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The concluding part of the saga

The ride down from base camp to the motel where we all were supposed to congregate before heading off to our respective homes was to take about an hour. Enough time to get the answers I craved for. I’m not a nosy person by nature but have a deep abiding love for mystery and gossip.Before I could start Eric asked the most obvious question. Was C happy with the way the shoot had gone.

She was reasonably happy despite not getting all her shots on day 2 but seeing things from my very limited vantage point I would assume that she had gotten enough coverage. Of course one can never get too much coverage but just enough is always managaeble for narrative. Documentaries of course are another story. Just turn on the camera and forget that it’s there.
That’s how you get films like “Meninas” or “The Great Happiness Space”.

I couldn’t contain myself any longer and asked it straight out. What was the budget on the film. The answer was a hundred grand. A deep exhalation of breath from me followed. I was expecting within the 50-75 range but I was a tad off. Still haven’t gotten a lot of experience in budgeting for high budgets. Ah well. Another 3 months and I’ll be good.

Now I’m not an intelligent guy by most standards but one gift/curse I do possess is a highly vivid and flightful imagination. I can take one word or image and run with it into insanely tangential areas jumping the space/time continium at will. Bad idea if you are a lawyer but useful for somebody dabbling in the arts. So while I was listening to her talk bout the film which I will relay in a minute, I was also simaltaneously figuring out what a hundred grand would mean to me at this juncture in my life.

a) I could pay the fees for AFI if I wanted to go there.

2) It would keep me in sharab,kabab and shabab for a decent amount of time. I could perhaps stretch it over 5 years if I maintained my current student lifestyle. Less if I upgraded myself.

3) Go backpacking all over the world for a couple of years

So in a span of about ten seconds I weighed all three alternatives and dismissed them for the simple reason that I wasn’t gonna get the money so it’s a moot point. Dreams shattered I returned full attention to the trials and tribulations of C’s film.

Turns out that this had been her 2nd schedule. Her first schedule had been a disaster in terms of logistics. She had lost her original location which was in California as well at the last possible minute and had no choice to fly the entire cast and crew to Colorado in the middle of ski season. Prices were through the roof and it ended up costing her 30 thousand dollars. Guess I’m never going to Aspen or Sundance on my own dime.

This schedule had cost considerably less but there was one schedule remaining which she would tackle once she had edited whatever she had gotten till now and figure out if she needed any pickups. Production costs aside, the post-production costs were also sizeable as it included considerable CG work, DI and HD mastering. Wheeww !!!

Now if anyone is getting the idea that C was a rich kid having fun on Daddy’s money then perish the thought. C is actually a former actor in her mid-thirties who had been trying to get this film done at substantial cost to herself over a period of 2 years. She had put up a quarter of the budget with her money. The rest she had raised through a variety of grants and investors, the biggest paycheck of all coming from the Sloan Foundation. Add to that a grant from Technicolor to process the film and deals on equipment etc etc.

Now the Sloan Foundation is this cool group of people who hand out a lot of money every year to projects promoting the usage and understanding of science which included films. Every year they give 100k cash prizes to films whom they think are exceptional in this regard. I think Primer and Pi won the awards but I’m not sure. In addition to rewarding finished films, they also fund films which who they think has potential. C’s film was one of them. Lemme tell you getting the grant ain’t easy with thousands of applicants every year.

Apparently over recent years the Foundation had gotten a bit more strict in handing out the money coz people who had gotten the grant wouldn’t make the film and pocket the money. It’s shitheads like those who kill independent financing. Now before anybody gets all excited and pulling out scripts from the drawer, RELAX, I already checked. Unless you are a bonafide student at one of the top 6 film schools in America which includes USC, UCLA, AFI, NYU etc you ain’t eligible for this particular grant.

Life’s a bitch ain’t it ? Deal with it. I was already dreaming up a script bout the Montauk Project when I was landed back to Earth with a thud. So next I asked her my second most imp question. Why in the name of God’s green earth had she shot in Anarmophic and not Super35 when she was gonna do a DI?

The diff between the two is substantial saving in costs as well as greater flexibility and ease. If a project shoots in 3 perf Super 35 there is a 25% reduction in stock and printing costs. In addition the camera is also much lighter coz the spherical lenses are much smaller and there is much more variety available than Anarmophic. Spherical lenses are also for the most part faster and can close focus more easily. Lotsa technical mumbo jumbo which I’ll be happy to explain in case anyone’s interested.

