ramblings...

juliet to romeo

"...and maybe not today but we will be born again - another time another place with different faces, with whiskers or needle legs , deep in ocean or outside a cobwebbed cave and with no memory of this, of the pain and the hurt and then we could be in absolute bliss, find real happiness, and bring the earth to life..again..and yet again..."

Short film culture

I think the times have changed. Bollywood had a culture of assistant directors because the camera cost was expensive. Also camera was heavy so expensive sets were built inside studios.
Shooting a movie was something only privileged few could afford. So anyone wanting to learn had to assist.

Today we have cheap cameras. Infact everyone has a camera in their pocket thanks to mobile phone revolution. Basic editing tools are accessible to people. Ofcourse there is a need for professional touch required for good writing, shot taking, editing and have good sound design but with technology and knowledge available skills can be picked up. There are lot more film schools with interesting films that gives students exposure to good craft.

Every industry that flourishes, provide avenues for new talent to showcase their work. You dont have to wait 10 years to do your first work. I think assuming a newcomer has a where-with-all to make a feature film is asking for too much. But short films is something through which they can express themselves, find their voice.

I think bollywood has really neglected short film category but just the way Oscars have a short film categories I feel mainstream bollywood awards should have them too.
Benefits:

1) It will encourage more people to make films - an incentive that is really attractive to drive them to perform better. Short film is of a scale that will not make anyone go bankrupt. So it is a good way to encourage newer voices to try out the medium. 
2) It helps bring in plurality of ideas and thoughts in mainstream award functions.
3) It helps producers identify potential directors that they can employ.
4) The thing is even if we help the career of one director and provide him a inroad to enrich us with his work, it will be worth it.

Keeping a lookout for the edge of the world

In the olden days, it was believed that the world is flat - not round. Which means there was a belief that world had edges and if a ship fell of the edges, it would probably go to hell.

The fact that so many ships did go missing , fed the myth even more.

So in every ship, there were men, whose job description involved climbing the mast and have a lookout for the edge of the world. These men would constantly keep a watch, day and night, lest the ship falls off the edge. They would be awake, took their duties seriously and were genuinely worried about finding the edge.

I feel these men in modern times, are film directors. Worried sick over something that is fictitious.

Ah well, post production is taking its toll on me.

Blogging restart

I have really hated being away. Blogging for me was a way of checkpointing my days and my life. And now I just feel that I have no documentation of my life and its learnings.
What is up on my front?

Yup, I shot a movie. It was supposed to be part of 3 short films package. And we were producing it. But I had a tough time handling production and direction at the same time. We had Zain handling production but he is actually a a director and since we were spending our company money it was getting really tough. Also our budget blew up because we were hoping to get some equipments free but we didnt get.

The good thing is now I have understood production. We had done ads but the max shoot was 2 days. Film goes on for 10 days, each day very expensive - of the order of lakhs -  and there is a host of location and many people to manage. Everyday it was like juggling balls and somedays I felt there was one ball too many. Infact I remember coming back, taking backup of data everyday after 14 hours shoots.

My biggest production learning was:
1) Invest in a good team rather than a good camera. We tried to save money in the wrong place.
2) Have people who are passionate, dont hire people in the first meeting. (Because i personally suffer from a syndrome where I like everyone in the first meeting)
3) If someone has worked in mainstream bollywood and is proud about it, chances are that he/she will disappoint you by doing sub-standard work. (This is a very sad truth but for me the biggest disappointments were the most experienced people)
4) Dont be scared of taking tough decision. I took lots of tough unpopular decisions. But I am glad I did. My film is better. Be extremely selfish about the quality of the film. Dont compromise because thats how the filsm start becoming bad.
5) Tap people's strengths, passions and enthusiasm. My best contri came from people who were fiercely passionate about their work. There will be days you will derive energy from others.

My key directorial learnings were:
1) Dont even leave one shot to be decided on location. Because that will generally be the most average shot. Magic may happen but magic is random.
2) Take coverage shots no matter what. Even if you have planned lovely takes, take your inserts.
3) Even if the shoot is for 30 days, prepare for everyday before the shoot. Dont depend on the break. Also production design wise, get props made before the shoot sched starts.
4) Preprod is the key.
5) Take suggestions and be open to people contributing but preserve your thought process. Sometimes the most popular decisions are wrong and sometimes they are right. Carry your internal compass.
6) Be early riser.
7) Rehearse. Rehearse. Rehearse.
8) If you cant love your actor, dont cast him.
9) Cut of the noise, protect your thought process as you are the only one carrying the film in your head so you know the tone of the scene and color palatte of the scene in relation to other scenes better.
10)I should just figure out eyeline match. Its embarassing.
11) Always have reference films. Show it to crew.
12) Even if there is a 10 page dialogue. Think about how you will shoot every word of that dialogue. Dont bank on coverage.

13) Most important -  Have a good chief AD who will shield you from all the logistic nightmare.

Some stills of our upcoming sci-fi film Time Machine that we directed and produced.

Short Film Window

I am happy to announce the operation of Short Film Window (www.shortfilmwindow.com) a platform where one can Discover, Watch and Share the best stories of our time .

The site www.shortfilmwindow.com is up and running and is in Beta stage and is repository of short films from across the globe. We have managed to syndicate around 160 shorts from Film Schools and Independent contributors and am in the process of reviewing and uploading them. 

I see Short Film Window as a global platform that hosts the best short films from across the world.

My goal is to to be the one place where individuals can come and see high quality short form content on a regular basis.

