Days 4-11

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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