How does it feel to be born?
I was born in a not so fancy government hospital on 15th February 1981. I always had this deja-vu about my birth. As if I remember the visuals on the day I was born, and me being this excited individual shared this thought with most of my family & friends and the leg-pulling that followed was unexpected, atleast for me. May be they felt normal by doing so. Their favorite line was, how does it feel to be born? (Pun intended)
Cut to 27 years later during the 2nd week of February 2008 I had registered for this “Filmmaking Workshop” which I was into. And as a concluding part of this 5 day workshop all of the students had to conceive, write and shoot a short film in a group of 5. I started thinking of the short film I had to make from day 2 when it was announced. I had these subjects in mind which again came across as clichéd after discussions with the group. I became more and more restless.
What if I can’t think of a story, or even a situation that could be made into a short? Will this be it? Ain’t I good enough for the path I’ve chosen to be a filmmaker someday? Well, as the restlessness grew inside me slowly to become a monster by itself, I started observing the workshop students (talk about desperation to prove)
I saw this friend of mine who sported a goatee (A goats fashion statement so to say), and when ever he had a say during sessions his hand would automatically reach his goatee for some fiddling like he’d stram a guitar if he were a rockstar. What makes his hand do this? What kind of a body language does it express? Well yeah some kind of expression for sure… So I started observing various students there and how they used their hands….which made me think “Hands are expressive too” in their own ways… Every time we talk about expression we think either “Eyes” or “Face” but if we really give it more thought we realise that we use hands for a whole lot of expressions too.
Aah!!! now I knew what my short film would be all about. So I scratched on my note pad made some quick notes and that led to my first short film that was made on 15th February 2008. I call it “the day I was reborn” and now I know how it feels to be reborn …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-b-RAQ7AbY
Showcased this short in some of the local screenings, which received mixed reviews. Some even went to extent of saying that its not a film at all. Good, bad or Ugly, whatever criticism I received I’m happy I made a film, my first step into the world of filmmaking after my rebirth 
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Bhai,
Can’t this be conveniently titled “the various uses of human hands”..will make for a good school documentary..you could have atleast maintained a flow in the various activities done..OMG! and why was the picture drawing shown backwards? for effect??
@Dang
The title “Kara” means hand in Sanskrit, the decision was just an artistic approach rather than educative… And thx for your suggestion I will surely consider the same if I plan to make an elaborate film on hands….. The picture painting was shown backwards to support the script which is used as a monologue VO….again it was an artistic approach……..surely not for effect
But I surely will consider such details during editing my next projects…
When you said hands, i instantly imagined that there would be an expression depicting “apna haath jagannath”! Ha ha ha!
The concept is something similar to the word fuck, used to describe anger, lust, adjective, circumstances (there wuz a track with Osho, who described that the word can be used in so many ways)
The Shlok Tempotrack soundtrack was aptly used!
@ Vinay
I wanted to show lust in a subtle way but the actress backed out at the last minute…. I had shot many more expressions…but I had to chop them due to budget constraints and limitations to our VO script….But I do plan to incorporate all the feedback I have received with my next film If I make it on the same lines….
The monologue was good.Budget is concern for all short film makers.
The music which you have used was it stock or composed for your movie.
On other note, this happens with most short,Amateur or Weekend Filmmakers like me, we get swept away in moment of passion.
The idea may be good, but the execution was wrong.
Keep in mind great ideas never translate in great scripts.
Best of luck for the future work.
I am not against using Sanskrit Words, but keep it simple, why we need to show off.
@cinemausher
thx for the comments will surely keep the things you mentioned in mind..
The music was composed for the film..
@Arvind,
Then it was good effort to do so.
all the best bro… dats wut sets apart the dreamers from the doers… eagerly lookin forward to inshallah competing with you in the PFCOne Film Fest this time around. May the best one win! Gawd bless. Viva passion!
I think it was pretty nice and imaginative. Though a little lop sided. Good voice too. Keep it up, you’ve got talent….
@Magik & Aarti,
thx guys