by Ken Kwek
“There’s no res— I mean, it’s film, it has grain.
You don’t measure the quality of celluloid in ‘quart’.” Uncle Russ Tee sighed. He hadn’t been expecting such scepticism from the boys, given the obvious superiority of an 8mm camera.
“Can it record in slow motion?” asked Rudy.
“Yes, of course it can.”
“Can it do time-lapse?” asked Timothy.
“Time what?”
“What’s the storage?” asked Rudy.
“What do you mean?”
“32, 64 or 128 GB?”
“Look, boys, I don’t know what the heebie-GBs you’re talking about but this thing takes skill to operate. You don’t just record willy-nilly at the tap of a dinky little red button that isn’t even a real button. You don’t accumulate tons of unwanted clips that are never reviewed simply because it was too easy to point and shoot. This Bolex isn’t digital, it has texture. It captures images on film: actual photographic film. There’s a science to it.”
“Science?” said Timothy, his ears pricking up.
“Yes. You have to learn how silver halides embedded in celluloid react to light. You have to understand the chemistry of developing the film and projecting—”
“Yeah, but if it can’t do time-lapse—” interrupted Rudy.
“Hang on, let him finish,” said Timothy.
“Look, you want to know why an 8mm camera is better than an ARSE-US?” said Uncle Russ Tee.
“A-SUS,” Timothy corrected him.
“Sure, it’s a little clunky and heavy compared to a mobile phone, but it’s not banned in school, is it?”
The boys fell silent.
“Silver halides, huh…” muttered Timothy.
“Sounds pretty cool, actually,” said Rudy.
“You could film the bullies right under their noses, and they wouldn’t even know it.” Uncle Russ Tee turned towards Rudy and poked him playfully in the ribs. “They’d probably think you were drying your hair.”
“May I, Uncle Russ Tee?” asked Timothy. Uncle Russ Tee delicately placed the camera into Timothy’s hands.
Timothy gripped the handle and looked into the viewfinder, with the lens pointed at Rudy. Rudy did a kung fu move with his arms, but looked more like he was swatting mosquitos.
Timothy panned the camera about, then brought it back to Rudy.
“Know what I’m thinking, Rude?” he said.
“Let me guess. Two birds?”
Timothy grinned and set the camera down. “Yeah, Uncle Russ Tee, thanks to you, we’re gonna take down the bullies and nail our science project ALL IN ONE SHOOT,” he said. “We’ll film them committing their crimes against innocent people and hamsters, then screen it at the Triple S Fair, while explaining the science behind the filming.”
“That sounds like a groovy idea,” said Uncle Russ Tee.
The boys held their palms up for Uncle Russ Tee to high five. Uncle Russ Tee did not have his glasses on and missed.
17
Technical Interlude
“Bring down the bullies with a hairdryer? I’m in!” said Gilbert.
“It’s not a hairdryer,” explained Timothy. “But if you think it’s one, so will the bullies. We’ll film them stealing our food, or showering the choir boys with ants, or launching rotten pong pongs at us – and they’ll be none the wiser! Then we’ll put it up on the big screen for the whole school to see.”
“I’m in!” said Wacky.
“What if Miss Chin says no?” asked Rudy, frowning. “I mean, she might not like the idea of trolling others.”
“We’re not trolling! We’re seeking justice!” argued Wacky.
“Look, all Miss Chin needs to know is that we’re making an old-fashioned movie,” said Timothy.
When the group described their new idea to Miss Chin, she needed no persuading. In fact, since the Pikipek incident, she had grown suspicious of all apps and digital gadgetry.
She was pleased the boys were proposing a project that involved technology only slightly more advanced than the abacus and the carrier pigeon. She greenlit the camera project without shouting, which was a minor miracle.
Rudy and Timothy took Wacky and Gilbert to meet Uncle Russ Tee at his shop. The antiquarian was going to conduct a workshop on the technicalities of mastering the Bolex camera.
This time, when Uncle Russ Tee brought out the camera, he raised it high above his head, like a footballer holding up the World Cup trophy, and sang:
“NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATSINGONYAMA BAGITHI BABA.”
