Sound, Camera, Action, Action! The making of Koga
Himanshu Bhatnagar won the PFCOne 2008 award sponsored by Hansal Mehta, wherein Hansal would sponsor to remake the winner’s one minute movie using professional equipments and settings and market it worldwide. Well, the movie is complete and Hansal is busy distributing it to various theaters and multiplex groups in India.
We present here for the first time the remade version of KOGA. And here’s Himanshu Bhatnagar on his experience of making the film with Hansal.
Sound, Camera, Action, Action!
The last action in the above subject is not a writing mistake but this is how we begun our takes for our short film. I’ll explain this a little later but before, I would like to take you through my experience of making, winning and re-making a short film called KOGA CAN’T SAVE YOU ALWAYS.
Making:
It was around 11am on a Sunday afternoon when I woke up; we people working in IT have a habit of getting up late on Sundays, even if we don’t want to sleep we lie down just for the heck of it, knowing very well that we wont be having anything better to do. But this Sunday was unusual. I had something in my mind. I wanted to shoot Koga. I narrated the script to one of my room partner who was the first one to get up that morning after me. He loved it.
“Let’s do it”, he said. I had a location in mind but the problem was the camera and the actors. My friend quickly went and woke up all my room partners. He had also called up his friend and borrowed her digi cam. He wasn’t doing so because he was impressed with the idea but because I promised him the lead role!
Filmmaking is honestly not only about being creative, it’s more than that. I convinced my other room partners by making them 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th lead. They all got suitably dressed and we were off for the shoot with a digi cam and 5 lead characters.
When we begun, the real fun of filmmaking started; the camera did not have sufficient battery left so it went down after a couple of takes! Here our mobile camera came in handy. After few more shots another problem popped up in the form of a security guard. He wanted to know what the hell was happening here. I had a tough time explaining to him that we are making a film for a social issue. He just wouldn’t understand. I thought he could have been the 6th lead but there are only 5 characters in the film, so maybe
I can make this a story of 6 guys in men’s room? Oh god no! But he was a little less ambitious than I thought. He only wanted to witness the shoot. We made him stand behind the camera and he was happy seeing actors perform on action and cut.
We wrapped up our shoot. The film was quickly edited and uploaded.
Winning
Winning was not all that fun as you might think. My film did not have good actors, nor was the camera-work any great shakes. Somebody during the festival said editing was bad – a point taken. But in spite of all this I was hoping that I might win because of the script, which was original and different – at least I believed so. But sadly somebody called ‘magik’ found it a copy of internet mails. I was shocked and depressed. My first thought was “what nonsense, it is solely my idea”, but then later I thought may be they have read something similar of this sort and they have assumed it to be the same story. Anything is possible in this world of internet but something so similar? I wasn’t convinced.
I finally got my answer on day 5 of the festival when results were declared, my originality and the simplicity of the script was acknowledged and appreciated by the jury. And I found that ‘magik’ had problems with other films which had won as well!. I was relieved.
Remake
As a prize I got a chance to remake the film with proper aesthetic values and technical support. This initiative was sponsored by Hansal sir and as I learned later, his organization India Study Abroad Center (ISAC). WOW! I had neither any contacts in the film industry nor had I ever been to a set before. I was scheduled to meet Hansal sir at his office one Sunday afternoon. I was a little nervous, I must admit; he is such an experienced filmmaker after all. I had literally practiced my Hi and hello in front of the mirror. But as soon as I met him my fear was gone. Hansal sir is a very simple and down to earth person. We became friends as we discussed films, planned our shoot and had lunch together. ( delicious Yakhni pulao cooked by Anirudhya Mitra who is also a writer and an author on PFC). We had decided to re-shoot Koga by the end of Feb.
As per our plan, I came to Mumbai where Hansal sir had arranged accommodation at his guest house where I would be spending the 5 best days of my life. My DOP was Chirantan sir (he has shot the war film 1971, two films with Hansal sir, two with Nagesh Kukunoor and one recent film for UTV Spotboy). My sound engineer was a recent pass out from Whistling Woods. I was assisted by Priyanka who was a Film and Media Intern with Hansal sir’s organization. I was given production support by Vishal Tyagi and Mukesh who are members of Hansal sir’s production team. On the first day, we had planned an audition in Whistling Woods International. Auditioning was fun. Unlike my mobile film, this time I had lot of actors to choose from and I had to decide who would play each character – I enjoyed it!