Do play around with the platform. It works on iPads and computers and I am planning to have it work on mobiles too. Also I feel I should be developing an app for it. But my current focus is good content and creating a syndication team. 

Key Features: 
- Neat, simple snappy
- Integration with social networking sites
- Can choose films based on Genre, Language, Popularity, Length and Text
- Infinite scroll, List and Table views
- On-hover film info, one-click movie watch
- Content monitoring - Only well-made good short films are present
- HD films, hosted on Vimeo-Pro
- It's free and also ad-free !

So if you know of good short films or filmmakers, please feel free to ping me or write to shortfilmwindow@gmail.com

Today's GIF - with robots

Golden the Pony Boy

"Cotton and cardboard, cellophane and paper, thread, needle to employ,
All felt and fabric, birds fly and cats play,
 Golden the pony boy.
Made out of cloth and standing so still, just like a simple toy.
Gray as the sky on a day without sun,
Golden the pony boy.
Screwdrivers, rubber bands, glue guns and pliers, tools to create or destroy.
Patiently waiting, un-calculating,
Golden the pony boy.Flying wheels and coloured reels,
Spin into motion,
Bringing him lots of joy,
Trot, canter, gallop,
Over land and sea,
Golden the pony boy"

Pushing the boundaries

One is pushing the boundaries of form - in terms of your camera techniques, your way of telling a story, editing, acting etc...the treatment

but other is pushing the boundaries of what you are telling - in terms of saying things that have been unsaid or are difficult to say in a line or two or even in an essay- you cannot serialize your thoughts - you have to tell that in the form of a story so that the listener synthesizes that complex ambiguous thought from your story... and discovers an interesting facet about life...

isn't that what we should be pushing with all our films...

100 years of Indian cinema

I had the idea for this post in my mind for a long time but couldn't find time to write about it in Mumbai.

Here in a student town of Madison, spending time with PhD grads, and Silicon Valley enthusiasts - in the midst of a technology wave where "the young is eating up the old everyday", I thought my idea has reached a stage that I could verbalize it.

100 years is very less for any art form. We have art forms like painting and writing and designing that probably started at a time we were barely evolved as homo sapiens. These art forms have evolved, branched, transformed, travelled and have become an integral parts of our life. They have "matured". Has cinema matured in these 100 years -in India?
What is the benchmark for maturity ? When do we call an art form has matured, and are we getting there?

I felt one thing that sets moviemaking apart is that its main creators are concentrated in various film cities. It is not an everyman's art form.
 Ofcourse, movie making is logistically a larger effort than say painting or writing which can be an individual pursuit. Movie making is a team effort -  either a small team or a large team but generally it requires more than one person -  and is an expensive pursuit nonetheless. Making a good well-finished movie also requires training that is not integrated in out school cirriculam.
But we are not talking about costs or training right now, we are first talking about decentralization. Has it reached a stage where any person in a village who wants to make a movie can actually go ahead and make it? And what are the chances that the movie he makes can potentially move us emotionally as much as a movie made in mainstream?

I think digital revolution is one of the key things that will help movie-making ubiquitous and will bring about a plurality that is much needed for its maturity. Prob not just digital revolution but also including film making in curriculum the way drawing and painting is. Films or rather videos are now becoming integral part of our life with online educational courses, advertisements, farewell videos and even instruction kits using videos to illustrate a point. Therefore learning how to make a movie not just sensitizes people but also serves as a good skill set .

Our film content was probably more evolved in the 50s when the film as an art form was being discovered and people from all walks of life were entering it. Now, there is some sort of calcification of mindsets. Art thrives in exploring the unknown - trying out new things.  Its important to ensure we make money but why is it not important to ensure that we create beautiful original movies ?

That's why I feel that one thing that we should look out for is ensuring that more and more number of people can make movies bypassing traditional producers and traditional mindsets. More people will also comeup with smart and better ideas of tackling one of the biggest bottleneck of film business  - the distribution.

 It's hightime, like in silicon industry (which is also relatively young) for the young newer ways to start competing with older traditional ways. The day a film made by a newbee in nagpur competes equally strongly with Iron Man for our attention- I will celebrate the most !

Love

 Normally I am pretty matter of factly about cinema but compilation of this rare chinese archival footage by Wong Kar Wai on one of my fav melodies got me really gushing.



I tried hard couldn't find the translation of the song except it's title which means "The years slipped by like flowers" . But I found some other translation of some other song (which I customized to shorted and make it prose like) and I thought I could as well ascribe the meanings of that song into this one. So here is - my customized translation - of one of my fav chinese song :):


The years slipped by like flowers:
Hazy streetlights quietly stood in the drizzle,
The past again swept me by...
I still remember at the time of parting, 
You tightly held my both hands,
You uttered lightly one sentence "take good care"
And my eyes became hazy...
In foreign land, the wind is colder and the dews are more condensed. 
Layer upon layer, the longing lasts for ages.
From distant land, arrives a secluded sound of songs.
And each melody fills my heart's fields ....

Hazy streetlights quietly stood in the drizzle.
And the past again swept me by ...


Addendum:
Found the translation of the song here: http://bbs.nciku.cn/space.php?uid=2811&do=thread&id=7663

Power of 1 person

Every person represents the human race - to every other person and to nature. I think it's a big responsibility and great power. Because at any juncture, a singular person with his/her singular action, can redefine the character and capabilities of the entire human race.

Weird dream

Today I experienced a beautiful moment.
And then I went to sleep and I got a dream that I am someone else in some other world and the beautiful moment  I experienced was not real but a dream. And in my dream I was heart broken that my reality was not real but a dream.
But then I woke up and reality fell back in it's original place and I got my beautiful moment back :).


