This weekend, I got an amazing opportunity to make my first film. It was part of a college fest being conducted by the Symbiosis Law School, Symbhav 2013. The fest was to cover 3 days, and the Documentary making competition happened on the first day.
I'll admit that I was a bit nervous about the competition, there were two things that made me feel like this. One, I was not a film maker, I had wanted to sign up for the photography competition but they ran out of slots (on hind sight, I should have really submitted photos considering how crappy the winning photos were). Two, the week before, I had gone for another college fest, held by the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communications and I saw the enteries for a 24-hour film making competition and the concepts and the films just blew me away. So I was extremely nervous about the competition and being out of my depth.
Luckily, I had a trump card in my sleeve, I had worked with not just one, but two production studios as a result I knew much more theory on how to make a film and the actual execution of a film (even though I'd never made a film before!)
My team was composed of two great friends of mine, Navroze Anwar and Aditya Joshi. Aditya, believe it or not is an actor, and he has his own production house, so him being on the team gave us a huge boost in the collective knowledge. Navroze while not having had experience in films, made up with his enthusiasm and passion. So as a team we were confident that we'd at least make it into the next round.
The organizers alas, didn't get the turn out they had expected with only 5 teams showing up for the first round. In a desire to stick to the schedule, they started us on the first round.
The first round was narrated simply, but was much more complex. The teams would be given a unique random topic which floated around the fests central theme of 'Essentially Desi'. My team was given the topic of 'Bandh Kitab: Dreams and Expectations' The topic was rather self explanatory to me, we had to shoot a film about someone who had had a dream. The positive or negative outlook was completely up to us.
The round would see the 5 teams conceptualize, shoot and edit the film in 4 hours. That's right, from 10 am till 2 pm we had to shoot the film, and edit the film. The film also had to be 5 minutes long, so that's even tougher to execute.
I mean, the 24-hour films that I had seen the week earlier were all 6 to 7 minutes. And made by students who wanted to be pros.
Needless to say, we came up with an idea that all of us, as students could relate to and we began shooting. Aditya would operate the cameras as he knows how to frame the subjects perfectly, Navroze would take center stage, utilizing his own personal emotions to connect with the character and push the acting part of it out the window and make it a pseudo-real story (that might not make sense, but bear with me). I helped with the dialogue and also provided the equipment that would be used. (essentially making me the producer :P) I also used whatever editing skills I had learned from my internships.
We ended up winning first place at the fest, which was awesome! But as my team members celebrated I was really unhappy. Not for anything else, but that the final product that we had given was extremely shabby. Plenty of other teams had much better editing software, I had managed to get strapped with using Window Movie Maker, and so the editing was laughable at best. In my personal opinion, the reason that we had won was because the film had enough of a story and content to outshine the lackluster effect that it had.
So, I made a decision that I'd not close the book on this project, but I'd make it into something that I would be proud of. I'm sure Aditya and Navroze would have felt compelled to do the same if they ever made a mistake in their roles (thankfully they didn't).
So, after a weekend of editing (like 6 hours really) I finished the editing. I got myself Adobe Premiere Pro and edited it as much as I could.
Enjoy the final product,
I learned a lot from this film and all the other ones that I saw and have now been bitten by the film bug.
All I want to do is make more and more films!
I'll admit that I was a bit nervous about the competition, there were two things that made me feel like this. One, I was not a film maker, I had wanted to sign up for the photography competition but they ran out of slots (on hind sight, I should have really submitted photos considering how crappy the winning photos were). Two, the week before, I had gone for another college fest, held by the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communications and I saw the enteries for a 24-hour film making competition and the concepts and the films just blew me away. So I was extremely nervous about the competition and being out of my depth.
Luckily, I had a trump card in my sleeve, I had worked with not just one, but two production studios as a result I knew much more theory on how to make a film and the actual execution of a film (even though I'd never made a film before!)
My team was composed of two great friends of mine, Navroze Anwar and Aditya Joshi. Aditya, believe it or not is an actor, and he has his own production house, so him being on the team gave us a huge boost in the collective knowledge. Navroze while not having had experience in films, made up with his enthusiasm and passion. So as a team we were confident that we'd at least make it into the next round.
The organizers alas, didn't get the turn out they had expected with only 5 teams showing up for the first round. In a desire to stick to the schedule, they started us on the first round.
The first round was narrated simply, but was much more complex. The teams would be given a unique random topic which floated around the fests central theme of 'Essentially Desi'. My team was given the topic of 'Bandh Kitab: Dreams and Expectations' The topic was rather self explanatory to me, we had to shoot a film about someone who had had a dream. The positive or negative outlook was completely up to us.
The round would see the 5 teams conceptualize, shoot and edit the film in 4 hours. That's right, from 10 am till 2 pm we had to shoot the film, and edit the film. The film also had to be 5 minutes long, so that's even tougher to execute.
I mean, the 24-hour films that I had seen the week earlier were all 6 to 7 minutes. And made by students who wanted to be pros.
Needless to say, we came up with an idea that all of us, as students could relate to and we began shooting. Aditya would operate the cameras as he knows how to frame the subjects perfectly, Navroze would take center stage, utilizing his own personal emotions to connect with the character and push the acting part of it out the window and make it a pseudo-real story (that might not make sense, but bear with me). I helped with the dialogue and also provided the equipment that would be used. (essentially making me the producer :P) I also used whatever editing skills I had learned from my internships.
We ended up winning first place at the fest, which was awesome! But as my team members celebrated I was really unhappy. Not for anything else, but that the final product that we had given was extremely shabby. Plenty of other teams had much better editing software, I had managed to get strapped with using Window Movie Maker, and so the editing was laughable at best. In my personal opinion, the reason that we had won was because the film had enough of a story and content to outshine the lackluster effect that it had.
So, I made a decision that I'd not close the book on this project, but I'd make it into something that I would be proud of. I'm sure Aditya and Navroze would have felt compelled to do the same if they ever made a mistake in their roles (thankfully they didn't).
So, after a weekend of editing (like 6 hours really) I finished the editing. I got myself Adobe Premiere Pro and edited it as much as I could.
Enjoy the final product,
I learned a lot from this film and all the other ones that I saw and have now been bitten by the film bug.
All I want to do is make more and more films!
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