panic sets in

The moment we'd been anticipating is finally here. 6pm monday, 21 December.

Panic has finally set in.

We're understaffed, underfunded, underslept, underpropped, under pressure.

And it's the best time in the world.

staging

The director abusing children


The DOP abusing crew


On location today, doing technical staging at the samrat apartments for our scenes. Breaking things apart, de- and re-constructing the lighting and movements, gauging where the actors are going to take us when the camera starts rolling. There are so many technical details to take care of it's mind-numbing. This may be a short film, but from the beginning we've been approaching it from the perspective not of a 'short film', but of a 15-minute feature film. We can only hope that in the end it serves us well. One of the first discussions between Gaurav and myself amounted to, "All the work we do for this thing, all the paperwork and planning and research, will only take us so far. Nothing guarantees a good film, no amount of budget or stars or anything. But everything we do will increase our chances of making a good film. That's all we can hope for."

Fingers crossed.

shaking off the chill

The day's technical recce was enlightening, to say the least. It always makes so much of a difference between seeing pics of a location and seeing the physical space. At the heart of it we have to create a world here, a world deep enough and real enough for the viewer to fall into without a second thought. It has to be inhabitable, and, certainly on one level, forgotten immediately. This is the whole suspension of disbelief game--even the most fantastic of films, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey--has a world that is instantly, immediately inhabitable. From the caves where Homo neanderthalensis emerge to the stargate sequence, there is enough there for us to say to ourselves, "I could be there. This place exists." In the example of 2001, the African veldt was created with retroreflective matting (front projection) on a studio set, and the stargate sequence is a combination of slit-scan photography and 60's psychedelia liquid projection. Two extremes of location, to be sure, but at the heart of it is the fact that Kubrick created a world that, however impossible to film, was immediately a place you could sit and have your morning coffee, in a way. The parameters change according to the requirement of the story, from a fantasy world like Avatar or Legend or Lord of the Rings, to a shadow world like The Bourne Identity or The Nightmare Before Christmas, but this is the heart of suspension of disbelief.

So today's pics are a tour of the physical spaces that will become our world in Reincarnation. As we progress it will be interesting to note how the space compares to what is seen in-frame, the sort of liberties we take with bending reality to our will. You can see more on our Facebook fan page too.

Mr. G- Director Saheb


An area that will become a psychologist's office. Love the light play here.






Sid's room.
In case you forgot we were in India.

and miles to go before we sleep...

OMFGWTF!

Um...a couple days to go before we snap slate and roll camera--and there are only 10 locked props on my list. Who's been sleeping on the job?

I sure as heck haven't. My poor thin bombay blood is too thin still to function in the delhi cold (a bone-chilling 57 F / 31 C today). Ah well, my northern genes should kick in....eventually.

Off to the technical recce today, checking locations with full principle crew to finalize any ideas / problems / et cetera. Will update later.

Billi in Dilli

Arrived this morning (spot on time, much to my amazement--11 sharp) to Delhi via the Something-Kranthi Rajdhani Express. And Delhi ('dilli', locally) is *cold*. 18 hours of train travel really gets you in gear for jumping into the middle of things...not. But I managed astonishingly well harassing the rickwallas until I got the price I wanted to get to the production office.

Some quick introductions to the crew at Reel India Pictures Pvt Ltd, then off to the hotel for a shower. 2 rooms later and some exhaustion-slash-fortitude-slash-desperation prepared me for the hotel shower...it was a lot like being peed on by a troupe of cold midgets. Parse that one, Noam Chomsky. Anyway, it was cold, and I'm not a big fan of cold--hello, why else would I move to India?

I survived the shower, patted myself on the back for packing my long underwear, kicked myself in the ass for leaving my good l.e.d. flashlight on the train (stupid reading habit), and went back to the office to catch up on what's been happening.

(In case you've been following the blog already, my bombay life was in a bit of turmoil this past fortnight: getting evicted from my apartment thanks to a shiftless coward choot of a former flatmate, a mad search for a new place, actually finding a great flat and signing the leave & license in 3 days in bombay--a minor miracle--then getting hit with the news that all of a sudden India decided to completely screw up their visa regulations, to the tune of possibly not letting me back in the country for two months following my 179-day visa run, and so having to make sure bombay life, and most importantly my 2 cats, was taken care of for the next two months just in case...rather a hectic couple of weeks, in short.)

So I missed a solid week or so of pre-production, but feel like I'm pretty well caught up by the end of the day with what's been going on. We breezed through the auditions again and locked down most of the secondary cast, went over some visual stuff with Mohit (production/art direction), checked out the location recce photos, and the ever-popular passel of new Excel spreadsheets. Man, you gotta love those spreadsheets.

Or not.

At any rate, Reel India is already a bit more 'real' than a lot of the gandus I've worked with in bombay--young, chill, not carrying a chip the size of himachal pradesh on their shoulders about me being firang, et cetera. Which I'm very thankful for. I'm encouraging everyone to contribute often and freely to the blog / twitter / facebook propaganda machine, let's see how that goes.

And...holy crap, it's really happening finally! Hurry up and wait finally happened. Ready for our 15 minutes, Mr. Warhol....

Truly Free Film: The Twenty New Rules: What we all MUST TRY to do prior to shooting

Truly Free Film: The Twenty New Rules: What we all MUST TRY to do prior to shooting

looking for the heart of saturday night

ARRRRGGGHHH!

Suffering from writer's block when you need to write promotional copy just sucks.
I'm trying to come up with that perfectly crafted single paragraph that encapsulates the film, and it is just eluding me. Totally. I come up with great descriptive words, hackneyed phrases, and incomplete sentences. This is like trying to take that perfectly-framed photograph when you just can't seem to get it in focus.

I've read and re-read the script, in English and Hindi, dozens of times now. I can practically recite it, if pressed. But I can't find the flowery, evocative prose that I need. For inspiration I look to Henry Miller, one of my favorite authors, who summed up writing as "laying bricks". You can't build a wall if you stand there thinking about it too long; you just need to start laying brick after brick. Lay bricks long enough and you might end up with that novel or screenplay or ad copy you were intending to build--or you might not, but at least you're working.

So I'm stuck, and that's all there is to it. I think I need to recharge myself with some serious reading before I try to commit something to paper again. Check out some of these inspirational links I've trolled if you're in the same boat:

Writers on Writing http://bit.ly/4t37cs

Internet Resources - Writers Resources - Writing Links & Writers Links for Writers - Word Stuff http://bit.ly/7gwHy9

The man who invented the Hollywood schlock machine. - By Paul Collins - Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/5JuctO



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Now playing: Holly Cole - (Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night
via FoxyTunes