P.S: Bookmarking some delightful animations:

http://vimeo.com/60999448

http://vimeo.com/58562532

http://vimeo.com/60754449

http://vimeo.com/60547691

http://vimeo.com/60989007

Consumption of art and moral stamina

 Isn't it great to try to touch something inexhaustible and infinite with your work and hope that it comforts the person who is exposed to it.

I am one of them who really truly believe that art/literature/movies can give birth to a tender lilly in the hearts of the cruelest of men.  It can transcend space and time barriers, it can impact your soul. There is a great joy in being exposed to evolved work that originate from intricate and beautiful minds  and that joy is similar to  spending time with a nice friend or mentor who can help you see your life through a prism. You can carry back this wisdom that (if the artist is lucky) will help you fill the gap between you and the world you live in.

I read this interview and found a  great resonance in the fundamental intentions of this artist.

To quote:

"I have difficulty giving up the notion of the nobility of art. I make money doing this, and I want to make money, and I would like to have a lot of money, but I still believe that the only reason to write is that somehow it will make something or somebody better. I do believe—and I know I shouldn’t—that art transcends money and success and any of that. You can still do it if you’re not clinging to the notion of nobility. But I am, I’m clinging to it by my nails. I really can’t justify it intellectually. I’d argue against it rationally. Yet, if it wasn’t for that—what would this life be? What would this world be? What the fuck would we do? I’m fully aware that it’s something that cannot be accomplished by me or anyone, but it’s something to strive for, and fail at, daily."

Full interview here:

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/there-is-no-real-life/

Regarding mediocrity

It's hard to make something that's interesting.' It's really, really hard. Basically, anything that anyone makes…It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It's all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a fucking act of will. 

You just have to exert so much will into something for it to be good.

- Ira Glass 

Midnight wisdom from a overworked mind

When u have big budget people working in it atleast get good money but when u have a small budget, there is no subterfuge-  u have to make sure u make a fucking good film!  Make that time & effort count.

Law of 10X: Doing everything better by a factor of 10

I woke up at 4 am today because somewhere in sleep I started dreaming about my work and then I just woke up. Since my husband was out of town, my dog was sleeping with me with her tiny head on my stomach - our fav pose.

Anyways I felt I was wide awake so thought I could make a nice cup of tea and work on the thing that had sparked my brain in the morning. My dog's eye was still squinting when I switched on the light so I decided to move to my office downstairs.  I wrapped my dog in my blanket and quietly went downstairs. My dog dutifully followed me and came and slept on my office sofa.

Anyways - the above para seems pointless. However what was significant was that this was not a regular day. This was once in a blue moon day - very rare days when the ideas wake me up and I get so excited that inspite of it being a wintry morning and having a cosy,velvetty dog snuggling next to me, I felt like getting to work. And there was no deadline/motivation for me to abandon a good morning's sleep.
So as a result, this morning I was way more charged up as I normally am.


I also read a thing from Larry Page. It was regarding giving 10X to everything you do. Or rather doing everything better by a factor of 10 (with age you realize that they are two different things). And I just felt that today was the right day to receive that advice. And almost adopt that as a motto, as a benchmark for my every performance, in every field.

When we look at the stars ...

Mixing science, philosophy and dreams in this post:

The light from stars take quite a while to reach us- they measure the distance in light years - some stars take 4-5 light-years to reach us, some take 100-200 light years.. and some thousands...
So interestingly when we are seeing the stars in the sky we are not seeing  the present, but we are seeing the past...
Our night sky - a canopy of stars and constellations - in reality is a web of past - a starry cobweb.

Now we are all synthesized from our environment.  Matter, atoms. We are made up of earth.
How was this earth formed?
After the big bang all the matter started spreading, all the atoms, all the star-dust started spreading in all directions.
The earth made us, but these stars, their dust made the earth.

So when we are looking at the sky, when we are looking at these stars - stars that are thousands of light years away - we are looking at a past .... but not just any past....we are looking at our own past.

Just some food for thought.

Film

One day my car was passing western express (bandra to goregaon travel), I saw a poster - probably of Dev.D and it struck me because the designs were not common for hindi posters. They were not out-of-the-world for a person following latest designs but one wouldn't find them in Indian posters. 

At that time, I slipped into my fantasy land. I wondered how the poster of any of my film should be, and I was thinking of nature not content as I didnt have a first film in mind then. I thought if my poster would be up on any highway - it should cause traffic jams and minor collisions because the art in it should absolutely fascinate the onlookers. It should be unique, radical yet familier. Like those russian posters I once saw.

And then even in the trailer, if tv is on and if the person is in another room and they hear the trailer they should drop everything and run and look at the trailer. They should feel compelled to share it with everyone and they should feel that they have stumbled upon something great - something that they cannot contain within themselves..it should fill them up with joy and anticipation...

And how should the movie be - after the movie ends - people should feel transformed - something intrinsically, they feel like being better, they feel like changing the world. Maybe they find out what is the purpose of life and value people who love them more...or they realize something significant and meaningful and pertinent - like they are alone sufficient to bring about a change and do a task and they need no one and still can influence everyone...The film  touches them in that way - it acts like a catalyst for that internal transformation and awakening.

That's why I like to give a feeling of high through films- a film shld be the best kiss you ever had, best musical symphony you ever heard, best painting you have seen, it should be the highest peak you have climbed, it should feel like victories of decades of hardwork, it should be like LSD, and it should be all of this combined. 