Btw all Bollywood films are projected in Anarmophic aka Cinemascope coz the projectors in theatres are fitted with Anarmophic lenses. Dunno bout the rest of the country. So what happens in the DI is that while you shoot in Super35, you can output your master negative in Anarmophic. That’s what we did in Eklavya though we didn’t shoot 3 perf. The reason for going Super35 in Eklavya was for aesthetic and not financial reasons which happens a lot in other countries as well.

So I was very curios bout the decision to shoot anarmophic especially since the film wasn’t meant for theatrical exhibition. As it turned out the decision to shoot Super35 had been made by C long ago but the DP who had worked on the film prior to the current DP had somehow switched the cameras on his own accord during camera checkout.

It was only when the cameras were unpacked on location did C come to know and by then it was too late coz too much was pledged. So at substantial added cost the format would have to remain Anarmophic. I confess I was flabbergasted when I heard this. Just goes to show the critical importance of communication and constant oversight over the cast and crew. While I don’t really give much weight to the auteur theory, I believe with every ounce in my body that the entire crew should help and enhance the director’s vision. Disagreeing is one thing but blatant disregard is an unholy sin.

The two most imp mysteries laid to rest I asked her why she had been forced to get most of her crew off the net and other sources. Why hadn’t her classmates helped her out. Turns out that the UCLA MFA was a 3 year program and most of her classmates had dropped out by the 3rd year as it’s solely dedicated to developing and shooting one’s thesis. That turns out to be very expensive process for most people and they can’t get to start working in the real world.
Totally understand this funda and agree with it but the thought of not getting your degree kinda rankles. It’s my middle class desi upbringing I guess. Your degree is your life. Hehehe.

She told me about one of her friends who came to study film at UCLA on a full scholarship from Africa. She was a brilliant filmmaker but suffered one drawback. She wanted to tell stories bout Africa and African people and couldn’t find authentic African actors in LA. So she dropped out and went back to make films there. Pity really as I’d have loved to work with her. Guess NYU or Columbia would have been better for her coz of the massive African immigrant communities in Brooklyn and Queens.

We then had an unbelievable converstation bout the philosophical and personal approach to filmmaking which is not really suited for a blog. It’s a two sided approach which is best suited over reflective conversation. Hoping to have some more of these at IFFLA.

So we reach the motel and chill for a bit while people check in. The 2nd AD Rebecca was supposed to give me and Eric a lift back to Culver City. We start chatting with one of the PA’s Tony who had just come in for a day. Tony worked part time as a bouncer at a really seedy dive bar and regaled us with tales of how he would find people having sex in shit splattered and pee stained toilet. According to him the toilet in the bar is almost as filthy as the one in “Desperado” but that didn’t seem to bother them none. He seemed to take particular pleasure in doing solid KLPD by ejecting them from the bar before the completion of the act. Bit of a mean streak I guess. I told him he has a future in films and should seriously think bout it. Especially producting.

Finally Eric and me hop into Rebecca’s car. Rebecca is a theatre stage manager and it was her first time on a film set and she did a damn fine job. She was the one who commanded Operation Snow that day. While she had a fun experience and would like to work in films more. theatre would remain her one true love. Had an interesting conversation with her bout film vs theatre though I don’t know the first thing bout theatre. I’m very much a post-proscenium arch kinda person and apart from a couple of Broadway shows, I’ve only been to watch a play thrice in my entire life.

I’ve got nothing against theatre and really respect people who do it but it ain’t for me. I belong to the VCR/DVD generation and watching everything in long shot just doesn’t do it for me. I need to feel the edits and experience camera movement. Chalk it down to immaturity and not knowing better.

Rebecca drops me and Eric off and so ends my first shoot in LA.

Epilogue - Couple of days later C calls me up to thank me and I reply that I got the better part of the deal. (Dialog from Gattaca) . I ask her when she thinks the film is gonna be ready and she says that she needs to edit the footage and shoot the last schedule.

Apparently the crew liked me and she wanted to know if I would be interested in working on the final schedule which would be shot in the Mojave Desert.

WOULD I BE ??? YOU BETCHA.