and one of his passengers. Impressive, because it is almost surreal that such "villageness" exist in Singapore. Almost like some Aussie or NZ town (mebbe some feeder bus in Toa Payoh also has that kinda friendiness, but I doubt so, and I think the Sembawang estate ambience makes it somehow different).
Anyway, back to the film. Oliver is very cooperative in front of the camera, much more than we had anticipated. Even past his morning naptime, he is still eagerly acting out his role and laughing and squealing. Too bad it was quite difficult to take any nice photo because the camera was usually rolling, we can't really get out of our seat, and the whole process was quite hectic.
But Oliver is quite a natural thespian, at one stage even acting out the script himself (ie throwing his toy Mr Bear on the floor). Guess we have just discover a star. Just one little problem... we fear that the producer might chop his scene and only his back will be shown on screen, if at all. Oh well. Stay tuned for the broadcast...
