Peacock, a short film that escaped…

PROJEKT iVIEW   | Movies | July 16, 2008 at 2:00 pm         Print

iView Author:

Vishesh Mankal

(Delhi, India)

Email:

Vishesh_Mankal [at] hotmail [dot] com

Peacock, a short film that escaped…

From the start only one thing was clear in my mind. It was that I had to make this film a satisfying experience; not just for me but for anyone who watches it. Chronologically this would be my fourth film. My first was well received by my teachers, colleagues and friends. But then somewhere along the line, I got pretentious and started making films for the sole purpose of getting attention. Maybe I was hoping that the fact that I got a movie made would make people overlook my mistakes and shortcomings. But that wasn’t to be and I learnt it the hard way. I don’t know what films should be like, whether one kind of film is better than the other, but one thing I learnt from my films was that nobody wants to be bored, which is exactly what was happening. Although my technical abilities were always praised, my skills as a storyteller were dismissed by and large. But I didn’t pay heed to anyone’s words. I told myself and my crew that the fault was with the people, not with us. I told them that people don’t understand good cinema and so on. I was undoubtedly too arrogant to see my own faults. So, I decided to make a film with absolutely zero sensibilities in the hope that I could bring myself down to the levels of my audience. It was an action film that never got made. I am thankful for that, for, in retrospect, it was a terrible film. Then, I decided to take the social message route and made a film called “Silent Night”. In retrospect that film was also bad. In fact, now I really regret ever making that film. That is when I realized that I had hit rock bottom, that it wasn’t going to get any worse than this, or should I say, I decided that I wasn’t going to let it get any worse. That is when the idea for “Peacock” came to me. It was a perfect film to get back on the wagon, as it offered me enough meat as a filmmaker and promised to be a film that people would enjoy.

So, in between all the other work I had to do for my upcoming college projects (music video and the final diploma film), I developed the screenplay for “Peacock”. It took me about twenty five days and two drafts to get right. Eventually, we formed a crew and started having production meetings. All in all, we had about three weeks of pre-production time, during which we managed to get in trouble with the college authorities, send out audition calls, and arrange for everything we needed. We took the “beg, borrow or steal” approach (not that we ever got around to stealing). We all pooled in money for this project. Earlier, it was only I that paid for the finances, without keeping track of the money spent. We decided to keep things in control this time. All in all, we managed to raise a budget of just over nineteen thousand rupees. A day before the auditions, however, we got sort of blacklisted from our college in relation to a very complicated affair. So we had no place to hold the auditions, as this movie was already being made on a shoe-string budget. We eventually held them in a park. All the actors who turned up were very sporty though. In about three hour’s time, we had our principal cast chosen and briefed. All the actors were so excited about doing this film that they memorized their dialogues, figured out their costumes with the Art Department and all in all got ready for their parts within a week’s time.

Principal photography began on 15th of March, 2008. We had a very tight three-day schedule to shoot the movie in. On the first day, well, everything went wrong. It’s always the same thing on first days of principal photography; nobody trusts each other, the actors are insecure, the production manager has a lot of running around to do and so on. But even though I had experienced all that before, I have to say that the first day of principal photography on this film was a total disaster. To begin with, the camera that we got (a SONY PD-170) had a faulty viewfinder and to make it worse, that day we were shooting only outdoors. This meant that our Director of Photography had to set the exposure through the LCD, which is always a struggle. Then, the camera attendant had not brought a boom-rod, stating that we should have asked for it specifically (Strangely enough, the boom-mic came without asking). After giving him a piece of our minds, we graduated onto a bigger problem. One of the actresses had an unforeseen problem and came a few hours late. We had two very small scenes to shoot without her, after which we were sitting around for a good while waiting for her. Then, with tempers rising with the day’s mercury, we got around to shooting the other scenes. Since a lot of the actors were first timers, they didn’t realize that acting is a waiting game. Needless to say that everyone was everywhere and things were getting out of my control. But, we kept at it. Our sole aim was to get all the shots done. At one point a rough crowd gathered around us as we were shooting a solo scene with one of the actresses. Rude remarks were flying around and I really have to give it to my actress who kept her cool and delivered the best of performances, take after take. One actor in particular gave us a lot of trouble, though. I found out later that he was somewhat not right in the head and a junkie. He turned out to be a big headache later on. And then to top it all, an important crew member fell ill and had to take rest. But at the end of the day, despite all the problems we faced, we got all the shots we needed and covered all the scenes we set out to cover. On the first day, we finished only an hour behind schedule.