I think the medium has the power. I would like to wager that.

First Blog of 2013 - Speciesism

 This morning I saw lots of picture on my facebook profile of animal testing or animal manipulation to maximize their productivity. Thanks to my friend Richa Hingle for that. If you haven't seen, do see the pictures of cows whose guts have holes so that farmer can access it directly or dogs who are gassed to death or bunnies whose neck and eyelids are opened ala clockwork orange style so that lipsticks and masscaras are tested on them.

Now hardly any of my blog posts have been about animals so why suddenly this post.  Because something happened to me in 2012. If you havent been following me and my 1000 updates then let me state - "yes I got a dog!" This was my first brush with an animal. I never thought animals were worthy of my time. They do not help me any which way - professionally, evolution-wise, they die before me so they even cannot take care of me in my old age, or even materialistically.

But having a dog myself sensitized me towards animals and nature in a way that no documentary or article or experience or trek would ever do. So this article will sound farce to lots of people. But if you have experienced animals in day to day life, have tried to invest time in understanding them, then you will probably understand where I am coming from.
In any case, I suppose articles like these are worth a thought because knowledge never goes waste.

I can testify that animals exhibit the same feelings as humans. I am talking about emotional intelligence EQ. The way we measure EQ in humans, if we could measure in animals, they would probably surpass us. And I say it with my own experience, they demonstrate lot more patience, love, affection and recall than we humans do. If you feel I am saying this because of my undying love for my dog Juno (aka Juno Singh, aka junki aka goodie girl), then believe a person who has studied animals way more than all of us combined - Charles Darwin:

"The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals." 

 I once had a friend and he was telling me that his sister married a Spanish - a language his family didnt know. So how did his sister's husband and his mother communicate? He said we underestimate sign and body language. And that's true, with my dog, both of us (being highly intelligent if we both say so ourselves) have developed a sign/body language which we both understand and for me living with her is like living with another human or say "a stream of consciousness". Animals can speak, its us who cannot listen (but we love shifting the blame to animals). These animals are equally emotionally rich. But any relationship requires time and patience which we lack. Forget about understanding animals, we do not have patience to understand our fellow human being.
Lots of my friends say that we are more evolved than animals, so we earn the right to rule over them. However, I have met lots of people who have very low IQ. In all brashness and immodesty, I can say they are really dumb. But then, should I round them up and gas them to death or puncture their guts or torture them, beat them, kill them eat them and feed it to our kids?  Why was there outrage against concentration camps then?

Somewhere I feel the core problem is identification. We cannot identify with animals and hence we feel its ok to torture them. Sensitizartion towards nature and animals should be part of school curriculum. Isn't that also knowledge and knowledge should first be imparted about our surrounding first. We can study and read up about Big Dipper and Ursa Major later, this is close home, this should be taught first.
This is the moral science we need - respecting other beings. We cannot justify horrible moral choices by saying "we are evolved" or "we are more intelligent" or we are "bystandars" not participants. When on one hand we believe we are peace loving, corruption or rape protesting individuals, on the other hand we cannot totally ignore what we do to animals. When we hold Nazis in disgust, we should be aware that we are being the same with someone else. And it's a moral choice we are making.

Someone once said that - "Knowledge is important. It helps us see what we are and what we might become." Knowledge is strength. I think in today's world we need to redefine "stronger". In my marathon practice, whenever I slowed down, the fastest runner ran back to give me company. That is strength - the ability to help- not ability to rape or ability to torture. That is succumbing to your weakness.

Top Post - Films Written and Directed by Arati Kadav

USS PAAR - (35 mm) 17 min: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY4Cfiz2ZfI

Film Festival selections:

- River to River Florence Film Festival, Italy, 2010
- Kalpanirjhar film festival, Calcutta
- Article 19 - Won the Best Short Film Award
- Bhubaneshwar International short film fest
- Xaverian Film Academy ( X.F.A ) 

- Newyork Film Festival 

- Germany Film Festival  (Indisches Filmfestival 'Bollywood and beyond')
-Silent River Film Festival, Irvine, CA - Nominated for Best Film and Best Director. Won River Admiration Award for Outstanding Film and River Pearl Award for Best Child Actor
- Selected for 8th International Directors Lounge, Berlin
- Selected for Shorts Competition & Focus section at John Abraham Signs Film Festival 2012
- Selected for Kaala Ghoda Film Festival Mumbai
- Selected for NIFF, India, 2012
- Won Dada Sahab Phalke Janmbhoomi Puraskar for Best Short Film, 2012

Gulmohar (35 mm) 11 min : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8KywzAe2ts

- River to River Florence Film Festival, Italy, 2011
- Selected for 12th Mumbai International Film Festival, 2012
- Selected for Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival, Venice , Italy, 2012
- Selected for NIFF, India, 2012

- Selected for maremetraggio film festival Italy 2012

Reflections: (16 mm) 8:11 min: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0AgFMpxSxE

Selected for Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival


Blog on 3D:  http://aratikadav3d.blogspot.com/


Some self made HD videos:
Small Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMNXY4GaPRc
Chalkboard Animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyIV3tgBU48
Later chalkboard was used for Uss Paar credit sequence (in collaboration with Zenish Mehta): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft757USiIBo
Test - generating emotions without face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmibOqFKTXU
Some 3D tests (done with 2 HD camera side-by-side):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pUvs9lJ2WQ. Plus my blog on "home-made 3D": http://aratikadav3d.blogspot.com/


Past Credentials: Computer Engineer from IIT, Kanpur. Worked as Software Development Engineer for Microsoft, Seattle for 3.5 years. Expertise in computational grids and machine learning & AI. 2 years course on Film Making from WWI. Received class valedictorian award. Worked in Advertisement Industry - Olay, Bournvita, Puma. Made documentaries for Goa Tourism.

