Days 4-11 -- 9 thru 17 Oct
Well, there's a saying in the movie business (and construction, for that matter): "Hurry up and wait." This is one of those limbo periods.
Gaurav has returned to Delhi to start the work there, liaising with the producers, Reel India. This will be their first venture on a short film for the festival circuit, their bread-and-butter business being ad films. Sometime during the last week we met with an actor for the lead role of 'Siddharth'. He was actually an alternate choice, as the first choice actor who'd agreed to do the film already has a date conflict now. I felt he was great for the part, with only some minor things to work on look-wise, but it's always difficult to try to convince people to work for free on a small project. Fingers crossed that he decides it's worth his time.
I've been busy doing not much at all, looking over potential festivals and reading through the script again and again and again. On a construction project the blueprints are your bible, on a film it's the script. Gaurav and I had a good laugh about how few people in the business see it that way, comparing stories of the films we've worked on being the only ones who've read the script. Bollywood, as an entity, perhaps functions a lot differently that way, not being as story-driven as western cinema. My hope has always been that they're catching up to that concept here, but that's not to deprecate the financial bottom line--a lot of money goes into this beast, and all our work can only hope to increase the chances that we make a good film and thereby realise some return on the investments made.
And I finally got to work on this blog, obviously, and will be updating more regularly with as many interesting tidbits as I can. It's Diwali here now, so life is on hold in India for a few days. I'm heading to Delhi to join Gaurav in the next few days, and work will start in earnest.
Oh, and Happy Diwali!
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Now playing: Jason Mraz - I'm Yours - Album Version
via FoxyTunes
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Days 2 & 3
Day 2 - 7 Oct
A shorter meet today, reviewing paperwork and clarifications on the schedule. I'm beginning to realize just how detrimental extended periods of stasis are on the brain; I feel slightly autistic while making these spreadsheets. Again more talk about the film in general, and I'm getting loads of knowledge-bombs dropped on me. Gaurav's perception of the role of director and the overall scope of what it takes to make a film are spot on.
Back to the Excel salt mines for me.
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Day 3 - 8 Oct
More paperwork! Reviewing the shooting schedule, trying to trim it from 7 days to 5 or 5+1 (as it's called here). My previous experience had been solely in the art production, which was basically a construction job with a different name--it was old-hat, fairly intuitive for me. This is a lot different, I'm finding out. After some clarifications for myself, I get a better grasp on what we need to do and get to it. Ultimately, the aim is to think of everything for every department involved, so that no-one has to think too hard or go off on their own tangents--keep everyone on the same page, basically. We go over timing the scenes for the film, measuring how many cans of film we'll need and what our final product will be. This I find to be a really fascinating part--I'm timing Gaurav while he reads through the scenes to himself, and you can tangibly feel us playing the film in our heads, seconds ticking by. Not surprisingly, owing to the strength and clarity of the script, our internal timings are quite close. At the end we come up with about eleven minutes and change, and decide to beef everything up by about 20-25% to bring us closer to a solid 15 minutes. Cannes is quite picky for their short film requirements, after all.
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Now playing: Amitabh Bachhan, Sonu Nigam, Vishal, Adesh Shrivastava & Ranjit Barot - Come On Come On
via FoxyTunes
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Now playing: Dus Kahaniyaan - Bhula Diya
via FoxyTunes
A shorter meet today, reviewing paperwork and clarifications on the schedule. I'm beginning to realize just how detrimental extended periods of stasis are on the brain; I feel slightly autistic while making these spreadsheets. Again more talk about the film in general, and I'm getting loads of knowledge-bombs dropped on me. Gaurav's perception of the role of director and the overall scope of what it takes to make a film are spot on.
Back to the Excel salt mines for me.
------------------------------------------------
Day 3 - 8 Oct
More paperwork! Reviewing the shooting schedule, trying to trim it from 7 days to 5 or 5+1 (as it's called here). My previous experience had been solely in the art production, which was basically a construction job with a different name--it was old-hat, fairly intuitive for me. This is a lot different, I'm finding out. After some clarifications for myself, I get a better grasp on what we need to do and get to it. Ultimately, the aim is to think of everything for every department involved, so that no-one has to think too hard or go off on their own tangents--keep everyone on the same page, basically. We go over timing the scenes for the film, measuring how many cans of film we'll need and what our final product will be. This I find to be a really fascinating part--I'm timing Gaurav while he reads through the scenes to himself, and you can tangibly feel us playing the film in our heads, seconds ticking by. Not surprisingly, owing to the strength and clarity of the script, our internal timings are quite close. At the end we come up with about eleven minutes and change, and decide to beef everything up by about 20-25% to bring us closer to a solid 15 minutes. Cannes is quite picky for their short film requirements, after all.
----------------
Now playing: Amitabh Bachhan, Sonu Nigam, Vishal, Adesh Shrivastava & Ranjit Barot - Come On Come On
via FoxyTunes
----------------
Now playing: Dus Kahaniyaan - Bhula Diya
via FoxyTunes
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Day 1
Day 1 - 6 Oct
We are considering 6th October as the "official" start date of the film, as that's when action began for me. We'd discussed the film, read through the script, tossed around ideas and done some very basic groundwork for the last month, and Gaurav has been working on it far longer, of course, but 6th is when for all intents and purposes we pressed the green light on the project.
I met Gaurav at his flat, we looked over some of the basic work I'd done regarding festivals to submit to and general ideas about the film, and then spent about 8 hours just talking--how we were seeing the film, the production, the working environment he wanted to create, what my part to play in that would be, et cetera, et cetera. It was good groundwork to go over, then we met a couple of his friends, struggling writers in the scene. It's interesting how many people I've met who have similar stories to mine and Gaurav's--that of deciding one day to cash in our chips with whatever game we were playing and trade it all for Bollywood. For some reason, that's slightly reassuring.
My work now is to go over scene and location breakdowns and start coming up with a master schedule for all facets of the production: scenes, locations, actions, props, costumes, cast, mood, everything. Gaurav is still working on fixing the lead role and some other title roles, as well as pinning down the financing.
----------------
Now playing: Shreya Ghoshal - So Jaoon Main
via FoxyTunes
We are considering 6th October as the "official" start date of the film, as that's when action began for me. We'd discussed the film, read through the script, tossed around ideas and done some very basic groundwork for the last month, and Gaurav has been working on it far longer, of course, but 6th is when for all intents and purposes we pressed the green light on the project.
I met Gaurav at his flat, we looked over some of the basic work I'd done regarding festivals to submit to and general ideas about the film, and then spent about 8 hours just talking--how we were seeing the film, the production, the working environment he wanted to create, what my part to play in that would be, et cetera, et cetera. It was good groundwork to go over, then we met a couple of his friends, struggling writers in the scene. It's interesting how many people I've met who have similar stories to mine and Gaurav's--that of deciding one day to cash in our chips with whatever game we were playing and trade it all for Bollywood. For some reason, that's slightly reassuring.
My work now is to go over scene and location breakdowns and start coming up with a master schedule for all facets of the production: scenes, locations, actions, props, costumes, cast, mood, everything. Gaurav is still working on fixing the lead role and some other title roles, as well as pinning down the financing.
----------------
Now playing: Shreya Ghoshal - So Jaoon Main
via FoxyTunes
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