Of Sci-Fi Shorts and Men
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I grew up on a staple, steady, and perhaps oversaturated, diet of “Jurassic Park” and the Star Wars films. There is no doubt one can cite better films, but for me, they will always be the pinnacle of cinematic bl
iss. After-school evenings meant popping in the desired VHS (DVD was still in the early stages) and forgetting all scholastic atrocities till the time the credits rolled. Every time I would replace the bulky tape in its cover, I’d promise myself that someday I too would be making films. Many years later, although that dream is yet to be fully realized, making short films has kept my hopes alive.
All my previous films have been dramas, so I have been robbing myself of the pleasure of making a pure genre film, especially something to do with sci-fi. My earliest attempt at putting together a piece in that vein was at film school. Although it was only a two-minute music video, it planted the seeds for a full-fledged sci-fi short in my mind. After more than a year of appeasing my desire for the same, I began writing a story that would see so many changes that I don’t even remember what my original inspiration was. But, I did arrive at a final draft about four months into (intermittent) writing.
My last film was mainly criticized for its length, so my main priority was to keep this one as short as possible. I envy those who can dish out films that are no more than a minute long. I can do nothing but applaud their efforts from a distance, for my thought process simply refuses to work in that fashion. So, while this film is shorter by nearly ten minutes than my previous effort, it is still essentially narrative in nature. I enjoy working on long scenes and sequences, as they give me the illusion of making longer films.
Fellow enthusiasts would be interested in knowing that the entire film was storyboarded down to the T over a week of tedious work. This meant that taking shots out of order did not require much scratching of heads. Most of the dialogue scenes were also heavily rehearsed over a period of four or five sessions, which helped immensely in avoiding unnecessary coverage set-ups. All the same, it was a most chaotic shoot. What was initially just a two-day schedule dragged on for a total of five days of many half and quarter shifts. The first day of filming felt like playing a game of hide-and-seek with the sun. More often than not, it chose to emerge from its hiding spot in the middle of takes. I was reminded of “Lagaan” and how the farmers of Champaner had to endure a similar fate. Thanks to the antics of our beloved life-giving star and its mischievous cloud friends, oftentimes I had just one good take to work with.
Mother Nature had a still nastier surprise up her sleeve for the second day. I distinctly remember waking up to the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning at four am the next morning. Many people would postpone the shoot in such cases, but no-budget filmmakers have not that luxury. Non-paid actors and crew members can only work for so many days. So, shifting the schedule around to suit the sporadic bursts of rain, we trudged on. But chaos theory was still at work. A dead camera battery and a lengthy, characteristic power-cut in Noida meant that filming had to be halted for more than two hours. In no time, my trusted watch informed me that it was already five in the evening, and I had still more than three hours worth of filming left to be done. We eventually lost the race against the setting sun, with more than a quarter of the film still left to be shot.
I eventually had to shoot inserts with my friends in costume doubling for the actual actors with a small handycam. At one point, we even invaded my lead actress’ college to shoot a small party scene. The fifth, and the last, day of filming consisted of a re-shoot of one of the scenes ruined by rain earlier. These five days saw the crew members and me prancing around the capital getting all the footage we could lay our hands on.
Post-production took me another three months, as I had to work on the visual effects and such. There were times when I wished that the computer would blow up so that I wouldn’t have to work any longer, or that I would lose my tapes in a flash flood or something. But no such thing happened. I had no choice but to keep working. After a while one becomes numb, and simply waits for the universe to reveal its hand. But I suppose the universe was busy making some other poor filmmaker’s life miserable, as I managed to finish the film without more incidents.
I hope everyone enjoys the film. Kindly leave comments if you can. Hopefully, I will be following this up with more blogs detailing the different aspects of the film.
Part 1
Part 2
Cast
- Farha Alam – as Jheel
- Saransh Vaswani – as Chikku
- Kushagra Parasher – as Bhootnath
Crew
- Directed by : Vishesh Mankal
- Associate Directors: Praveen R., Yogesh Chaturvedi
- Chief Assistant Director : Nahan Gomroki
- Director of Photography : Advyth O. Herur
- Assistants Photography: Praveen R. Arjun Pareira
- Make-up: Kanchan Ujjal
- Costumes: Mamta Mankal
- Sound: Vivek Sharma
- Costumes: Mamta Mankal
- Produced by: Mamta Mankal, Vishesh Mankal
Tags: action, adventure, Cinema, Digital Film, Editor's pick, Exclusive, low budget film, post-apocalyptic, Sci Fi, science fiction, Short, Short Film, visual effects
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fantastic effort…has its flaws..but can be completely overlooked for the quality of certain aspects..