Shining Moments

Today our ads are out on TV.

7 webisodes that got promoted to TV and 2 TVCs.

Here is the link to first 2 minutes, a pic of our campaign and also  pic of me posing next to a tv (cheapster) :).

Parents didnt have zoom so they subscribed to it by paying 800 bucks & calling tata sky - just to see my ad. And were glued to tv from 6 pm. They were the ones who called me @ 8 to tell me that they saw the ad coming thrice.

2 of 7 webisodes: 1 of 5 TVCs:

And the DVD covers are here! (click on them for better res)

Key to Happiness In Any Profession

I feel that if you find these 3 things in your profession, you have found your calling.

Pleasure. Engagement. Meaning.

Some awesome ipad apps useful for moviemaking

I think people management is intrinsic part of any director's profile. However, sometimes, you like to do certain things yourself (lack of budget, complicated idea that language cannot explain) and so here are some very useful apps that I think will help up maximize productivity.

1) Storyboard Software:
A picture is worth a 1000 words. And if you have to communicate a shot to your DOP, actor, production designer, AD, it is sometimes worth 4000 words.
Here is a very handy and useful app for storyboarding:
http://tamajii.com/storyboards/
They also have storyboard in 3D:
http://tamajii.com/storyboards3d/


2) Basic Animation
Don't we love to animate and are limited by the technical process. I usually overcome that by doing stopmotion. But that is also a long process. What if you are stuck waiting for someone for hours. Sometimes you don't feel like reading a book even then. So on those days you can use these app to create small animation videos for public service, for friends, for yourself. Also a nice way to have howtos for your site.
Here are two such apps:
   Animation desk: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/animation-desk-for-ipad/id409124087?mt=8
   (http://www.padgadget.com/2011/08/10/animate-your-thoughts-with-animation-desk-for-ipad/)
   and a more basic: http://itunes.apple.com/IN/app/id362956988?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4


3) Photoshop
http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/id495716481?mt=8
Working on photoshop - making those posters could be easier with this app. I haven't tried it out and some feedback is that it is not very smooth (first version maybe). But I think it will make it more intuitive with time :).

So enjoy and get creative with your ipad :).

    

Why I love Fantasy

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, 

rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

— George R.R. Martin

Transcience

There is something very beautiful and potent about transient moments.. fizz of a soda bottle, passing gaze of a stranger,  stolen glances, arriving at an idea, an image or a brush stroke ... they make you realize that your heart is deeper than the deepest well you have seen, that you are not just a random stranger walking on the road but that somewhere you are connected to a whole, that you can cause a ripple in the cosmos, that your insignificance doesn't contain you, or you realize that any mould whether physical, mental or societal ever made, cannot contain your heart, your mind...that somewhere you can free yourself from the fabric of space and time and bounce and jump and even fly ... and the truth is that it's only in these moments you realize that you are fully alive and finally through these transient moments you will live forever....

2 really good respources

I normally refrain from posting other people's articles on my blog but I really liked 2 links a lot:

1) Design Thinking: A 40 minute lecture on designing which is simple awesome. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670615/a-40-minute-crash-course-in-design-thinking
I will find myself revisiting it often.

2) 10 ideas for people in advertising from the original Mad Man of advertising (George Lois):  http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670603/10-tips-for-success-from-george-lois-the-original-mad-man#1

Two of the pointers I swear by and I know is true :

1) The accepted system for the creation of innovative thinking in a democratic environment is to work cooperatively in a team-like ambience. Don’t believe it. Whatever the creative industry, when you’re confronted with the challenge of coming up with a Big Idea, always work with the most talented, innovative mind available. Hopefully … that’s you. Avoid group grope and analysis paralysis. 

2) To create great work, here's how you must spend your time : 1% inspiration, 9% perspiration & 90% justification.

This I am only realizing with time. Any work you do you have to justify and convince your team, your clients, your financiers investors etc and unimaginable amount of energy goes into it. The energy seems more so because we are not marketing people- we are essentially creative people. 

Indian Ocean Music Video is out!

It was one helluva shoot and lots of hardwork went into it. Thankfully, I lost my mind only once - that is after the final release when I uploaded the final video on youtube I felt the video and audio suddenly went out of sink. Maybe it was fatigue of so many days of intensive edit work. And I said to Zain - "oh my God now what do I do". Obv the video hadn't gone out of sync but nonetheless I had started losing it. It takes 5 uncertain hours upload a HD video with our flaky internet and I was saying "let's do it again, let's fix it and do it again, let's not give up, let's do it again". Zain and my dog Juno both were in total state of shock - albeit briefly. Then I went to eat icecream and felt better. Maybe empty nest syndrome.  Bye bye another video - you no more belong to me now.

Guerilla Branding (Post is work in progress)

Now that I am in showbiz and we have our own company Tangelo, I am trying to understand brands better. Read a few books on it and here is condensed version of all that I understood.
I would be concentrating on guerilla branding. Branding for small businesses or even industry professionals who are free-lancers like writers, cinematographers, directors.

It's a work in progress and I will refine it as I keep reading and contemplating :).  I will write it as a FAQ so that it is more precise and to-the-point.

First 2-3 days I will concentrate on basics so that when I reach guerilla branding part, the basics are covered better.