So, after a rough night’s sleep, we all got together for the second day’s shoot. It was a lot easier for everybody as we were shooting in a relatively controlled environment. We were shooting interviews that day and our Set Designers did a wonderful job of making it look very studio like with only one black curtain, a few light-stands, a chair and a room that was no more than fifteen feet across on either side. We had one lighting set-up, which we tweaked as per the requirement of the shot. One problem loomed large over our heads though. It was the beginning of summer and Noida was already beginning to suffer its annual power shortage problems. We had opted to not bring a generator along for two reasons. One was that we were shooting in a residential area on a Sunday and it wouldn’t be right to create so much noise. The other was that we were not sure how much money we might end up needing for contingency. So, we kept our fingers crossed and continued with the task. But as soon as we set up the first shot, we lost electricity. The Landlady told us that if we didn’t get power back in another fifteen minutes, it would be gone for the whole day. Turns out, it was only a momentary loss. We got electricity back after a few minutes. After that we kept loosing power for a few short minutes at regular intervals, but it wasn’t bad enough to make us stop shooting. The biggest problem that day happened when our junkie friend that I mentioned about earlier opted out of the film. We lost all contact with him and I was told by another actor that he wanted to be paid for the job. We had made it clear in the beginning that we wouldn’t be paying anybody. Seems he didn’t get the message. For a while, a gloomy air shrouded the set and some of us were beginning to think that this movie will never get finished. Then I remembered a very good friend of mine, who had acted in one of my films previously. I called him up and he came promptly, proving to be a much better choice for the role eventually. I will forever be indebted to him for rescuing us in time of need. Anyway, once more we finished the day on schedule. We all felt a little better about ourselves that day, for we all felt that we had been through the worse and emerged victorious.

The third day was a mixture of indoor and outdoor scenes. For one, we had to re-shoot all the scenes involving the dropped actor. And then get on with the original schedule. It proved to be a good day overall. By then, everyone trusted each other and there was an air of camaraderie on the set. Once more, we kept up with the schedule and finished the film on time. Even though we had only been together for three days, the last few moments were very emotional. There was a sense of accomplishment, but there was also a sense of disappointment at the whole thing being over. As for me, I was just beginning to enjoy myself. But then again everything that has a beginning has an end. At least ours was happy.

The editing took me around a month. I remember being utterly dissatisfied with myself for a long time. I felt the film was slow, boring and simply not what I wanted it to be. Then, a few inspired decisions later, I was happy again. My Director of Photography also provided original music for the film, which we recorded over two days. Then, a week before I was slated to begin principal photography for my grad film, we showed the film to our first audience. It was a success, with the teachers praising it overall, and everyone else enjoying it. Ultimately, this film is the closest I have yet gotten to creating something that I think turned out better than how I intended it to. So, without further delay, I will provide you with the links for the YouTube version of the film. I am sorry for the bad quality. It is all I could manage as right now I am out of station in a place that offers limited internet connectivity.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Kindly watch the film and give me your comments. All views are welcome. The film is about 25 minutes long. It shouldn’t be a drag, though. I worked hard on making this film watch-able and I hope it doesn’t bore any of you.

CAST (in order of appearance): 1) Abhishek Ahluwalia as Prabhakar, 2) Prateek Jain as Hasan, 3) Jyoti Mahi as Sahila, 4) Mamta Mankal as Pramiti, 5) Rajat Bhatia as Mayur, 6) Kamna Mathur as Lakshita, 7) Bharat Bhoo Shaan as Balvir, Czar Routray as Eknath

Written, Edited & DIRECTED BY: Vishesh Mankal

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Advyth O. Herur

ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHERS: Praveen R. and Rhyme Jasuja

ART & COSTUMES: Nahan Gomroki and Karma Dendup

SOUND RECORDING: Rupam Bhakat and Vivek Sharma

CHIEF ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Yogesh Chaturvedi

SET DESIGN AND DECORATION: Nahan Gomroki, Yogesh Chaturvedi and Kamna Mathur

MUSIC COMPOSED & PERFORMED BY: Advyth O. Herur

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Chandramani

PRODUCED BY: Vishesh Mankal, Advyth O. Herur, Nahan Gomroki, Karma Dendup, Rhyme Jasuja, Praveen R., Chandramani, Yogesh Chaturvedi, Rupam Bhakat