The children stared in silence.
“Sorry. That’s from The Lion King,” explained Uncle Russ Tee. “I saw it in the cinema in 1994.”
“We know, Uncle,” said Timothy, doing a facepalm. “We’ve seen it on YouTube.”
Phuuuuuuuuut.
“Excuse me,” said Uncle Russ Tee.
“Can we get on with the lesson?” asked Timothy. He could see his classmates’ eyes glazing over already. Or maybe they were watering from the odour.
“Cinematography,” began Uncle Rusty, in his best attempt at an authoritative tone, “real cinematography is both an art and a science. But you can’t perform the art without knowing the science.”
Like a magician, Uncle Russ Tee produced a yellow box from a hidden pocket in his cloak and waved it in front of the kids.
He expected them to elicit sounds of awe but everyone just stared at him with empty expressions. Everyone, that is, except Rudy, who thought the box was a bar of Ritter Sport.
“Is that the one with cornflakes?” he asked.
“Cornflakes?” repeated Uncle Russ Tee, confused.
“It’s not chocolate, Rudy!” cried Wacky.
“This box,” continued Uncle Russ Tee, trying to hide his irritation, “contains a reel of 8mm celluloid film. Celluloid film is coated in a chemical compound called ‘silver halide’. Silver halide allows you to create images with light, not unlike the way an artist paints paint on a canvas. Only the paint is light. I mean, er, the light is like paint.”
Wacky and Gilbert blinked. Rudy yawned. But Timothy tried to stay focussed.
“Go on, Unc Russ.”
Uncle Russ Tee picked up the Bolex. “The first thing you need to do is to load the film into the camera. You have to do this in complete darkness, or in a black bag, or the film will be exposed and the ‘canvas’, so to speak, will be completely ruined.”
“Why?” asked Wacky.
“Because…because that’s how the silver reacts to light. It gets washed out.”
“What gets washed out because of what?” asked Gilbert, whose eyes were now crossed in bewilderment.
Uncle Russ Tee took off his spectacles and rubbed his temples. He chewed his fist for a moment, then resumed speaking.
“Okay, let me try again,” he said. “Your 8mm film is like, er, it’s like a hard drive. A vampire hard drive. The hard drive is needed to save images in the camera, right? But like a vampire this hard drive can’t be exposed to sunlight. See what I’m saying?”
The kids nodded hesitantly.
“Now, the aperture is like an eyelid. If you stare directly at the sun with your eyes wide open, chances are your vision will be filled with blazing light and you’ll go blind. Correct?”
The kids nodded.
“So, you need to make sure the camera’s eyelid is open wide enough so you can see, but not so wide that you go blind. Understand?”
The kids nodded again.
“Shutter speed is…” Uncle Russ Tee scratched his head, then continued: “Shutter speed is how quickly the eye blinks. If you blink really quickly, fast-moving objects like a person kicking a football or a speeding car will be in focus.”
He demonstrated this by fluttering his eyelids rapidly like the wings of a humming bird, which looked a little crazy to the kids.
“But if you blink slowly, chances are you won’t see these fast-moving objects clearly at all and they’ll appear blurry and––”
&
nbsp; “Can’t we just Google this?” Wacky interrupted.
Uncle Russ Tee farted again.
Phuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!
18
Dress Rehearsals
The boys needed to practise their camera skills so they rearranged a corner of Uncle Russ Tee’s shop to look like the school canteen. They used an old wardrobe for a food stall and a vintage trestle bench for the bullies’ table.
Uncle Russ Tee was cast as Big Burt, Darren and Tsai Koh, all-in-one. Not one to shy away from such a major role, he took on the part of bully with verve. He overturned the carrom board, covering Wacky in breadcrumbs and peanut shells. Then he rubbed Gilbert’s face with a dusty pillow as he tried to empty his pockets.
Rudy was designated cameraman. However, he was struggling to hold the camera. The Bolex was a bulky, cumbersome thing. Also, Rudy couldn’t remember the various buttons he needed to press to get a decent moving image. This is SO much harder than a phone camera, he thought.
