Today was day 1 of filming for the School Video Awards (SVA)
We were at Nicholas house filming the indoor shots, then after that sangita’s dad fetched us to the airport perimeter to film some shots of airplanes taking off as part of the short film. Her dad dropped us off while he went to turn some rounds before coming back to pick us.
we were at the fence, so I place the camera on the fence with the lens going through the gaps, to catch the planes taking off.
Sangita decided that we should walk further where the planes fly past so that we can take them flying overhead. wow that’s VERY FAR from where we were initially and I insisted that we shouldn’t. But anyway, as we were walking, a police car from passed by in the road beside the runway inside the fence. He went past us, and we thought: oh no, is he going to come back and stop us? (I have the videocam in my hand while sangita is holding the tripod) little did we know what’s going to happen next – our little adventure with the police!
The police car came back and the policeman waved to stop us. He asked us what we were doing, we replied and said we were not supposed to do that. Nadia and I passed him our IDs and Sangita wrote down her name cos her ID was in the car. So we waited while he typed some stuff in the cool computer console in the police car, and asked us to hold on a while, while he contacted his superior.
And then, sangita’s dad came back and saw us with the policeman. So the policeman asked the dad to pull over at an opening up ahead where there is a closed secured gate into the runway. we all alighted and he asked us to wait and told us that there will be his colleagues coming to check the thing. He asked me to show him what we have took, so I gladly showed him the (lousy?) shots.
All along, I was thinking…光明正大的，没做错事。 Nadia seemed very worried while Sangita was like…oh my…Her dad was quite calm and kept trying to explain that it was a school project.
And then, two more police cars came. Wow…suddenly so many officers amongst our midst. They check with the first policeman and they keyed some stuff and wrote some stuff and called some people. After some waiting and talking, they told us that they need the Senior Investigating Officer to check our tape. So we have to follow them to the Bedok NPC at the Bedok Police Division HQ. So they took the camera with the tape in their police car, while we got handcuffed and …joking la! We went into Sangita’s dad’s car and followed behind.
All along the police were kind, cos I think they sort of understand that we are harmless, while they are just doing their job, due to the increased security of the post-911 events and blah blah, so they apologised for the inconvenience.
At the police station, after waiting for the few policemen to fill up a form to say that they took our camera (oh no are they going to keep it for a few days? that’d hinder our filming), We went into the Senior Investigating Officer’s room (beside there was an Asst and one with just Investigating Officer) he asked who was the leader and questioned Sangita while we waited outside. Sangita told him everything and they wrote a statement/report. After that I played back the tape to him while he was writing the report to return us the camera. He said: “Wah, got sunset some more. quite nice eh? Good luck in your competition.” 🙂
After the whole ordeal, it was 2 hours past since when we first met the first police offier. wow what an experience…haiz.