just like that

I'm getting the hang of it.

Today's shoot went well. I was the AD. The director was extremely vague, which is not good for his grade, but was great for me. He didn't do much planning - so made my job easy. The only part of the shoot that he was concerned about was food - which was excellent! His health conscious girlfriend made us delicious wraps, chocolate dipped strawberries, rice cakes and what not.

So anyways, I had a thought today. I think American men are generally more respectful to women than Indian men. Be it strange men on the bus or classmates. They don't stare - or letch - or whistle - or make you uncomfortable. They see you as a human being. Can you understand the significance of this difference?

explosive moment

I've been zoning out in my production classes. The hot professor gets on my nerves! My crew-mates say random pieces of vital information that I've never heard before - and they claim it was mentioned with special emphasis in class!

So I had my first shoot yesterday. I wasn't excited, not very nervous, like I usually have a tendency to be for big events. I thought to myself, is this what I want to do all my life? Hmm...

Today I rehearsed with my actors. These two brilliant guys who are so comfortable with their bodies and voices. They understand their tools, they play around with them - just really skilled actors. I had them in my mind when I wrote my script. It just felt perfect to watch them carry out the scene. My screenwriting professor gave us a tip about making our characters sound different from our own voice - and that is to cast different people in your head. That is what I had done with these two guys.

But the most perfect happy moment was watching my words come to life. The actors loved the script and said it was an actor's script! I wrote an actor's script! Can you believe that?

We worked on it for an hour. With every run through, the actors saw more and more of my point of view - and admired it! I cannot believe that these words I wrote on paper/laptop - became real words felt by other people - and will one day soon, hopefully, exist on film for a long time to come!

I've realized what brought me to the world of filmmaking was a strong desire to have a voice. And when I hear that voice loud and clear - I am HAPPY! :)

Of cupcakes and cancelled classes

Exciting night - at least for my loser-self!

I tread out Sunday evening to attend a not-so-important evening with a bag full of goodies. I carry everything I could possibly need to study between 7pm and 11pm. It's only nine when I realize I didn't eat anything and will not be able to do anything productive without food (not that I had done anything productive till then - apart from contributing in the meeting with my brilliant idea of buying a fancy dress and returning it the next day after the shoot so that the director could stay within budget).

Then I go food hunting with my friend Aki. He's quite strange sometimes. But he has reason to be. He just found out that his sis-in-law back in India passed away. And he has a month old baby back home who he has never met. Anyways, so he's hungry and I'm hungry and both of us are not thinking right (for our own reasons - mine being HUNGER). So we check out two eating places on campus on opposite sides - and both are closed! So I decide to go to the mall with the free bus and then go home from the mall - and Aki decides to go home and eat.

Stupid me realizes after getting on to the bus that there is no bus from the mall to home at this hour on Sundays. I am panic-stricken with the thought of taking a taxi home. The bus I am on stops at another eating place far away on campus. I see its open and has food - and I jump off! I get in and buy some nice chocolate cookies - and on the phone with roomie R try to figure out how to get to the other side of the campus to take the last bus home. He gives me the bus timings but it's still far away and don't feel like walking all the way. I look around and spot a couple of Public Safety cars doing the rounds. I reluctantly walk up to one and ask the lady police officer if she could give me a ride to the bus stop. And she says yes! So I sit in the back of this police car - wondering who else sat here before me - and when we reach the stop and I try to get off, the door doesn't open - Duh! The police officer comes out to open the door for me. I feel good about taking her help instead of risking the walk. I felt safe and taken care of - sweet :)


That reminds me - this film I'm DPing (director of photography-ing) needs me to shoot cupcakes and so I have do some research about lighting food. I came across many photographs that made me drool - but this one reminded me of my blog :)

Another cool thing that happened was that finally I got an email from a professor cancelling a class! I haven't had a single class cancelled till now despite adverse conditions. But this one happens to be my favorite class - Spanish! And the reason is my professor's husband has a surgery - which isn't very nice too. So I guess it's better to not have any classes cancelled :(

no free lunch - yippeeeee!

I've been meaning to write about my crisis situation - but real life intervened!

My first real film shoot is next Sunday. I had a crew, location, actors, equipment, motivation - just no script!

So I waited for the last moment - as usual - and finished my script. It's called "No free lunch". I had the idea for the story since a few weeks but had not written it down properly. I wasn't sure how it would come out. My AD loved it - she is an undergrad, therefore more experienced than me (i know it sounds weird, but its my second quarter as a grad and third year for her as an undergrad) and she's gorgeous. She is. Really. How I wish my friend Sums was here! She would know what I mean.

