AGD - Shooting Pains

We just did the first shoot for my short film AGD (working title: A Great Date) this Saturday. It turned out to be one of those days that start on the wrong note. Having gone to bed about 0200 after a salsa party the previous night it was no surprise that I slept through the alarm and got up at 0710. Since my cab was booked for 0750, it was a cause for panic.

Then, as I should have expected, my printer refused to print the script. And I had no time to fiddle with it. I managed to get my filming kit packed in time for the cab and got to the station. Only to find that I had left my tickets at home! Fortunately, I always get to the station 30 minutes before train time and my house is only 5 minutes drive from the station. By grabbing a cab from in front of the station I was able to get the tickets from home. Just in time to board the train.

On the way to London I whatsapp'ed my team to ask if anyone could print a few copies of the script for me. Then I sat down and tried to create the shooting script which I had been too busy to create in the last few days. And wasn't able to create on the train either. It's not easy to do it on a tablet.



To add to this, one of my crew members had a personal emergency and messaged to say she's not coming. Okay.

I had a meeting in London about another project which went so well that it made me about 15 minutes late getting to the location for AGD. Most of my crew was there including a new MUA Julia Kass that I had just recruited a day before. But my DOP wasn't there and my sound man IM'ed to say he was running late, very late. He had the sound recorder and mic with him, and also his own camera that we use sometimes for shoots. Terrific!

And to make matters worse the very spot I had visualised to place my action, was taken by some men who thought Saturday was for hanging out in the park and drinking beer! But being a public park, I could not ask them to move or leave. But Brian had printed out the script copies and my DoP Cathrine arrived presently.

To get us started I blocked the scene with the actors in a close-by but different spot even though I could see it would work best at my chosen but now occupied spot. Then while the actors went for their make-up, camera department started their set up. I downloaded an app on my smartphone to use for sound recording, just to prepare for the worst case scenario.

But then things started to turn. Just as the cameras were all set up and my DoP was happy, the drinking men left the spot. As we moved the cameras to our favourite spot, my soundman Arun arrived. While we set up the sound gear and the third camera, the actors were ready. Actually they had been ready for a while and had been running lines with each other.

While all of this was good, the actors took the cake in this story. As soon we started shooting, they did the whole shot in one take! And let me tell you this was a difficult scene. It was long and dialogue was not in correct sequence with proper give and take as it would be intercut with another scene for the final cut.



Because of this there were places where the same person had to speak twice with no lines from the other person in between. And they managed all of that perfectly even giving me the right pauses for cutting in the right places. I had, of course, blocked and rehearsed the scene with them before and given them my notes, but even so, I was blown away!


The second part of the shoot was in Camden, in a restaurant that we like, and thanks to my actors we had time to break for lunch. The second scene went the same way. This one didn't have continuous action that could be filmed all in one go and there were some retakes but still it got done easily and quickly. I do have a kick-ass team!




I even had time to have a drink with my team before starting back from London.

Moral of the story for me is to always keep trying to make the best of the situation even when things seem to go to pieces. Oh, and to do my due diligence and pick good actors like I did this time! :)

Meet The Romi

Meet the Romi was such a fun project to shoot. It was literally a script that came out of nothing.

When I was young and lived in India, our locality was such that their was always a quarrel or two in the week on the crossroads near our house. My elder sister who had a great sense of humour used to enjoy watching those fights and if there was no fight in the street for 2-3 days, she would comment that she was missing the "shows".

One day I was thinking about that and the line came to my mind "Where I come from that's called entertainment!" And after that the script just wrote itself!

Casting for it was very funny as well. All my team members were of the opinion that I should do the role of Romi myself since I am, evidently, Indian. But I wanted the character to be a student, in early 20's to fit the story. Plus, I can't "do" an Indian accent to save my life. Yes, I know, I find it hilarious too, but after all these years in England my accent is a very bastardized mix of 50% English and 50% Indian accents.

We held auditions for this film and Ken was the first one to read for the part of Romi. His Indian accent was great and we just cast him there and then. We made the right choice! He was great as Romi.

The casting for the role of Natalie was also quite hilarious. We held the auditions in Central London in a public building with the camera and mic setup around a set of tables. There were 5 of us in the audition panel. There was a public performance going on nearby and there were a lot of people milling around. For the scene where Romi walks in on Natalie in the shower I wanted to see if the actress could scream convincingly. So, in my naivete, I asked the first actress to audition to give us a sample of her scream.

