Director's Log

I returned from my first day of shoot at the morgue today. To save myself a lot of typing, here's an extract of the day's events from my Director's Log (names withheld):

"Dr. S informed the Producer earlier in the morning that he had two cases, and that shooting the autopsy was possible. However, he later told us that the autopsy shoot couldn't happen because the post-mortem needed to be wrapped up quickly as the relatives of the victims wanted to claim the body as soon as possible. On that dissapointing note, we only prepared to only shoot cut-away shots of the place for today. We arranged to meet Dr. S at 2:30pm.

We collected the shooting equipment which was under the Production Manager's name, and drove to Tesco to buy a mini-dv tape, since he was not around to do this. We arrived to the KLGH Forensics Dept. slightly late because of this.

Surprisingly, we were told that there was an accident case and that we can go ahead and shoot the autopsy procedure. We were slightly rushed in preparing our equipment because they had been keeping the body for us. Although the production crew was mentally unprepared as far as figuring out camera angles and such, we were enthusiastic and ready to go.

The victim was a male European cyclist who got hit by a car along a well-known road in Kuala Lumpur. He looked like he was in his fourties. The body was still quite fresh, so the smell was not strong enough to create a nauseating effect.

The autopsy went well, and it was a very interesting experience. The doctors, who are now quite familiar with us, were very friendly and helpful. They accomodated our shoot by stopping their work in important parts of the procedure so that our cameras are able to take close-ups and such.

Dr. S allowed us to freely shoot the procedure, but with the only rule that they will keep the tapes after our shoot. They were very wary and concerned of these footages leaking out into the public and on the Internet after a couple of past bad experiences with other people.

An electrical blackout in the autopsy room occured halfway into the procedure. The crew did their best in ignoring the fact that they're in a pitch black room with a disemboweled open-chested corpse. Just kidding. We were used to the feel, sight, and smell by then. Well, almost. The Asst. Production Manager retreated to the small office in the autopsy room when things got slightly gory. The Producer and I soldiered on throughout the whole procedure. When the electricity came back on a while later, we briefly shot the cleaning and stitching up of the body as both our camera batteries were rapidly running out of juice. The entire procedure lasted 5 hours. Normally, it would take much less time than that but they slowed down the pace for our shoot to show us the details and proper sequence of events of the procedure.

After sliding the body back into storage, the doctors dashed off for dinner. During the procedure, they were commenting frequently on how hungry they were and were planning to eat KFC while they were slicing the major organs of the body. We were amazed at how desensitized they have become in their line of work.

Anyway, after the shoot, we discussed further on our plans in the structure of our video with Dr. S, and then surrendered our tapes to him."

It's evaluation day tomorrow, where the big shots of forensics are gonna watch our raw footages. So I'm expecting a lot of "No, you can't show this", and "You have to censor this..."