The background score, editing and camerawork are of superb quality for a short…
Kudos to the team… I love the dedications…. may the force be with you…
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May the force be with you too. Glad you liked the film.
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loved the film. special effects and costumes were not bad for a no-budget film. the city shots with ur actress when she is speaking her monologue were very nice. hope to see more of your work
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The city shots were some of the most troublesome ones. But I suppose all the trouble was worth it.
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very nice attempt, liked some of the overriding concepts and execution through VOs.
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The VO kept me awake for many nights. But it seems alright in the context of the film.
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Vishesh,
It’s great to see SF from India in any form, and you have done a excellent job with ‘Not Born Heroes’. Believe me, it was worth the frustration and time involved! Too often short films don’t really satisfy me, relying on a cheap joke or trick to form the spine of them. Not Born Heroes, on the other hand, always feels like a big, epic movie. I do wish it didn’t end on such a ‘to be continued’ note, but considering what comes before it, I’ll let that pass.
Is it perfect? No, but I’m sure you more than anyone are aware of all that could be better in it, so I won’t dwell on it here. But is it good? Yes, absolutely, and you and your team should be very proud.
V
PS I would love to hear more on the behind-the-scenes aspects of the film, especially the CG and integrating it into the live footage, etc.
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I will start working on more detailed write-ups soon. I don’t know if they will feature here, but I’ll be updating the official blog for the film in any case.
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Wonderful effort. Great concept, I wanted to see more of it. Being a Science fiction addict, I love anything that is associated with it. Are there any other Indian sci-fi short movies made ? or is this the first of its kind ? character-wise Chikku (Saransh Vaswani) had this crazy appeal and him going down and how Jheel (Farah Alam) decides to fight back (with her realization of the power she had within all the way, without knowing it actually till the moment when everything is lost, arrives) was commendable. Worth all the troubles your team had gone through. As a personal opinion, with no-budget movies like these, I would prefer if you have not shown aliens or effects at all, that way I guess we can leave the viewer with the fear of unknowing. Yet, the effects shown were crucial to the screenplay, so I have no complaints. Please give us more of science fiction:). Bravo Vishal & team.
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I wanted to show the aliens in order to give them a visual identity, and to give the film a larger scope. Glad you enjoyed the film!
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Thanks for the input guys! I am sorry I am unable to post a detailed reply right now. My hard disk has suffered a cardiac arrest and I am trying to pump it back to life. I will address everyone individually once I am through this digital ordeal.
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Kudos to you Vishesh Mankal. Two thumbs up for your film.
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Glad you liked it.
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Good effort Vishal. Loved the ending. One of the better short films that I have seen.
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Sorry its Vishesh..
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No worries, man.
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Kudos to PFC! this makes sense. I had missed this post because coudn’t check pfc for last 3 dayz.!! This ‘exclusive’ will make sure, that post worth reading get privileged attention.
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I am truly humbled.
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Great stuff Vishesh.I have not read your post but jumped over to the short itself.Great concept.The CGs used were perfect considering the usage aspect.It looks fine.It shows that one does not need Avatar like CGs to drive home a point.I loved the editing..I think that was one of the most important aspect here as it takes to a different level.The narration was good.Given huge budget I am sure you can make great Sci Fi for the Indian audience.Good use of light and darkness.Before I forget to say..good apt BGM.All the best.I shall read the post now.
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Thank you, Sourav. I am truly amazed by the enthusiastic response the film has received here. At least the efforts were not in vain.
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great effort man. as an ametuer film lover and an even ametuerer “filmmaker” i know the effort tht goes into putting just one sequence. great effort but the dialouges could have been improved. and the ending too. but i throughly enjoyed it.