OH..MY..GOD!

She gave us a sample alright! When my ears stopped ringing I realized that all the people around us were still staring at us! Goes without saying that I didn't ask any of the subsequent actresses to scream. I had learnt my lesson!

If you watch the film you will see that the height difference between the actors playing Jack (Dave Frost) and Natalie (Claire Austin) is ludicrous. But they were both such good actors that we wanted to cast them rather than look for someone  more height compatible. I must say they worked out great!

Well, here is the link to the video, I hope you watch it and let us know how you like it. We have improved in our filmmaking since then but those old projects are still quite dear to us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq-TKUZ8kMw

Sabse Badi Daulat - The Magnum Opus story

I promised I will give you more stories from the production schedule of SBD. For a low-budget short film this thing was big and it was eventful!

Magnum Opus, was actually scene no. 11 in my script. It's a simple scene in essence. The hero has left his father's house opposing his dowry demand. He comes to see the girl, they meet in the street and he asks her to come with him. She says no, they disagree, he leaves. That's the whole scene. It has very few lines of dialogues, mostly poignant pauses.

What made this simple scene complex was that I wanted it to be special. I had a certain vision for it, complete with lighting, performances and the look. Hence, I called it my Magnum Opus, which means "Big work" in Latin, like a masterpiece.

The very first evening when we got there, I sat my team down, the cast as well as the crew, and told them that this was one scene where I would not accept anything less than perfect. I told them I was sorry for using that word but for this scene I wanted everything "perfect", even if we had to shoot it many times.

How true were those words!

My team promised me full support and we set out for our shooting.

Our second night there we made an attempt at it. For lighting we used 3 battery-powered, emergency lights with LED bulbs in them and dimmer controls. They were good, but I wanted the lights to illuminate only the actors and that was hard to rig perfectly for the camera.

So I tried a custom solution. We made a "lightbox" from two empty cartons of water bottles by pasting white papers inside the box. Then we experimented by holding an emergency light outside the box but facing inside. When this box was pointed at the actors it gave a soft, white, diffused light.


On top of that the temperature was down to about 1 degree Celsius with a freezing wind coming from the fields and my actors were very cold. The heroine was in a thin suit and the hero in shirt sleeves. I could see that any time I gave them notes about the performances, Jyoti would take her shawl back first and only then listen to my comments.

I offered to postpone the scene for another night but nobody wanted to give up, not even Jyoti, who I felt was the coldest of all at that moment.

We tried it for a while, but the performances were not where I wanted them, my hero was too shy, I think, for that intense lovers quarrel scene, and after about 2 hours we called it quits.

Looking at the rushes later, I found that it was a total loss. The light was way too low among other problems.


The next night we shot scene 10 which comes before the Magnum Opus scene in the film, it shows a Ladies Sangeet scene where the heroine is present with her best friend. This is where the hero sends a small kid to call her outside.

A small story about this scene as well. The shooting was done with ladies from the neighbourhood and the small kid also I drafted right on the spot. The shoot was done in about hour and a half, and we packed it up. I told the ladies we were done. But they were having so much fun they kept singing and dancing another 2 hours even after we had  finished our part. :)

Then we returned to Magnum Opus on our fourth night there. 

This time we tried a different lighting styles. We used the lights on dimmers as well as using different surfaces to bounce the light. The light was better than the previous attempt but only a little and the performances, well that was a different story! 

I kept using words like "intensity", "the aggression in love", "emotion", "subdued rage", "frustration" etc. Other than the dialogue delivery I wanted a certain type of body language etc. to convey the subtext. 

At one point, my hero got fed up with my comments on each take and asked me to show him how to do it. Okay, so I did. And still...

Oh well, to cut a long story short, we did about 20 takes again, in a cold night, and finally gave up. Though it was not as cold as the first night we tried it, staying there for long did make everybody shiver. 

When we looked at the rushes, the lighting was better than last attempt but neither the light nor the performances were perfect. And I wanted perfect for this scene. 

We tried a third time on the 5th night, the last night that we were there. This time I left my jacket off. I had been feeling a bit guilty about keeping my actors out in the cold for take after take so without making any  fuss about it, I just quietly left my jacket in the house before setting out. You can call me macho if you like, I won't object. :) 

This time we used the same emergency lights without any special rig, but we used certain angles that I liked. My 1st AD, Sagar, took the initiative in experimenting and finding those angles that worked and I looked from behind the camera. 

