Inner Conflict
iView Author: skywalker (New Delhi, India)
Email: withheld
This will be my first post on the PFC, (hopefully if it gets published ) but it is not a strange site for me. I have been a regular reader of PFC, be it the movie reviews, director’s personal space or writings by people like me who are not directly associated with films.
But trust me this is what made me think and write a post here. There is something that I think I should or say I desperately wants to share with people, with whom I hold the common interest of cinema. Because other people not really understands what I sometime try to tell them. People don’t understand when I tell them I want to get in to films, they don’t understand when I tell them watching film is not bad as it’s been projected in the society , esp. the middle class family from I belong. And when I say people, it includes everyone around me. My parents, my friends, seniors. I have always had this feeling that from being a middle class , it is actually very difficult to do what other’s might think is wrong, but your heart follows it. And when I say middle class, it doesn’t always mean money. The morals, the upbringing and the culture where I brought up, always tells me to follow what is “safe” in society. To play safe is what matters here. Safe in terms of career, moral values, handling money, and even love 
. And since ‘film line’ is not what we call as a safe place, it doesn’t come under the list of a middle class guy’s choice of career.
After not able to clear the MBBS entrance, I ended up doing the graduation in botany, where I never understood the difference between the stamen and petal. But during I graduation I did understood one thing and that was theater and films. And when my classmates where busy doing practicals, I was busy doing the rehearsals of my plays in the college. Science students are supposed to in the lab , unlike the philosophical heads of English H. people, but I put my science streams embarrassed and spent all my days doing theater with art students. The bug of cinema and theater got into me so deep that, I land up appearing for a film courses entrance, instead of continuing in science,which my baffled my folks so deep that they had to give up all hopes on me. Unfortunately I didn’t got through there either but yes ended up making to the india’s finest advertising college, IIMC. My elder brother is a software engineer, settled in California (I never realised people are so crazy about california, until I saw Wang-kar-wai, using California dreamin all through in chunking express) and when I made it to the advertising, my near and dear ones didn’t have anything to say. Although my parents and my brother were very happy, in fact my mom was on top of the world, that her son got through such a prestigious college. But even after two years of completing my course, I still think, was it because of me got in to advertising (which they never had thought of ) or was it because at least I was able to clear an entrance exam.
But whatever it is mom was the happiest of all..”kya karein maa ka dil toh hota hi kuch aisa hai”. Although she never understood why used to get only Rs.3000 per month as a copywriter, when most of my batch mates where getting paid handsomely in Public relation or client servicing. But she always believed when I tell her that I get the maximum satisfaction then my friends, because I enjoy my creativity.
And now after just writing copy and thinking ads, I’m in a channel making promos as a promo producer. I never cared of money in my life, I was happy getting 3000 but I was depressed when someone in my dad’s circle used to ask him about me. After passing out of IIMC and working with a India’s top 6th agency, the kind of money I was getting was hard to explain for my dad.
So decided to take the middle path and chose news channel, where I would be in the creative field but also have a decent salary. But here I’m now stuck in the rut, making shit everyday in the name of direction. My id card says my designation as an AD., but it’s been almost a year , and that I did is nothing. Im allowed to think concepts, but not allowed to take your imagination out of the studio. And when the budgets allowed for a out door shot, some jack ass sitting on my head bombs the idea or tweak the idea to make it literal in the name of understandability of the audience.
When my other friends are giving shape to their creativity and making shorts films and documentaries, I’m just spending time in the so called office, sitting in front of the computer and thinking ideas to make a footage based promos.
And now when I want to break free from all this and follow my passion of making movies, the tag of being a employed guy comes in between. Everyday I have make my parents understand that today im getting a salary but tomorrow I might not get a monthly salary if I decides to shift to films . Whenever I come home watching a movie in the hall, I get this strong feeling projecting my work up there on the screen. People talk about their adrenaline rush, I think this is my adrenaline rush, whenever I see people standing in queue to buy tickets to watch your piece of creativity.
But then again the shackles of a middle class family tag holding me everyday to continue with what I’m doing. I’m letting this adrenaline building inside me each and everyday because I know one day I ll have to let things come out in the way it should be.
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
Heartfelt article brother..wishing you all the best!
Lage Raho ’skywalker’ bhai!
keep walkin’ bro… sky is the limit!
@ Skywalker
That was straight from the heart & admire what you wrote.You’ve echoed the sentiments of many more people like you on this forum.
Hey man!
. You will get an amazing confidence in giving up everything and starting all over again.
I know how it is. Atleast you are working in a related field. I was working at Microsoft in Seattle as a s/w engg. but then here I am studying in a film school with folks 10 years younger than me. I am also from middle class background and also IIT. My uncles fainted that I am doing something like this. “Is it good for girls?”. There will be lots of factors that people might want you to consider and they would want to reason out too- frankly – don’t give all that any weightage. One cannot reason against passion. Let them call you fool – afterall there is only one life. Since it is yours enjoy the right to screw it
P.S- though save some money for khaana-peena for 2 years before you quit. I really hope your family supports you (mentally more than anything else) in this endeavour. Cheers!!
Skywalker,.
“May the Force be with you”
Hey Skywalker you are already walking in the sky, so now…UNIVERSE is the limit.n u know this for sure. nyways where is the SCRIPT, man.
I’ve heard your sentiments many times, both from people in and outside the industry. There are plenty of AD’s and production executives working in film and tv who feel they are stuck in a rut and can’t break through to the next level. Even if they are working on successful films, they often feel that they have no creative input, their ideas ignored, their work unnoticed.
The obvious thing for you to do is change your job. I may be wrong, but slogging away at work you don’t find satisfying just so you can call yourself an AD seems pointless. Even if you can move up in seniority, if your ideas and concepts are fundamentally different to those of management, then you are never going to enjoy this work. You don’t necessarily need to jump into freelance film work; you can find a tv show made by people you respect and can learn from.
If you are still reliant on a salary, then in the mean time, start spending your own time making films. Short digital films can cost almost nothing to make, if you can borrow a camera from someone for a couple of days. Ultra low budget shorts with great concepts succeed at festivals and competitions all the time and plenty of directors and writers have build careers from this. There’s free video and sound editing software online and endless sites with advice on producing short films.
Likewise start writing concepts, stories, scripts etc and entering them in competitions and workshops.
In such a competitive industry, just being passionate is never going to get you ahead. The most proactive person in the room is generally the one who gets noticed.
thanku tanul and magik for the wishes. Aarti after reading ur comment, i can understand how difficult it must have been for your folks, seeing u shifting the gear of ur career but then as u said “One cannot reason against passion”
. and i really wonder what must have gone through billo (gates)barber’s mind after losing one employee to the world of imagination 
. all the best for ur endevours !!
and chris thank u for ur advice and suggestions, i really appreciate it. but i have already added some short films and commercials in my showreel and lookin out for making some more (as a individual).