I was thrilled about the fact that she loved it. Now I have to revise it once before I make final copies for the Monday class. The only problem is that the actors haven't confirmed till now. Just keeping my fingers crossed..

Oh, Happy Lohri to everyone back home! And especially to baby T - poor thing will be subjected to relatives once again today! Enjoy the warm fire and popcorns, and think of me while you do it.. :)

I have to come up with a production name by tomorrow. It is really silly but I want to decide once and for all. I have been waiting for this moment, and also dreading it - when I have to think of one name to describe my filmmaking style/concept/theme. It doesn't matter if I pick some random name now and change it later - but I don't want to do that. So it has to be something abstract, yet definite - all-encompassing, yet me. I wish I was super smart and could think of the perfect name. Any ideas?

Also, I would love to post my script on the blog but I'm afraid it might get stolen. Uh! The fears of the world wide web! What could be worse - my photo posted on a porn-site or my script stolen and filmed under someone else's name? Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit - both ways! So I should shut up and do some more work.

Cats, Dogs and Blissful Ignorance

Isn't it just great to chance upon one of your favorite old films just when you are really bored and have nothing else to do?
Umm...maybe not!



It's so wonderful and horrible at the same time to be studying film. All day everyday I am being trained to break films down to their tiniest of components. It's great because this way I will understand all the ways I can manipulate these components and create good films of my own. It's not nice because now I'm beginning to see beyond what the general audience is expected to see.

I had been the Bad Director's dream viewer all my life - completely ignorant of continuity errors - buying everything that was thrown at me - a perfect Bollywood audience! I feel bad about losing out on the experience of simply being consumed by the images and sounds on the big screen without looking at the lighting, the acting, the composition, the story, the visual structure...OMG, who have I become!

Here's to the memory of that old me and to all the films that I had once truly and innocently loved...here's to the truths about the cats and the dogs!

R.I.P.

Miranda's disastorous date

So i'm watching 'sex and the city' and this guy Miranda is dating is a documentary filmmaker. So clearly he gets my attention immediately. After they watch a docu about World War II he says something that I could have said a few weeks ago.

He says something like "its amazing how a documentary film can capture the emotions of pain and suffering - something that narrative films can never achieve." I'm sitting their grinning - the kind of grin you have when you understand some one and at the same time you know that you know better :) He goes on to say that narrative films are "bogus". A few weeks ago, i could have thanked him for articulating my feelings.

I had a natural affinity with documentary films when I first got initiated into this genre. It made me feel things - and I knew then that this is what I want to do! After watching narrative films all my life and encountering documentaries only when I came into my first year of undergrad college (at 18), I didn't appreciate narrative films anywhere as much as documentaries. I had an instant understanding of the importance of this particular medium. It just made a lot of sense to me. Without realizing it, I began to look at the narrative form as inferior to the realism of documentaries.

Cut to six weeks back from present - a class i attended called "Directing the Actor". I had an experience that made me change my mind. The problem with my earlier ideas and that of Miranda's date (the filmmaker) was our narrow concept of "reality". Documentary films do not by definition mean reality - in fact, when a documentary filmmaker approaches her subject, she interferes in the subject's reality and thus alters it. The reality of the subject's life ceases to exist when the filmmaker intervenes. So who is to say if what we see in the film is real or not?

Contrary to what I believed earlier, I feel now that the possibility of achieving the purest form of reality is more with the narrative form than it is with documentaries. In the narrative form, an individual writes a script based on their own realities or the realities that they have observed of others around them - basically from their own life experiences and interactions. If the scriptwriter is honest with their work, they will create a script that has certain truths in it. Now the most crucial role of creating the reality on screen is of the actors. The director has to ensure that she is able to push the actors to be true in the moment and feel their characters and situations. It is a lot of work and involves a lot of people in the process of creating reality - but it sure is possible.

This is not to say that all narrative films create reality and all documentary films don't. There sure is a lot of crap being made in our world - and most of it is "bogus" :) The point that i'm trying to make is that the responsibility of creating reality lies solely with the filmmaker - no matter what form of filmmaking she employs. By reality I do not mean only serious reality as in the "pain and suffering" that our friend mentions to Miranda - reality refers to all human experiences that we as humans can relate to. And we may not consciously know it, but all films that touch our hearts and make us FEEL succeed in doing this one most important task.

For all Karan Johar fans: sorry for wasting your time..hehe..