It's hard to describe the angles in text but Sagar himself was holding one light with an outstretched arm, just outside the cone of the camera view. Before each take I had to push on his back to flatten him against the wall, he was that close the edge of the frame. The poor guy got a crick in his back by the time we finished. In addition to Sagar, there were two of the village lads who were each holding a light facing the actors.

Once I got the lights set up to my satisfaction, we started on the performances. Priyanka had given odds that day that there would be at least 15 retakes. There we no takers. We all had our estimates of the retakes for the night. So, we were all ready for a long haul.

And long haul, it was!

I was not happy with my hero's body language, and there were times when he forgot the lines. I can't blame him though; it was a very high-pressure scene. But that didn't stop anybody else from making fun of him. Couple of times even the heroine laughed at the way he delivered a line. It wasn't always his fault but he was a good sport and didn't grieve about it. All in all it was fun even though it was hard work!

Finally we did about 20 takes and when I was sure that  I could piece together the whole scene from different takes, I called for pack up.

And that is how we did Magnum Opus. None of us are likely to forget that scene or the words Magnum Opus for the rest of our lives!

The Show Must Go On

I have been hearing this phrase since I was a little boy - “The Show Must Go On”. As I grew up, I understood its meaning but didn’t really agree to it. Over the years I watched many different “shows” some of which earned my admiration and others my disdain, I wondered why must the show always go on.

What is the need for a show to go on if it’s really bad? What if the team behind the project has run into real difficulties, why should they make a superhuman effort just so the show can go on? These and other such questions came to my mind and for some time I decided the age-old maxim was not correct - the show must go on but only if it deserves it.

And then, I stepped into the filmmaking arena myself. In a very small way, I started doing the same things that all these filmmakers and TV producers and stage directors had been doing for years and years.  And...I started to learn!

In the short time I have been doing this I have learnt many new things. Lots of technical things, of course, but along with them some deep, philosophical things as well without which I doubt if anyone can become successful in the film industry.

One such thing is the real meaning of the expression - The Show Must Go On!

A film project, even a short film with no budget to speak of, involves many people. While the motivation and skill of these people varies greatly they do have one important thing in common - the project. They work together and give it their best to finish the project successfully.

Regardless of the worthiness of the project itself a lot of hard work goes into the project. There are undoubtedly difficulties on the way but they must be surmounted because giving up means letting down so many people. That’s one reason. There are others.

No matter how bad a show might be, if it gives rise to one cameraman, one director, or one writer, who in his/her turn goes on to make great works of art in the future, the show deserves to go on. And this is usually the case. I won’t cite examples because there are way too many, but we all know that good actors, good technicians or good filmmakers have come up from bad failures before.

A film is a work of art, it may be turn out to be a bad film but in the process of making it, it may teach some very valuable lessons to its makers. We all learn by making mistakes and during the course of one bad project one inexperienced director may step on the path to be the next Spielberg.

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For me the expression has very personal and alas tragic meaning.

When my first project “The Third Angle” was underway, I received news from home that my father had suddenly passed away. I have no words that would justify my emotions at the moment! I was very close to my father and this without the shadow of a doubt was the darkest, bleakest day of my life!

To make matters worse, my family lives in India and I was here in the UK. There was no way I could get there in time for anything!

To make matters still worse, I had second auditions scheduled for that night and my team had been working hard on the pre-production. The morning and afternoon hours were spent in a state that I don’t want to describe here but when coherent thinking returned I weighed my choices. I could cancel the project or I could go ahead with it.

I should mention that the project was on a very tight deadline in order to finish it before BFI deadline for short films for the London Film Festival 2011. My absence, since I was the writer and director, would hurt the project.

At that time, I began to realize many things at once.

I realized that I could not let my whole team down for my private grief, not to mention the actors we had already selected and the ones who were coming to audition tonight.

I realized that my father would have seriously disapproved of backing out of my commitment to these people.

I realized that I myself needed this project in order to keep myself distracted and keep my sanity.

I realized that not only I would have to carry on with the project, I could not even tell anyone about my private problems.

The post is getting long, let me conclude in brief. We had auditions that night and selected the remaining actors. I only told my friend Elaine, who was my first AD on the project and a close friend, that I would have to travel to India for a week and why. Elaine took care of rehearsals in my absence and I came back in time to start the filming.

We had many more problems with that project, but ultimately we finished it, I did post-processing on it myself and posted the DVD to BFI London Film Festival on the very last date!