He looked through the viewfinder. Uncle Russ Tee was strangling Gilbert with a feather boa. Rudy fiddled with the knobs to get the right exposure. He pressed record but didn’t adjust the focus, so all he could see through the viewfinder was the pink blur of the feather boa.
He tried again. This time he got both the exposure and the focus right, but he’d spent so long looking at the settings on the camera, everyone had moved out of shot. Fed up with Uncle Russ Tee’s overacting, Wacky had wrestled him out of frame, only for them both to be tripped up by Timothy, who had bent over to scratch an itch at an inopportune time.
“And this is just an 8mm!” said Uncle Russ Tee, spitting pink feathers as he picked himself, and what was left of the boa, up off the floor. “Imagine if you had to use a 35mm camera, which is twenty times heavier than a Bolex and more like a bazooka than a hairdryer.”
Then there was the tricky business of processing the film. There was no facility in Singapore that developed “old school” film any more, so Uncle Russ Tee fashioned a darkroom out of a bathroom at the back of his shop.
“What’s a ‘darkroom’?” asked Rudy.
“It’s a room with no windows,” said Uncle Russ Tee.
“It’s a lab where you develop the film you’ve shot, called ‘negatives’, in near darkness, so they don’t get exposed,” interjected Gilbert. “You treat the negatives in different chemicals, which turn them into colour images that can then be projected on a screen.”
Everyone turned to look at him, impressed. Gilbert had evidently done his homework on Google.
“Show off!” teased Timothy. Timothy slapped his teammate on the back as a friendly gesture. Everyone else slapped Gilbert on the back too. The repetitive impact made Gilbert nauseous.
Uncle Russ Tee took them on a tour of the makeshift darkroom. This consisted of three large plastic barrels in a beige bathtub with mould growing down its side. There was also a secondhand air-con unit that Uncle Russ Tee had managed to install.
“We need the air-con because you can’t develop film without keeping the room at a stable temperature,” he explained.
“What are the barrels for?” asked Wacky.
“For treating the film negatives with the chemicals Gilbert was talking about.”
“And the bathtub?” asked Timothy.
“To take my twice-monthly baths in, of course!” Uncle Russ Tee snorted. “Oh, and also to wash the developed film reels before they’re hung up to dry and readied for projection. Speaking of which, where did I stash my old projector?”
“Ooh, I can’t wait to see the stuff we’ve filmed!” said Wacky.
So far none of them had seen any of the rehearsal footage due to the following incidents:
Rehearsal reel #1
Ruined because Gilbert couldn’t see anything in the darkroom and accidentally poured toilet bleach, instead of film developer, into the barrel.
Rehearsal reel #2
Destroyed when Timothy got the runs from eating a rotten pineapple tart. He’d made an urgent dash for the toilet – which he’d forgotten was the darkroom – thrown open the door and exposed the negatives before Wacky could shield them from the light.
Rehearsal reel #3
Annihilated when Wacky and Rudy tripped on Uncle Russ Tee’s clogs and got tangled in coils of developed film.
Because of these failures, the team agreed unanimously that Uncle Russ Tee would be in charge of developing all future reels. Only Uncle Russ Tee would be permitted to enter the toilet, which Wacky had renamed the Spoilet.
Anybody who needed to use the actual toilet would have to make do with a bucket placed in the corner of the pantry, and a sarong.
After one last rehearsal, Rudy managed to perfectly film Uncle Russ Tee sticking a bucket on Timothy’s head and pinching his nipples. And then, for Uncle Russ Tee’s big finale, he looked directly at the camera and gobbled four luncheon meat sandwiches at once. The team were ready to bring down the bullies.
19
Chapati
Gilbert and Wacky checked their pockets for loose change. Rudy checked his too but he only found a dead moth. Timothy counted up the notes from Gilbert and Wacky, plus the $2 he had left from lunch.
They were all standing by the water cooler in the canteen setting their plan into motion. They had $6 among them.
“Are you ready?” Timothy asked Rudy.
“Make sure you zoom in when they attack,” added Wacky.
Timothy looked across the canteen. So far so good. Big Burt, Tsai Koh and Darren were sitting at their usual spot.
