Discovered an amazing photographer

Nastia Kaletkina

See some of her work here:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Nastia+Kaletkina&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=UMKHT9TyFMiGrAfA59jbCg&biw=1403&bih=740&sei=V8KHT-DdMMPqrQf4g_ChCw

The movies that we like

I have always seen some really good gems  that have come and got appreciated by people - be it Khosla Ka Ghosla, OLLO, Udaan, Delly Belly and many other ones and I have heard their makers say that their film-script was rejected by every production house in town.

And why so ? I was discussing this with Zain why a good script is rejected more than an ordinary mundane, rehashed script.
And there was very interesting point he mentioned that such films need to be really well-made, intelligently marketed to do well. Such requirements are not for films like housefull-2 who neednot even be a complete script to begin with. But inspite of that the producers know that the elements in such films: actors and the promise of brainless laughter is enough to get a substantial num of people in theatre. These films are not the first choice of people if a genuinely good film like 3-idiots with top actors is running but films like 3-idiots are few and far between and in the absence of anything good, these are the ones that run the most. So for a producer these are the safest bets.

Whereas for films like Khosla ka Ghosla - everything has to be good, story, acting, direction, edit and even then because it doesn't have big stars that draw the crowd, it will barely make enough money. It doesn't matter that over a period of time Khosla Ka Ghosla will outlive the housefull series in terms of entertainment. On paper, it is a risky proposition.

Attraction

Sometimes I wonder what attracts me...sometimes I get attracted to ideas, well-read persons, who I feel have better understanding of things, sometimes I get attracted to plain simple niceness -a good person, sometimes I get attracted to cuteness, like my puppy.
Attraction seems multi-faceted to me but it always grows for me. Like in one of Salman Rushdie books he says that Akbar is infinitely attracted to Jodha who is his imagination and the more Akbar loves her, more she comes alive. Jodha is so alive that she worries what will happen to her if Akbar dies...

I guess that's what happens when we get attracted to a person, we replicate a person and create a local copy - an image of the person in our mind. And that image as much belongs to that person as it belongs to our imagination.
As we think, try to fill in the gaps, our imagination starts overtaking and somewhere we get far removed from the reality of the person and start living with this jodha ...unreal but alive...

I guess like every other emotion, attraction too feeds on itself ...

Infinity

When the new leaf woke up,
The traveling wind nudged her and said, I will meet you in 12 months.
The leaf first confused, didn't believe him,
But then gradually she started waiting,
With twinkle in her eyes,
She waited every minute, every hour, ever day, for the wind to come.
And the rains came, the sun came, and the sun went.
But the leaf waited.
With the twinkle.
6 months passed.
On the 7th month,
The leaf grew old
and died.

It's the 12th month now.

***

A good article on how the movie trailer cutting has changed

A good article : http://www.salon.com/2012/03/27/the_movie_trailer_revolution/

Just a post where I have all the pictures of my dog that I took from my phone

Doesn't want to take bath - staging peaceful protest

Stealing onions from kitchen caught on my customized cctv i.e. my mobile phone

Peaceful protest against regular dog food

Playing with her fav toy - saurabh's shoes

wondering what Saurabh does every morning

Enjoying car rides

With my friends

with my mom

"Come - play chase with me" look

Evening walks - i like the view :)

"I want something - not sure what"- look

"I exactly know what I am getting"- look

My milestones ...

Well yes I am full-time filmmaker now, have forgotten my coding-giri somewhere esp after going to film school. But unlike lots of people, I never hated studies or software coding.
Also I have realized that I like to be busy all the time. Some sort of a disorder, my psychologist co-writer says. If I don't have work I start going crazy, restless and unhappy.

Oflate, actually in December, I thought of doing something around films but it needed an software infrastructure.
Now right now I can't tell in the public site as I have been warned that it is vital to be an early entrant and knowing my coding pace and irreregular time-schedule I cannot claim loyalty to my deadlines of this side-project.
So anyways I call this my 10 percent project as entire week I work on films, but in the evening , to stimulate myself, I do some coding.

