Making Films and Food!
I dare say that making films and food are the same business. They both create drama and emotions. They both tell stories and give the audience something to think about and react. They both excite and fire up electrical sparks in the brain. They both have to be made with fresh and new ingredients that have to be carefully chosen and hand-picked by the ‘maker’. The elements have to be right and their dosage perfect. They must have the right amount of sensations; too much of any would spoil the equilibrium and thus making it inconsumable. The cook or maker must know all about the people s/he is cooking /making for, their tastes, their palate, even though s/he may want to surprise them, and even if s/he wants to take them into the unknown.
So is it necessary to be a good cook to be a good film-maker? Perhaps not, but I believe that through food, one can learn more about film-making.
As in film-making, when cooking, one needs to have a clear idea as to what to make. One must always ask questions. Shall it be dramatic? Should it be mellow? Should it be action packed? Should the flow be smooth or should it be dry and thick?
What colour should it be? Red, yellow, green? Who am I cooking for? Then comes the difficult part, trying to imagine the elements of the dish, vegetables, pulses or meat and what kind and how much? You can always get take the easy way (like some do) and get someone’s recipe or a DVD and copy it.
But any self respecting cook would like his or her dish to be an original masterpiece, something that only s/he thought up, something that, even if not perfect, is authentic.
Now we have an outline of what the ‘dish’ is going to be, it is a sketchy draft of words, emotions, colours and sensations. Most people around you cannot understand it, but you can explain it using your hands, the expressions on your face, the variations in your voice. It sounds exciting to some and if you are lucky someone might bankroll your idea. So now you have to plan it all, buy the right elements; they must be perfect, not too ripe or too raw, not too cheap and not too dear. The right colours, the right texture, the right timing. You will need some help, so get the right people to be part of the ‘kitchen’, the chef commis, the chef de partie, the saucier. They are all excited to participate in the creation of your masterpiece, your chez d’œuvre.
It’s all set, now you must start cooking, each element must be put forward in the best manner, delicately handled, taking care of the different consistencies, chopped, diced, sliced, squeezed, sautéed etc. Your heart is beating fast and you wonder if what you are doing is right, maybe you should have waited a little before mixing those two things together. But do not forget to taste it, add the salt it needs, or any other element that you may now think of adding. Maybe it needs some herbs, some masalas. It can be slightly different from what you imagined at first but it is an evolution towards something close to the idea you had in your mind. It is your creation that you can sign and no one will say that it reminds them of something else they had eaten before. In the old days, bad cooks lost their heads. History will tell, either people will remember your cooking forever or for never.
I dare say that that making films and food are the same business.
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
I Love Both, Making Films and Food,
(Nowdays leaving alone, doing both things to please myself)
I think this Topic will get hit
Nice Topic, be back:)
O Boy!!! Welcome aboard Partho!
I wish I could do without Food. But films…NO!
Anyways welcome to PFC Partho.
How can we get the DVD’s of
1)RAAKH ..since you were the art director
2) HAVA AANE DE
Lot of people are dying to watch both these films.
And good luck with your FALLEN HERO. Naveen Andrews is a cool guy.
Thnx Shekhar, Oz & Mainak!
Mainak,
You have to ask Aditya Bhattacharya about RAAKH. he is the almighty director and producer on the film.
HAVA hasn’t been censored so cannot be released in India. It is releasing now in the US and the DVD will be out sometime mid 2008.
Thanks for FALLEN HERO… it’s in the pipeline (a long one d )
Cheers
PSG
PSG, you’ve now made me hungry for both food and the desire to watch a good film. can’t say a post on PFC has ever done that to me.. thanks, and looking forward to hava aane de.. here’s wishing you the best for its release
>-
Partho..add writing to that. I have constantly maintained that cooking, writing or any other creative art is similar. It emerges from the grey cells and nowhere else!
..err..was a Chef myself..
Wonderful !!!!
nice one /// njoyed readin it !!!
@striker > Yo! Dhanaywad!
@Indraneel > Ditto bro!
@ George > Cheers! (*)
Is this aditya bhattacharaya coming up with any new work…
i heard aamir mentioning that he did his firt film with him etc and ive also heard a lot about raakh…
he sounds intresting
@ Vivek
Aditya Bhattacharya has made a new film called ‘Dubai return’. I don’t know if that has released yet in India.
Raakh was Aamir’s first film as main lead but he had already worked in Ketan Mehta’s Holi.
Dada
Food and Films…….a raw nerve you touch !!!
How wonderful for 2008 if we could make films and feed it to ourselves first and foremost
like the food we cook,
rather than ‘keeping the audience’ in mind before we even start shopping for ingredients ………….