Why does one need branding ?
Before we talk about branding businesses or movies, one has to realize that every person is a brand in him/herself (whether they like it or not). Brand gives people around you confidence. And brand is bigger than what you do. It shows what you 'are'. A good brand indicates values like intelligence, responsibility and results.
I have always felt shy about these things, but even if you are not a pompous company/person, you have to realize that your brand is your credit for the value you provide. Your brand determines your perceived value.
An additional note is that branding is not a substitute for your strengths and innovations. But it certainly helps as your sphere of influence starts increasing.

Consistency.
What I have realized that consistency in communicating the brand and your behavior towards your customer is very important.
As it helps make people have a clear association with you. Inconsistency is one the worst brand your company can have.  Lot of times in hospitality and service industry, your contact person and service environment determines the brand. So it is very important to choose and train these contact persons correctly and invest in an environment that communicates your brand correctly. Or if you are the contact person yourself, it is better to take efforts to be be nice and courteous all the time.

What are brand components ?
We all understand what a brand is, but for precision people breakdown the term "brand" into the following components:
- Identifiers - Name (for products it can be logo, color of the logo)
- Attributes - What a customer thinks in response to the identifier.
A brand can represent
1) Need
2) Emotional Benefit
3) Functional Benefit
4) Economic Benefit
5) Feature
6) Product or service.
As you can see, for your brand to be effective, the higher you are in that list, the better.
- Associations - The wiring in the customers mind - what attribute do they give to your brand.
For example think of a few things you use in your day to day life. e.g Facebook - what attribute you associate with it (Is it a product for you, is it functional need or emotional need - every person's usage of facebook varies based how he/she associates with it).
 Or think of yourself in your organization. What attributes do you think your colleagues associate with you (are you their need?).

In a market, how do you position yourself effectively to create strong Brand Associations ?
Though you and your product can have lot of key benefits, start by choosing just 2-3. But before your customer is deciding whether to use your product/service the bigger challenge is will he even consider your product/service. Most young professionals in this industry face the challenge number one :).

To go about this, one should collect data and understand the market.
1) Do situation Analysis - Understand customers and competitors
2) Market Segment - What area of the market or what group of people will seek you e.g. Do you own a Pancake shop or a Gujju Thali joint. What appeals to whom. Someone says: "If everyone is your customer then prob noone is your customer".
3) Positions - This consists of 3 benefits that your market segment wants and how you can provide it better than the choices available to them.
4) Communicate - Now you need to find a gap between your brand position and customer perception. And work towards bridging it. This cannot happen over-night. Brand communication requires series of nudges and not a big violent push so this is a long process and happens over a period of time.

Now that I have positioned myself, how do I communicate ?

Perspective across Professions: The Best Lot

A long delayed post as it was on my mind for a while.

I have observed lots of people doing very well in various professions. Additionally, I have been fortunate enough to have experienced two diametrically different professions first-hand - Microsoft  in US and film-units in Bollywood.

Recently I came across a quote from Rahul Dravid (Indian Batsman) that stayed with me.
"I think we judge talent wrong. What do we see as talent? I think I have made the same mistake myself. We judge talent by people's ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That's the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent. I think when we judge talent, we have got to look at the whole package"-- Rahul Dravid

I remember when I used to interview candidates for Microsoft, we used to be told that we need to evaluate a candidate not just for his coding skills but also for his core values- that included focus, personal discipline, being open to new ideas, ability to work as a team, ability to not give up easily on tough problems, ability to be accountable and take ownership, keenness to learn and grow.

And even when I work with people, in movie-making - I have felt that best people to work with are with these core values. Infact the best people who cut the clutter and have reached the top exhibit these values the most. As somewhere these core values help them constantly evolve their professional skills and ensures that they do not take any aspect of their work for granted. Moreover working with them is rewarding for others as well.
 Rajkumar Hirani (one of the most commercially and critically successful Indian Film Directors) for example meticulously works on his script draft after draft. He makes sure that he visits locations and does shot breakdown in advance, and works diligently in the casting of even small actors. He had years of experience as an editor too and directors who have worked with him confirmed that he tried his best to provide best editing solutions to their rushes. We can see that he really excels in his core values. Who knows, maybe Mr Hirani might have made a good software engineer too if he wanted to :).


 The technical skill-set of a profession can be acquired. I think rest of the qualities take years and is largely dependent on how you were oriented since childhood, or how you decide to orient yourself with time. How seriously you take yourself and if you believe that your work does define your identity. 

Let's play with gifs and a nice article

Here is one:




Also here are some very good set of tips for screen-writing:

http://www.screenwritingu.com/screenwriting-articles/208-josh-whedons-top-10-writing-tips.html

Marketing Strategy Presentations for Films

I have been asked by lots of people - what is the marketing strategy of your film? Lots of investors/producers/dustributors expect a presentation from the director him/herself.

New/indie filmmakers, who are trying to prepare a presentation for the same, should try to cover the following points. You will see that thinking about these pointers will automatically help you devise a good marketing strategy.

1) Marketing Strategy
 - Target Group 
    Determine which age-group is most likely to watch your film. Kids, youth, adults. (Or as a distributor in Naaz will ask you: class ki mass ?)

 - Genre and Tone of Pitch to Target Group
    Now that you have identified your audience, what qualities of the film will you present to the audience. E.g Vicky Donor was a comedy-drama but they promoted it only as a comedy.