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Glad to know you share the pain. Ha ha…
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Thanks guys for watching and giving constructive inputs. I am truly honored to be a part of the editors’ pick. Quite unexpected, really.
Ram V: May the force be with you, too.
Siva: I am sure there exist other Indian films in the same vein… I will be on the lookout.
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‘Editors Pick’ was what made me read this post, and i am glad.
nice work Vishesh. pretty good concept, especially liked the parts of the diary (all the background story and flashback). acting from the male leads could’ve been better though.
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I was the most worried about the diary scenes. Glad they worked for you.
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Better portions of the film were the CG ones. How were they integrated?
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VJ: The CG is a combination of 3D animation and 2D compositing over live-action plates and at times with matte-paintings. I wish I could give you a detailed account here, but that would take up too much space.
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hey!! wonderful. there were two things that i really liked.., jheel’s acting n most of the VFX scenes. ofcouse the rest was also nice.
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Farha’s acting was what made me finish this film. I was terribly disappointed with what I had shot. But, it worked out okay in the end.
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Congrats Vishesh, Great Job. Keep at it.
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Thanks, Indu. Glad you liked it.
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hey vishesh … really liked your work .. especially production wise. being a student and self learner myself i can appreciate the effort tht goes into creating a believable vfx with no budget. Me and a couple of my friends while learning had tried to make a short filled with effects . BTW did you use any stuff from videocopilot.net?… i visit tht site regularly and tht some elements were frm thweir products. If not do visit tht site its brilliant … keep up the good work
P.S. : here’s the link to our short i was talking about – http://vimeo.com/2349791 (not a perefect piece .. but a successful first attempt
)
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Golani, just like every other self-taught (or even formally trained) visual effects person, I love videocopilot.net. Andrew Kramer is a god amongst men. Having said that, I have not the money to buy their products. Therefore, the effects are a combination of custom 3D particle generation and some free stuff from detonationfilms.com (another God-sent website). Anyway, I am glad to meet other people who understand the pain! Ha ha!
I loved your short, too, man. I would say a VERY SUCCESSFUL first attempt. Do let me know how you shot it.
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Thnks
. Well the biggest challange for us was to get a workable setup for croma with almost no budget … we didnt have the money to buy the actual material.. so we bought the right coloured cloth from a shop .. and got it stiched in 2 parts one for BG and one for floor. Next big hurdle was lighting. We took out 4 flood lights from our hostel’s football field. Placed two very wide and behind the character so tht they just illuminate the screen. The other two we kept long so brighten up the whole stage (including the character). The basic funda as i had read in many tutorials was to have a smooth lighting on the screen without any hard shadows from the character in front.
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Rest all was post prod. with various effects like keying, constructing the 3d stage, tracking for the magic tricks .. etc etc. Lot of hard work espcially when later you realize what all you did wrong while shooting, make adjustments cheat
Overall it was a fabulous experience, not as apreciated like our first two shorts but different nonetheless
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Really glad to see the enthusiasm and the hard work, Vishesh. Grand scifi in the films of Cameron and Spielberg is what made me want to be in films.
I really liked what you did with the VFX shots. Especially phase 2 activation and the roving alien camera. Even your aliens were really good.
Acting wise, not so enthu about the boys. Farha was good. A more discerible reaction when she sees the alien flying spy would have been nice.
The voiceover parts were very nice.
My useless suggestion: maybe you could have named the film after the place where the aliens make their base: Sector 18, Noida.
We’ve always had aliens come after Manhattan and New York. How about Noida and Ghaziabad for a change
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Well, well, a fellow sci-fi enthusiast!
Noida rocks, man! I have nothing but fond memories of the place that was host to my college times… Anyway, glad you like the film.
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The best Indian Sci-fi short film I’ve seen till date! Brilliant stuff! I read the post too, and it seems you have really worked your ass off on this! Brilliant work! I understand why you were terribly disappointed with the shoot. The film had its own parts, the parts involving vfx looked absolutely brilliant, whereas the forest shoot part looked very raw. But then in front of the lighting effects, CG and 3D animation that you’ve done, these aspects can be completely overlooked! I had seen your previous film too..and loved it! This editing of this film was very sleek. What appeals the most to me in a film is its basic premise, and this one scores on that aspect! Congo Vishesh and team!
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