It continued to go on smoothly as well. The sun did shift a bit in those 30 minutes that were wasted on relocating the "crew", but not that much. It still stared down from up above and slightly skewed, just about right to achieve the usual Rembrandt's lighting.
The stars of the demo were unusually mobile, despite not giving the impression of being physically active. It was either because of the occasion or presumably because of New Year's resolution that they made in their hearts. Anyway, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
This time, the shooting went even faster than before as the Uzbek uncles had already warmed up their bodies and did the required set of actions even without Navruz getting involved in choreographing. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that those 'choyxona' uncles were naturals when it came to running en masse in a disaster/campy movie. Though it would be hard for them to realize their talents and live up to their potential, especially when considering the overall rarity of campy movies in the global market, much less in Uzbekistan, they still shouldn't give up on that career path yet. Navruz already had some ideas in mind as to how to use them in the future.
It would be his own royal entourage of campy mass actors. He would call it C.U.N.T. - short for "Choyxona Uncles' Nutty Team". In Uzbek it did sound pretty great, but oh the poor Navruz, he wasn't aware that the word-for-word English translation would be this terrible. Navruz, in fact, had a decent level of English as, during his childhood, he was used to watching animations without any subs or subtitles, but it just didn't cross his mind that one day someone would be ballsy enough to spread the English version of the abbreviation. Well, actually his English was still not up to par to even recognize the finer details of this language of business and science.
To fully learn the language, he has to submerge himself into cultures rich in English heritage, otherwise he will just be a cabinet professor who only theorizes and never goes out to conduct an actual experiment of sort.
But we digress, and a lot to be honest.
The "crew" did the fine job with utilizing the somewhat desolate neighborhood. There were some occasional passersby, but most of them quickly got self-aware as they ducked their heads and hurried off the camera view. But it was just "most", not "all". So yeah, there were some bored dudes who came up and started bothering Navruz. They were adamant about getting into the film, and really, you had to admire their persistence and the desire to grasp any opportunity to propel themselves into Uzbek stardom, but they were just your usual minor thugs, only good enough to scare away girls in dimly lit alleyways.
They first mistakenly thought that it was a presentable though sweaty 'choyxona' uncle who was the boss, but that uncle was just chilling on the sideways as, after all, he was pretty much unaccustomed to this amount of activity.
The leader of the wild pack, looking the least threatening out of them all, had his eyes brighten from the realization that it was the dashing, not really, cameraman who they should kiss in the ass, and oh boy they did. Navruz had it swollen from that unceasing barrage of kisses. He only rehabilitated after a month of intensive treatment, but that is a story for another time.
The leader of the pack introduced himself as Isfandiyar Zulqarnain Ibn Oybek Ibn Mahmud, or Isfandiyar Mahmudov the normal way, or just Isfandiyar for the sake of convenience.... well, you can go even further and just call him Iska, that's what actually anyone who knows him do.
Iska was a very interesting specimen of a man. He could bootlick someone so much that the initial disgust at the act of bootlicking would somehow grow into admiration instead. Equally impressive was his sense of theatricalism. He was by no means an actor, but given enough time and mentoring he could become a decent performer, but it wasn't exactly clear what kind of.
His natural sense of theatricalism helped him persuade the street guys, who could actually easily beat him in one on one, to follow his lead. Landing jokes that mostly rely on his intonation and physicality, and asserting dominance without anything to really back it up. He was a talented bloke indeed.
He was standing there 1.8m tall, donned in Abibas tracksuit and shoes, with a faded old-ass cap on top of his greasy black medium hair. His posture was so gay that it was actually kinda straight, and you could tell it by the reverence that his homophobic goonies had on their faces. His nose felt like a fine imitation of an eagle's beak which, to be brutally honest, looked odd on the person himself. Strangely though, he had a fair skin, especially so his hands that probably never really hit someone's face.
Flaring the nostrils of that eagle nose for a moment, the king of the playground hill opened his mouth, "Bro, you don't know how lucky you are. You see, everything connects now. I went out with my boys for a pack of cigs and here we are, writing the history with..." He looked around scanning the crew and then Navruz as if he was marking them with his eyes which actually revealed his true thoughts. Navruz could easily read the word "bullshit" in those eyes, as he was the master of bullshitting ways himself.
After a slightly awkward pause, even by the standards of the abnormal duo, Iska wanted to continue but only to find his bullshit output to be insufficient. Navruz didn't really want to let go of such a diamond in the ro... wait, maybe sapphire in the mud? No, still doesn't ring true. What about opal in the lime? Or... or quartz in the oven? Yes, this one is better. But now that he thought about it, was Iska worth the hassle? Probably everyone was, it was just no one was given a proper chance, really.
He shooed away the ever persistent Iska by finally promising to contact him if something suitable came up. Iska also made a promise. He said he would never change his phone number and would wait for the phone call till the day he died of accidental autoerotic death. That was oddly specific, but nonetheless Navruz neutrally replied with an ok.
All this while Max watched everything unravel from under the shades. He marveled at how life can sometimes be stranger than fiction and vice versa.
Though the appearance of the daredevil of apartment block 47b somewhat stalled the shooting progress, the shooting itself didn't really require anything outstanding. The way Navruz wanted to film the demo was very tolerating of choreography mistakes and abysmal acting, or lack thereof. Anyway, he would be getting most of the essential effects from editing and sound design - post production, that is.
Finishing the second outdoor shooting, the dudes and C.U.N.T. quickly left the crime scene, everyone thinking about their own matters. For Navruz and Max, it was to hurry home in order to process the footage that they obtained.
They raced against time so they had to split the work into tasks. Max went off to compile a sound effect archive while Navruz did exactly what he had been doing when he was a wedding filmmaker - removing the embarrassing cuts... well, and other professional stuff... sort of.
The whole footage only amounted to 20 minutes of passable cuts. Each cut was around 2-3 seconds and each outdoor scene needed only a pair of cuts which would then be glued together by drum noises. So, in actuality, they only needed four cuts and two tracks of drum noise. Even an amateur on Windows Movie Maker could do it. What he couldn't probably do was to properly color grade the sequences so as to highlight the epicness/campiness and so that it would work in sync with the soundtrack to control the emotional state of the audience and guide them into a particular mood.
The poor Max, as his name suggested, went to great length to find the best material he could. His finds ranged from something really wonky to surprisingly good ones. Navruz, even with his voluminous set of knowledge, might not have really uncovered these golden nuggets that lay scattered in the fields of SoundCloud. Maybe it was just Max being lucky, but it didn't matter since Max' luck was also his luck as they were working together.
They tried several sound options along with the rough video cut. It proved that the more serious it sounded and looked on a technical level, the more campy it became. So they settled on a very heavy electronic drum which covered a whole single cut.
They thought it was genius, and it indeed was as the sound and the effects they found actually closely mirrored those of the trailer from the future "Inception". And funnily enough, the trailer for "Inception" wasn't even at the stage of inception as of that day. That trailer would go on to change the way we see the usually bland trailers with generic voice of god voiceovers as they start shifting towards Inceptionesque style of promoting.
Those two blokes accidentally invented this style before "Inception" could, and all because of that fateful night of January 3....