Thanks for the positive and supportive feedback of my friends, I decided to start my vlog. This is the episode where I talk about my plan for overcoming those limitations that I had discussed in the first issue.
I have started a Vlog recently. Here is the link for the first episode. I am not giving up on blogging, but planning to use the vlogging as a combination of blog, FB posts, and filmmaking. Enjoying it so far.
Hoping to have my blog audience enjoy the vlog as well.
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.
I still have trouble believing I am posting videos of my own creation. There was a time when I used to post clips from TV shows and films. But this series, it's mine. I wrote it, I shot it with my crew and I edited it. I am very proud of it. :)
So, we released our first web series a couple of weeks ago. It's called Excuse You and you can watch it on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/g7filmproductions
It's a comedy based around a London restaurant and its crazy staff. We release one new episode every Monday. So far, there are 3 episodes.
We launched our web series last week. I know some people will ask what is a web series.
Well, simply put it's like a TV show with two major differences - the episodes are smaller, and instead of a TV channel it is broadcast using a web interface like YouTube or Vimeo.
My plan is to upload a new episode every weekend so that people can have a fresh episode to watch on Monday. The idea is that in the stress of Monday morning, if we can be responsible for one of your smiles, it would be a job well done! :)
[Cast and crew of Meet The Boss after the shooting.]
Have I mentioned before that I have been trying to learn how to make films by making short films? I think that's the best way to learn to make films, by making them. And now that I have mentioned it I will be free to tell you about my many adventures in the low-budget filmmaking field any time now.
Right now it's about one particular adventure, my film for the Reed film festival.
So, I have this group where people come together for the same purpose, learning filmmaking. The last time we had a meet it was on 11th March and a member mentioned that Reed.co.uk is hosting a film competition where people can send films up to 3-minutes in length. The theme given by Reed is "The Boss" and with that theme you are free to make any kind of film that you want.
That was all well and good but the deadline was exactly 2 weeks away on 25th March! I like to chase such close deadlines but going from concept to final cut in 14 days? Even for a 3 minute film it's a tall order.
But then Gianni took me aside and told me this little story that had happened to a friend of his. It was brilliant! I liked it from the start. Also, when you don't have a multi-million dollar budget, you always look for good stories that can be told without any special effects or exotic locations. This story was PERFECT for that.
And that's how we ended up making the fastest film we have ever made - 8 days from concept to rough cut!
We spent one week in pre-prod while our whole crew was working full time day jobs. No auditions, I knew the actor I wanted. We shot it in one single afternoon (Gianni and I co-directed) and edited that night and next morning. We had our rough cut by noon next day. We could have brought it to final cut the same day but we were shooting for another film from noon. That story some other time...
This is our film and we are proud of it! So feel free to share this film from this post or from YouTube as you like. :)
Indian film cinema legend Dev Anand passed away in a hospital in London yesterday. To the Hindi film lovers in India, Dev Anand needs no introduction. I just want to use this space to express my deepest sorrow that the industry has lost an icon!
Dev Anand or Dev Sahab as he was known to everybody, was not just a film star, to me he was a symbol of undying passion and indefatigable spirit. He had a very successful film career starting from the black and white era of Hindi cinema all the way into technicolour with so many hits and superhits that they cannot be counted on the fingers. In his old age (I use this word hesitantly for him as he defied the term with his very being), he continued making films, and he kept on making them despite the result on the box office.
There were questions about the quality of his films and that he was so fond of being in the frame himself. Maybe there's something in that, or maybe it's that elusive x-factor that one needed for a box office success in Bollywood. But even his worst enemies cannot say that he accepted defeat. Even after the bad failure of a movie, he'd simply dust himself off, announce his next film and go out in search of his next discovery.
Despite the failure of several of his later films, he launched many successful careers. There are many legends and inspiring stories about him that you can easily find on the web. But I cannot refrain from mentioning the legend of his black shirts. The legend goes that Bombay police had to request him not to wear black shirts as it excited his female fans too much. There is a mention of some girls jumping off balconies. I don't know how true that is but it must have a grain of truth in it based on the facts we know.
Dev Anand was always a well-dressed, debonair star on-screen and off it. Even in his later years this image didn't change. Any time I saw him on screen in a film festival or award function, he was always the well-dressed, well-spoken gentleman who did our film industry credit.
Another inspiring fact about him, for me, is the song "Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya". In an interview Dev Anand said that he lived his life like that and indeed he did. That song has been an inspiration to me for years.
Dev Sahab was 88 and he worked till his last breath. His latest film is Chargesheet to be released in 2011 (already released?).
I will just finish with the sentiment that Dev Anand will be missed for his contribution to the Hindi cinema and he will live on forever through his work.
This post comes with a special rule - at any point during the perusal of this post you are allowed to say, "Sunil bhai, you are crazy!" but you can't do it twice! Read on!
Recently I read this phrase somewhere "A life of unfulfilled dreams, a shelf of unread books..." and it struck me as the ultimate wisdom. That's what we are left with at the end of the innings. Due to the nature of desires (we have one new desire with every breath, it is said) it doesn't seem likely that anyone would be able to fulfill all their dreams but still there is only one life and one chance to do all that you want to do.
Following this philosophy recently I started on another one of my dreams - to make a film. Here is a good place to call me crazy!
I am not one of those people who were born with the dream to be a hero or knew that he was going to be a film director when he grew up. Far from it. I actually didn't like learning about these things. Once I learnt that the actors always carry empty suitcases on screen. When you see someone coming off the train or pushing a trolley on the airport with loads of big suitcases on it...there's NOTHING in them! Totally empty! Another time I learnt that when the actors pretend to drink anything like coffee or tea, the cups are totally empty. There NEVER is any coffee in them, not even a little bit. After knowing these, and other things like these, I was always focused on it and could tell that the actor was just pretending to drink. With that special knowledge I could actually judge who made a good job pretending and who was just so so. But still, I didn't really want to know these things. I'd have preferred the bliss of ignorance.
On the flip side of this was the fact that I always found those movies interesting where they showed the moviemaking business. Fake rain coming down from the roof, fake car racing scene, all kinds of fake stunts, I found it fascinating!
It started with second life. I decided to make a movie there. About my motivations to make a SL movie, the less said the better, but suffice it to say that I spent a few months working on that project and finally finishing it. A movie where you capture game footage is called a machinima. The actors are all animated avatars but after you capture the footage, the editing is just like editing a real life movie. For that I had to learn editing. I did it the way I learn everything - from books.
The experience was amazing! It was so thrilling to work on that project and see the output. My friends who learnt about it from me said why don't you do it for real. And I always had an answer why it was not feasible to do that in RL. Money is usually a big part of it.
But then slowly, the idea took root - why not? With the advent of digital filmmaking, it has become possible for people to make low-budget short films.
Then finally, last month, in March, I did a course on filmmaking. It was a course for beginners, taught over 4 weekends. 4 Sundays, full time. I have mentioned this class several time in my posts, but never revealed what the class was for. Well, now you know. :)
The plan was to learn to make films by making a short, really short, film about 7 minutes in length. We were going to interface with an actors' class from the same institute to cast for our film. After 4 weeks we were supposed to have the finished product in our hands. Everything went well, but we ran out of time when it came to editing. So, now that film is being edited in our own time, when all of us, including the teacher who is a well-known, award-winning director, can get together. First such session was this Monday when we got locked out afterwards.
This film will be finished by the end of this month but I took a copy of the whole footage and made a backstage video for it, something like a "Making of" for our project. If you are curious (and you should be if you read this far), you can watch the video below. Your comments are welcome.
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