 - Creative Media Strategies for Brand Differentiation
   Incase you dont have stellar star cast, what strategies will you use to differentiate your promo from 1000 other promos. How will you excite your TG.
Personally I feel a good way to approach this is by being in the shoes of TG.
    a) What qualities in the films do they want to watch
    b) What are the locations/mediums where they discover a movie
    *c) How do they take that "decision" to go to the theatre and watch it.
 What hints will you plant and at what all places so that they are able to take that decision readily.

 - Choice of Songs to Release
   Songs play an important role in marketing. They play in radio, music channels constantly reminding people of your movie.  Delhi Belly is a great example. Hardly any of the released songs were used in the film but they were used to draw the audience to the theatre.

 - Pre-Release Word of Mouth
   What WOM willl you generate that people would really really want to see your film.

2) Release Strategy
 - Types of theatres (multiplexes or single screen)
 - Show Timings
 - The Date of release of the film. This timing is extremely important. Just the right timing can make your film a hit or flop - you need to do in-depth study to understand it.


---
Update: These are some of the pointers that I have arrived at after talking to various people and with time. If you have more pointers please add and help.
Any data that gives insight in Release Strategy would be really helpful.

Two secret teasers of my music video for Indian Ocean

I am really excited about the new music video I produced and directed for Indian Ocean. And it features Rajat who already published a newspaper article about us (Read it here) . Here are some of the teasers I made. A big shot out to my Co-Director Zain Matcheswalla and Cinematographer Vidyut Singh Jaswal.
These are still not final teasers but I just can't help share them in my chotu blog.

Basic concepts of Gravity, blackhole, wormhole

P.S: Just a change of mood.

Newton questioned why apple falls on the ground and deduced that smaller objects get attracted to larger heavier object. But he never explained why.

Einstein explained it as follows with a very simple illustration. Imagine space-time to be a  large white bedsheet (space-time fabric) and all the objects, our planets, suns be placed on that bedsheet.
Now if you place a heavy object on a bedsheet, it causes a depression and the lighter objects get attracted to it. So earth causes a depression and sun causes a bigger depression and earth gets attracted to the sun and spirals round it. We as humans are so light that we cause a depression that nobody cares about and we remain glued to the earth.

A blackhole is a very heavy object and huge depression in the bedsheet and anything that comes near it gets sucked in.

Now this space-time fabric will be infinite so spherical. A wormhole is a depression that goes from one end of the sphere to another end. So if you enter a worm hole you can reach the other end of the universe.

The importance of editing

Understanding editing is very important. In this post and future posts, I will try to point out to certain articles and editing techniques that I think is important for every director to know. Below is first 20 minutes of a great Documentary on Editing. Remember seeing it in WWI and great to see it again.

Dir-editor is a team that is responsible for shaping the film and telling the story most effectively.
See what Sally (Tarentino's editor) says in part 2 - it's an invisible art because the aim is to keep the viewer emotionally invested. If a dir knows editing well, she can plan her shots well and time them well. I think the process of seeing my own footage on the editing table has greatly helped me improve my directorial skills.

See my previous post: http://aratikadav123.blogspot.in/2010/11/edit.html  on criteria for evaluating a cut as suggested by Walter Murch.

Story-telling - best techniques are transparent

Continuing the mood of my previous blog posts, I just wanted to write this blog as these thoughts totally pre-occupied me on my drive from Mumbai to Nashik.

The subject of discussion here is film-making craft and story-telling - and how the craft should help the story-telling and not distract from it.

I saw a short film made by young enthusiasts and I felt though the short film was made with not so developed filmmaking techniques  (bad hand held camera, simplistic shots)  it was made with such purity of heart that I felt I really enjoyed it and it stayed with me.

Why did I feel that it was made with purity of heart ? Why didn't I feel any purity so in say the recent well-crafted films I saw. How can a badly crafted film show more purity than a well-crafted film by professionals ?

Somewhere when we look for refinement in story-telling techniques, we start seeing these techniques outside the context of story itself and it's likely that we stop paying attention to the central thought of the film and  gradually start betraying the film's story. For example - "wah kya camera gol gol ghoom raha hai. Wah wah".Maybe instead of thinking about the camera, the audience was supposed to feel sad for the woman's death. So these small distractions add up. Precision is important to create a transcendance with your films.

I rem a lecture in my film-making course on causal chain given by shyamal  - esp coz he gave the same lecture twice and I was bored to death. But in the process the thing that was drilled down my head was that a given scene follows another scene and leads to another scene. A very simple but profound teaching. That is there is a causal chain, and every scene is defined by what precedes it and what follows it. So I remember when I was shooting my short fiction "Reflections", there was a scene were a classmate of mine had a small role of being a barber and he is very hilarious inherently. So during the shoot, beyond the part that was written, he would do something hilarious to enhance the performance and everybody in the crew were lapping it up. And we thought we got a good take. But I asked him to give one more take where he just walks to the lead and says just what is necessary. And he was so disappointed and everyone in the crew said why we need another take esp coz we were shooting 16 mm and on a strict budget of cans. But at that point I was remembering the lecture,  and I knew the scene before and the scene after this one and a distraction of thought from emotions of the protagonist (esp for a 7 min film) to the side actor would have really affected the film. And on the final edit I felt I took a good call (now I must re-iterate that filmmaking being subjective, people might disagree with my call as well but for a dir it is very imp that he has least number of regrets on the edit table).

I think the best films I have seen so far have impressed me with their story  first (or the profoundness of central thought and the catharsis it caused in me by emotionally involving me) and much later do I notice the acting, editing, direction and music.

 Appreciation for the parts should come only after appreciation for the whole.


