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

Yash Chopra - The King of Romance - Passed Away

Yash Chopra, prominent Indian filmmaker, passed away this Sunday evening in a hospital in Bombay.

That single sentence is easy to read but it’s not easy to digest! The impact of this one fact is immense! Yash ji was not your normal run-of-the-mill film director - he was a creative genius and a bold trend-setter.

Some of his great films included Deewar, Kabhie Kabhie, Trishul, Veer-Zaara, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom,....the list is long. So many of these are in my all-time favourites list.

He made more than 50 Hindi films and most of them were extremely successful. I think his genius was in his style, he could portray any subject in a larger than life manner and still connect with the common man. He was a true merchant of dreams.

Yash ji sold many dreams to the Indian audience worldwide over his 50 years long career. I don’t want to type out the list of filmfare awards and the honours he won in country and internationally, the internet is full of those facts. I didn’t know they had named a railway station after him.

All I want to do is pay my tribute to the great dreammaker and tell you that he was a great inspiration, definitely to me, and probably to a huge number of filmmakers all over the world.

He will be greatly missed.

Trailer - M3 - Make More Mistakes

This is the trailer to G7's upcoming film "Make More Mistakes". The story is about a young man, Sam, who finds a device that has the power to  "undo" mistakes. The film features some interesting moments from his life as he learns to apply this new superpower to the problems in his life. What happens in the end is something he never expected, the device changes not only his life but Sam himself! 

Filmmaking is a team sport!

I say that from my personal experience. G7 Productions is a film production enterprise. But it's unlike any other film company (we think so). The fact of the matter is that it's very unlike a film studio or film production company in the way it's structured. The whole G7 Productions comes from an online group where people join in order to learn filmmaking. No, it's not an institute, it's just a group of people who are all interested in learning to make films and we do this not by sitting in class rooms and studying "the visual medium" we just go out there in real world and make films!

We have no money, there are no multi-million dollar budgets for our production. There is nobody who pays our salary. We also don't make any money from it. Then why do we do it? One word - Passion!

For reasons of our own each of us is passionate about making films. So we indulge in this hobby of ours in our spare time and make films on a budget that's practically non-existent. The films we make are usually short 3-5 minute films. For almost all films our target is to finish them and send them off to one film festival or another.

No, we are not stupid. We know that making a film on such a low budget and expect it to be selected in a prestigious film festival is almost silly. But we still do it, for two reasons.

1. Making a film with an international film festival in mind forces us not to compromise on quality and strive for excellence in each area of film production.

2. We know that with each film we finish, the quality of our output keeps getting better and the day will come when our films will be shown on the big screen as part of let's say BFI London Film Festival or Virgin Media Shorts Festival.

Filmmaking is slightly different from most hobbies. If your hobby is drawing you can simply pick up a sketch pad and start drawing. If you like to sing, all you need is a good microphone or a bathroom with the door closed. Not so with making films. You cannot make films, not high-quality ones, all by yourself. You need a crew and a cast.

Making a film, even a one-minute long film, takes a lot of organization, a lot of hard work and the sweat of the skull. This is where the group comes in. In the group we team up and work on different projects. While I have been in this group I have written scripts, worked as a cameraman, I have acted, worked as a clapperboy, and directed. Direction is my first love, I enjoy it a lot.

On the outside, it looks like the director has it all, he controls everything, he runs everything, he gets credit for the film!

The real story is slightly different! For want of a better comparison, I'd say that the director of a film is like the captain of a ship, without the support of his crew he is nothing. On a set, a director can accomplish a lot if his crew is professional and works together as a team.

Here I am using the word professional for attitude rather than being paid or unpaid. I am privileged to work with people who have this attitude, who know how to work as a team and who motivate me to do better just by doing their best in their role.

Whenever I think about it, I find it better to be working with people who turn up on the set on a Sunday morning not because it's their bread and butter but because they are passionate about it and enjoy doing it, even giving their spare time for it!

I have just finished a shoot today and I must say there is NO better feeling then saying "Pack up!" at the end of the day with a warm satisfaction in your heart that you accomplished something today working as a team towards a common goal!

Let's make some magic!

Meet The Boss - Reed Film 2012

This short film is our entry for the Reed Film Competition 2012. We made this in record time, 8 days from conception to first cut.