Phir Director: 2nd time lucky oye!
Mere guru ne kaha tha mera waqt badalne wala hai (my time will change, thus said my teacher). If you don’t know what I am talking about, click here. After my day-long stint as a director, I thought I had gotten my share of blessings from Lord CinemaIndra. But it wasn’t so. Of all the reasons in the world, I was retained as the director for the sake of CONTINUITY. Can you fucking believe it! As much as I tried to convince myself otherwise, the fact remained. Though embarassed thoroughly, I said WTF, I will do it.
I remember while I wrote the scene… ‘Shot of the school assembly’. 5 damn words that I had written turned out to be the most cumbersome, tiring, taxing & most grand scene of this corporate film. As this was supposed to be the more complicated part of the shoot, we had two teams that were shooting simultaneously. And I was running around from monitor-to-monitor, checking the shots. The early morning bright sun didn’t really help. Well, it was a pain, all over.
That was the first shot of the day & then I thought things will be better now on. Haha. In the second sequence that we shot of prep-school kids, no you can’t guess it, a ‘cutey pie’ threw up on the camera. Take that Mr. Director. I woke up at 5.00am, travelled some 25 odd kms, skipped b’fast, didn’t smoke, all for this one moment. The Camera Asst. said “nothing saar, it will be okay” & I made a mental note, not to over-react / panic while shooting. Things will go wrong if they have to. Experience does come handy oye, I realized.
Well, after this, things did start looking up & how. I was amazed by the way the kids made up for my temporary dispair & angst. What expressions, what patience. They sang the same poem thrice, waving their arms & legs, smiling at the camera & not throwing up. Hehe. That was that & after a little bit of uber cute filler shots, we moved on to the senior school. Lafda / Locha part 2 begins.
Now being an international school, the chicks (including the teachers damnit) were hot. SMOKIN’ HOT. So lesson learnt “never fall in love with the subject, solid footage wastage occurs.” Now me & my Camera Asst. fell in love with 3 chicks in the same class simultaneously. Total mayhem. Thank god for my sane side, we did manage to get what we (client & my agency) needed & a lot of footage that we (just me & my cam asst.) needed. Haha.
Another important lesson I learnt during this schedule is to befriend your production team. Give them respect & show some cameraderie. Ask them if they have had their lunch, koffee etc. It helps. It fucking DID help me. Now what happened was that out of the two teams that were shooting, I thought that 1 team had done their job & announced them to PACK UP. What I didn’t know is that they had one of the equipments that the second team needed. They had got the tracks, on which we had to mount the camera & can a shot.
Now here in Bengaluru, once the word pack-up is announced, no matter what you say, what you do, the statement can’t be undone. The damage was done, I thought. So we were trying to figure out how to shoot the scene without the trolley. I went out for a sutta. OK now when you shoot at a school & you are a sutteri, you are in pain (another 4 letter word that I hate). To smoke a stick, you gotta walk 10-15 mins to go out of the bloody huge school premises. Well, that wasn’t the big deal, but as I had shared a few of my suttas with my production guys & due to that reason, we managed to hold the team back, despite me stupidly telling them to pack up. I am now waiting for the 3rd schedule on the 12th. Hoping it is as fun & enriching as this one.
Well, it was one helluva day that I will never fogget & the lessons learnt were so valuable. We shot from 7.00am till 5.00pm & I am hurt physically, but damn I felt so bad calling it a day. I love the camera, I love the tapes, I love the battery, I love the sound of the trolley, I love the crane, I love everything about film making. I hate PACK UP. You can check out a few pics here that I managed to click, despite all the madness, stress & orgasms (strictly filmy ones). LOL. Now I don’t mind dying & going to heaven or hell, who cares!
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
Magik bhai- mubarak ho, lagta hai aapka to time aa hi gaya hai.Not only was this post interesting, it was extremely humorous too- trade mark Magik style.I am already looking forward to the continuation of this series on the 12th
Dude- Shootout @ Bengaluru- is it a tribute to Shootout @ Lokhandwala
You lucky dog!! :D
lol! Congratulations and I sincerely hope the interesting subject(s) were not from the pics you uploaded :P.
Ma..bhai ko naukari mil gayee!! Ab hamare sab dukh durr ho jaayenge..bhagwan tera laakh laakh shukar hai..
magik bhai ki nikal padi.
so happy for you yaar.
sapna tera sach ho gaya……;)
best of luck for the remainder of your shoot.
Oye magik..heartfelt Oye!
Thar you blow!!!SUTTA does it… great comradeship.
Btw, I care. Don’t u fucking die on me. We have to have our share of madness, stress & orgasms (strictly filmy ones)…hehe…Abhi bahut kuchh karna hai.
Thank you so much guys. there’s more comin’ bloody soon!
Dude…tera waqt sach me badalne wala hai…yesterday DANISH called me up and was asking abt you…wanted to start some project. get in touch wid the “dedicated producer-cum-director-cum-lyriscist-cum-spotbouy”. Lolz
~Ashu Bhai MAPRM wale
@ ashu: really? mera aslam bhai to nahi bana raha na mere bhai? lolz
@ tejas: saale filmi oye! LOL.
@ sethu: yes it is a humble tribute!
@ rbehemoth: maa kasam not those. LOL.
@Magik
Congratulations buddy!!!
Saw the pics, really love the equipments and the scenario…phir dhoom!! Keep it going ‘Key-Rann!’
@ Kuldip & Sridhar: Thanks for the encuoragement.
I am sure once u get into full time film making , the “sutta” will take a back seat … Love as they say is the worst kind of addiction and in our case its love for film making … Now at least you would be having some minutes of footage that you can watch again and again and feel happy … happy 4 u and I hope the “cinuman” showers more blessings on you …
Darn Magik..you are shooting your first ad-film..do you even realise that in your orgasms? Awesome..Hi-Five!!
@ SJ: thanks so much for the warm wishes. need ‘em all.
@ OM bhai: I dint realize pehle, but now that u hv reminded, lemme check. LOL. Hi-Five!!
wud luv to see ur subjects who were the cause of ur wasted footage (not much, i hope…)
lage raho magik bhai…