But the stage of filmmaking I am in - or some of my friends or colleagues are is sort of an adolescent stage where our enthusiasm can lead us to get attracted by techniques at the cost of story.  However, with time and experience, we could also settle and aspire to be filmmakers like Koreda where every nuance, every use of technique is originating from the story and enhancing the story. Only a trained director on second viewing can point of the techniques that he slyly used, the techniques so effective that they became transparent.



Addendum: Actually the environment in which a film is made is also very important. The forces coming together to make the film - the producer, the music director, the cinematographer, the editor etc also play an important role in it.

We live in exciting times !!!!

Cloud computing/ Grid computing which was my MTech thesis topic is now an everyday reality. Now you can leverage that to do anything you want - you just need to pay a rent like electricity rent and all the cost of maintaining 1000s of servers, dealing with complexity and nightmares of their security/availability is taken care by these cloud computing vendors. You can just concentrate on your code.
Heroku (based in US) and E2ENetworks (based in India) are good cloud computing beds for deploying your apps that you want to scale as number of users or connections to your server increase.


In my prev blog post I was talking about my secret s/w venture. And now that I have done enough coding and made enough progress I thought I could share it.

But the main reason for this post is to encourage - students and software engineers to harness the power of cloud computing and push them to give way to your dream start ups. It's much easier. This project was something I did alone in 6-7 months and it will take additional 2-3 months but I did it only on weekends or weeknights that too intermittently -only last 1 month I gave weekdays too. Also I had to learn the whole web stack (and languages like php, jquery, ajax, css, sql which are actually pretty simple). For people who need not learn all that - it is simpler and easier. Also I am a control freak and write everything from scratch and obsesses about having simplest design and not use drupal etc so I had to write and test code and it took me longer (amt of debugging time is always more than amount of coding time). It will take less for you.



Anyways really-  I wish next Zuckerberg or the killer software app is from India and I hope some young s/w engg or any guy who has a dream of making a killer site can make it. In the comments later I will also post all the websites that will help you learn and create things faster.

What does it take to make your film emotionally felt ?

Recently I saw two movies from two top directors. I call them top director because I see their film as text-books, something to learn from and and get inspired from. I know they will present their stories in ways I haven't seen. They will have mise-en-scenes that are unseen, not just in India but in the world. Atleast that's what I expect.

And well when I saw the film, I was mighty impressed by the world they created. It's always good to get a refresher on how to construct a scene. Their techniques and the density of the film world they created was something that I cannot imagine acheiving in my first 3 films atleast. The "karigari" was of the highest quality.
But after seeing their films and thinking about them, I got a little tensed. Tensed cause inspite of being such brilliantly crafted, I don't know why, I couldn't feel much. I couldn't take that journey with the characters, in their highs and lows. It felt like I was the spectator and a film was unfolding in front of me. It never felt for me that I was myself going through it. Their movie-making craft was not helping their story-telling.

A good contrary example (but rather random) that come to my mind from a scene in Indian cinema is that of Johnny Gaddar when Johny is sitting in front of Dharmendra and Dharmedra has found out that he is the one who killed their team-mate and Johnny shoots at him. He is doing a wrong thing but  I was with that guy. Even my instincts were - kill him. I was one with the character.

In the past too, in one of my films I have failed to make it emotionally felt. Did I not spend enough time in making people register what my character was feeling.Was the problem in the edit, my handling of actors or was the problem in the writing itself where the thoughts in my head didn't reach my paper ?
And how to avoid being in a dissatisfying situation like this ? A story not well-told is dissatisfying for everyone.
I thought this could only be attained by taking care of feeling/emotions in every phase of film-making. Think of "feelings" like a delicate rose petal that I have to take care and transfer it - from my soul, to my mind to my script, to my shots and finally in my edit (& music) and to my viewer's mind and soul.
So these are my recommendations - moreso to myself than to anyone else to help a film convey the emotions I set out to convey.

1) Feel it - If I don't feel to or I never felt it - it will not be born. So feel the threat of being caught, feel the joys of living a life - feel it on my mind, not just in my shots or plots, but feel it in my being.

2) Write about it in script. Make room for it, give instances, experiences to the character so that they can convey their personality traits, give them specificity, give them weirdness, give them nuances, give them scope of presenting spontaneous reactions. Cross check that you have indeed downloaded your thoughts into you script. 

2b) Make those nuances visible in your shot breakdown. Make room for them. Plan shots so that we orient viewers to receive it. (An example from King's speech last shot where the coach is in his room thinking about the King and the King standing, waving people, thinking about the coach - the shot breakdown was very subtly and nicely done and they made room to convey this thought on the script)

3) During shoot- Convey it to your actors. They should be sure and very clear of the story in the point in time of the film. Incase they are not then they will not convey what you envisioned or thought of. It should reflect in their face, their body language, in the vibe or energy they exude. Give actors pauses where he is thinking and stay with him. So much of acting is done in pauses.

4) In the edit, between a good shot and a great feeling, give importance to feelings. Because even a million dollar shot will be of no use if it cannot generate a feeling. So stress on feelings and emotions.

These are my thoughts. However, if someone has pointers on text, case study or subject matter that can help me increase the emotional footprint of my film then please let me know. In the coming months, I will take up some scenes/movies and see what made them tick emotionally. Any recos ?


Update:  After discussing with a colleague, just want to clarify that beingn emotionally felt is not a mandate for any film and people can make any film and enjoy it the way they want.  And that is not the area towards which I want to steer any discussion . It's just a blog on what I feel,  and what I want to achieve with my films.

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