Next day we booked the location and the camera. Finding a location wasn’t as difficult as we thought it would be. We saw a men’s room in Oshiwara, liked it and booked it.
Next was the camera. Hansal sir had the Red one in mind so we went to one of the dealers that rents out this camera. Chirantan sir was with us. I have never worked on an HDV and had never seen an HD camera, but this was supposed to give stunning results with very high-resolutions and the vendor told us it is fast becoming popular among filmmakers like Danny Boyle… man… I’m gone shoot my short film with the same camera from which SM was shot. “oh god”, I said to myself. Besides we decided to shoot on 4k resolution. I was dying to see the footage now. But before that the best was yet to come…the shooting!
On the third day I did a brief rehearsal with my actors so that we could understand the space orientation and could decide who is walking when and how, in and out of the frame. One actor which we had selected in the audition couldn’t turn up because he was busy with some other shoot. After a quick round of rehearsals we went for dinner and became friends. (We made another film a few weeks after Koga, I wish I could write more about that, but in next thread may be.)
Ok. So location and camera were booked, actors had rehearsed and everything was set for the D-day. Or at least so I thought!
Day 4 – you know filmmaking is probably one such place where planning is a must and where planning never works! I got up at 5 in the morning only to discover that the actor who couldn’t turn up for the rehearsal had fallen sick; “I’m ill and wont be able to come for the shoot.. Sorry”, his sms said. I tried calling him but to no avail and then I knew the shit was about to hit the ceiling. I called up my other actors to bring one more actor but they told me the obvious “it’s too late now to find an actor”. Thankfully Vishal, who is a close friend of Hansal Sir and was with me throughout these last 3 days, came in handy. I requested him to play the 5th guy and he was game for it. So at 7am we began our shoot. Shooting for your film is always fun but when you have supervisors’ like Hansal sir and Chirantan sir then the fun becomes learning and I have learned a lot during my shoot.
When we were shooting for KOGA, when all the lights were set up, when the sound engineer was ready with his sound console, actors had rehearsed their lines, and camera was fixed on the tripod; I was under the impression that before starting for a take a director gives a call for the lights, camera and actors as in Lights… Camera… Action! But no, all this depends on your sets and your own working style:
I knew this before the shoot but what I missed out then was the clap; So when Chirantan sir said, “camera rolling” I quickly said ACTION after which everyone started starring at me and I realized ohhh…. shit I missed the clap. That was embarrassing, really embarrassing. I mean how can a DIRECTOR be so stupid? I had nothing to say here, although it was ok since I had never been to a shoot before. Even then I was embarrassed.
Hansal Sir, who was present throughout the shoot, quickly took the charge of the situation and quietly said “Its ok…I’ll tell you when to say ACTION”.
So we went for another take-
-Start sound
-Rolling
-Roll the camera
-Rolling
-action (Hansal sir to me, softly)
-ACTION
So there were 2 actions, the 1st was for me to say action and the other one was from me to the actors!
But honestly I had lot of fun throughout our shoot. I was behaving like a small kid wanting to have all the rides available in the fair. Rides here were the Red One camera, the cool lights and all those different lenses from 14 mm to 135 mm in focal length and the fun-fair was my shoot.
Guys trust me, I have had vodka and I have smoked up but nothing in this world gives you a better kick than observing a frame that is transformed by inter-changing the lenses, varying the focal length or adjusting the f-stop. Wow!
Day 5 – we did our editing in a professional editing studio. We did it on Final Cut Pro (FCP). Technically I know this software as even have I edited my films on FCP but this was very professional. They are 3 screens, one to capture and maintain the logs, other one to edit and the third screen to view the final output. What blew my head was the quality of rushes we got from Red One camera. That was amazing, beautiful, not from this world, I swear. Footage we had captured was not even 15mins and yet the size was 29GB, beat that. Phew…
Now, I don’t think I can really inspire anybody out here but if after reading this blog about a young boy from a small town in Rajasthan making it to Mumbai, shooting on Red One, taking auditions in Whistling Woods and doing editing in one of the finest studios out there makes you a little jealous than let me tell you that you are a few Sundays behind me because PFC is a place which truly appreciates the people who have passion for cinema. No big cameras are required, no big editors or actors are required but passion is all you need. PFC One is I guess the only festival, I believe, which only looks at your story telling and not the technical aspects of your film.