He scanned the rest of the room. The choir boys were sitting at a table as far away from the bullies as possible. They had grown thinner over the last term having given up eating lunch. It was the only way they could avoid the unpleasantness of being robbed. They sucked on Strepsils instead, to keep their voices lubricated, and to stop them from collapsing when the hunger got too much.
Timothy took a deep breath. If their plan worked, and Rudy managed to film Big Burt, Darren and Tsai Koh stealing his food, it would be sweet, poetic justice for them, the choir boys and all the other suckers at Bangsvale Secondary School who’d been picked on.
Gilbert chewed his nails.
Rudy was so nervous his hands were shaking. He just about managed to check that all the knobs were set correctly on the camera, then he wound up the spring mechanism ready to film.
The team bumped fists to psyche themselves up. But Rudy’s fist was so wobbly he bumped the water cooler tap by accident which spurted water at Wacky’s face.
Timothy turned around. He walked towards the snack stall. As he passed the bullies’ table, he held up the small pile of $2 notes in his hands and counted them off.
“Two, four, six…”
Rudy, Wacky and Gilbert found seats two tables away from the bullies. Rudy stood behind Wacky, pointed the camera at the back of her head, like a hairdryer, and pretended to dry her hair (which really did need blow-drying now after the accident at the water cooler).
Big Burt was the first to catch sight of Timothy counting out the cash. He signalled to Tsai Koh and Darren, jerking his head in Timothy’s direction.
Rudy panned the Bolex towards the bullies’ table and squeezed the record button. The camera emitted a thrrrr thrrrrr thrrrr sound. He watched through the viewfinder. The bullies eyed Timothy as he bought five dough sticks from the snack stall.
The snack seller raised his eyebrows at Timothy as he packed the five fritters into a bag. He was surprised a tiny boy like Timothy could finish even one fritter.
Timothy paid the snack seller and turned around to face the canteen. He clutched the bag of fritters tightly in his hand and braced himself for the inevitable confrontation.
Big Burt stood up from his seat and blocked Timothy’s path. Then Tsai Koh joined him, circling Timothy like a shark closing in on its prey. Darren didn’t move. He stayed seated, and didn’t even look at the others. He just tapped his fingers on the table as if he was bored.
“Hand o
ver the fritters, Hobbit!” said Big Burt.
“No!” Timothy gulped.
“Ooooooo,” mocked Big Burt. “But there aren’t enough there to share them between you and the rest of Snow White’s dwarfs!”
Tsai Koh snorted.
Timothy felt his face flush and a lump of fear rising in his throat. Big Burt came closer and squared up to him.
Timothy looked across at Wacky and Gilbert, who were giving him the thumbs up. Rudy’s face was hidden behind the camera, pointed straight at him and Big Burt. Timothy held his ground.
Big Burt was standing so close now, that when Timothy looked up, he saw right into the depths of two perfectly round, hairy nostrils. He swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the bag of fritters.
“Listen to me, you porky coward,” he said as he stared up at the nostrils (which were now flared). “I’ll crush these fritters before you lay your filthy hands on them. You’re not taking anything from me or my friends ever again.”
Big Burt thought for a moment. Then he looked at Tsai Koh and said: “You know, I don’t feel like fritters any more.”
Tsai Koh grinned awkwardly at Big Burt, not really sure what his friend was getting at.
“No, I think I’d rather have something else,” continued Big Burt. “Timmy – can I call you Timmy? Timmy, do you know what a ‘chapati’ is?”
Darren sniggered.
Tsai Koh looked at Darren and sniggered too even though he still didn’t know what was funny.
Timothy was thrown by Big Burt’s sudden change of tone. He knew what a chapati was. It was a kind of Indian flatbread. But what did that have to do with—? Before Timothy could finish his thought, Big Burt raised his arms and shrieked: “CHAPATI!”
Timothy toppled over backwards in shock. Big Burt launched himself into the air, with his arms spread out, and landed on top of Timothy with a SPLAT!
“CHAPATEEEEEE!” howled Tsai Koh, who had finally caught on and followed suit. He took a running jump to land on top of Big Burt.