PFC One-2009 is not very far (I hope its happening this year as well), go pull out those mobile phone cameras which you thought were junk, get your room partners whom you thought were bums, edit your film on movie maker (windows users) or imovie (Macintosh users), and upload it. I promise this much – if you have the passion it will be acknowledged by some of the finest filmmakers in the industry.
So go make a film this Sunday and let your creative juices flow.
Cheers,
Himanshu Bhatnagar
Here’s the remade version of Koga:
Tags: hansal mehta, Making, PFCOne Film Festival
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
“Filmmaking is honestly not only about being creative, it’s more than that.”
FULLY AGREE!!!
2 mentions in ur post! dont remember if i was dat nasty! anyways, the winner takes it all.
Himangshu, I still feel your first effort was better..more fun, impromptu and quick on the humor..this seems forced..somehow..please don’t take this to heart..
here’s what i had said…
“Magik on January 6th, 2009 11:50 pm @ Himanshu: Koga reminded me of my fav TShirt quote – SAVE WATER DRINK BEER! i also think that when others should also have patted Koga’s back… the konnekt kud have been better. Anyways, glad u made it to the kompetitive sexion!”
http://passionforcinema.com/pfcone-2008-day-three/
wut was so nasty???
i went thru the whole comments in PFCOne 2008 all over again and i also found that here’s what i had said…
Magik on January 5th, 2009 8:52 pm
mushkil hai par namumkin bhi nahi om bhai! i think the judges have been very very just! salut!
wid due regard to wutever u won & made with hansal sir, can u please explain what am i doing in this post???
Bang on Indraneel da…this one didn’t touch me, nor made me laugh…your previous effort was light years ahead!
Himanshu has made an honest effort and it was a privilege for me to facilitate an opportunity for him to do so. Whenever we compose tunes/songs/themes it has been observed that the final recorded product does not sound as good as the initial ’scratch’ version. However, for people viewing it for the first time the pleasure of listening to/viewing a finished product is almost as much if not more. I enjoyed the first effort too but I am hoping that this particular effort reaches out to more people through the internet, movie halls and television. I did receive a lot of flak for this selection but I stand by my choice and commend Himanshu on his sincerity, diligence and passion.
Zindabad!
There is a loophole. We don’t use the water flushed out in the pee-tub to wash our hands.
Technically, this a much better film than the original.
The USP of such a story is it’s humour, if you’ve heard it once it won’t sound so funny the second time around.
I’m sure a lot of first time viewers will like this short film.
Great effort Himanshu. Hope you keep encouraging such efforts, Hansal.
well written Himanshu…nice and detailed…And the action ACTION part was hilarious!
And the actor in the previous film was awesome..Ok, he over-acted a bit, don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but he had nailed it!
Great Himanshu… I liked the film. Your earlier version might have been more fun but this time, it’s a serious awareness message with some humour.
this film was winner of one min film competition ??????
Lame!
what is so great about it?
Nice written Himanshu,
Here we should appriciate Mr hansal mehta for supporting and providing full production support to make such nice short film.
I hope in future we will have such more Sponsors in PFC ONE.
Himanshu,
One film that’s got me into splits, be it the original version, or the new version, and I watch it with my father everday, both the versions
Hhahaha, loved it!
Keep it up Himanshu! Waiting for more!
Hi Himanshu!!
I am Sneha from Screen – an entertainment weekly. We read your blog on the making of your movie KOGA CAN’T SAVE YOU ALWAYS. It was a very interesting read and so, we have decided to feature it in our next edition along with a short interview of yours. Could you please answer the following questions?
1. When did you decide to participate in the competition?
2. Where did the story idea originate from?
3. What was the first thing that came to your mind on winning the award?
4. How have things changed for you post winning the award?
5. What, according to you, is the best part of film-making?
6. Why did you decide to blog about the experience?
Please send in a small introduction of yours as well, as to what do you do, where are you from, etc. Also send us a picture of yours and a still from your movie. Please reply back ASAP on sneha.padiyath@gmail.com as we are on a tight schedule.
Thanks & Regards,
Sneha Padiyath
Screen