This blog is to mark my milestones as it give me a high and also self-accountability:
- Dec Vacation - project was conceived, discussed in white board with Saurabh. He saw potential. I drew up the first draft of visuals and design.
- Jan, Feb, Mid-march - I worked on my feature's script (we had some nagging issues and I wanted to address that). All documents around 10percent  project were placed in a folder called dreamproject. I call it dream project coz this is beyond me and an individual. I feel this will enpower so many people if rightly, neatly done with the intent of helping people rather than making revenue.
-March - Revived interest. As film pitching and cold calling was increasingly depressing me, I wanted to do something in parallel so that there is a sense of progress too. Also our production house Tangelo started and I am incredibly proud of my team so I managed to have 2-3 hours per day of free time (esp from 8-10:30 till I goto bed).
- Birthday - My father transferred me some money (40K) as birthday gift. Since it is his extremely hard earned money, I didn't want to waste it in materialistic pursuits. So Anyways, with the help of 2K - I managed to buy some infrastructure around my "dreamproject". Started looking for a web programmer (I don't have much experience in php).
- My brother coaxed me to code myself - called me names - and finally I started coding.
So it's end of march and I have managed to have xamp and login using fb on my site. This is not even the tip of the ice-berg. I have hell lots of coding to do. But well atleast getting the "hello world" right is sort of like a big stumbling block right out of my way.

Anyways ...i am liking this filmmaker by the day and geek by night thing. Incidentally 4 years ago it was opposite. I guess as someone had said when I was explaining long back that "I like coding also but i want to make films also"- don't be sheepish about having two passions.
And somehow managing both things - software and films together has imparted me a sense of self-fulfilment.

Goa Times

Hell yes! I gotta lose weight!!

Aca-tale-spy

Chance running into a newsletter I had started at IITK - http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/aca/newsletter2004_5.pdf 

Had wrote a huge anti-google article. Also all the funny cartoons there were made by me :).

Random Dreams ....

Maintaining this post to update some of the things I keep fantasizing about. Public - coz hoping someone echoes my thoughts and contacts me to make any of these possible.. ....some scientific some social and some just pleasure....

1) Face detectors at major railway station-exits that matches online record of missing people.
2) Mass Teleportation instead of mass transportation
3) A museum of animals made of cottons each animal  doing their regular chore - going to market, eating, just woke up, reading paper...and the museum is in their natural habitat (this could be an installation too)
4) Music training and color theory available to all children
5) Every school library has library of art-work created by students....
6) Knowing before hand whom you could marry/not marry...
7) Could change your head to another head
8) Roads are colored - houses are grey. Roads are colored, houses are colored...
9) Babies sitting in waiting room watching where they will be born.....
10) India has a design culture...an adda like prithvi...
11) Indians choose the color of their building.
12) Every square has an art work
13) Mild Music - classicals playing on the traffic lights...

The director and community

Whoever is fan of the paintball contest that happens at the end of community serial - read the struggles of it's creators - and also his theory of circles:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/mf_harmon/all/1

Below is reproduction of his proposed graph for every episode:

     1.  A character is in a zone of comfort

• 2.  But they want something
• 3.  They enter an unfamiliar situation
• 4.  Adapt to it
• 5.  Get what they wanted
• 6.  Pay a heavy price for it
• 7.  Then return to their familiar situation
• 8.  Having changed

In search for plants

...

I searched and asked lots of people for recos but seems like no one had any clue. Found this book - got the pdf version by the author himself.
Good and practical read for Indians.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_dgmMwooSjeMWY1ZmNjNTEtNTc5ZC00NDk0LWEzZjEtZmRhNGVlMTYxNzQy/edit?pli=1

Ghar se door Seattle mein

As I get a call that one of the closest friends leaves Seattle, talking to him, I get filled with nostalgia (sort of borrowed nostalgia). I guess there is always this age when you are single and crazy and you are lucky to meet people crazy enough with whom you get drunk, walk on the empty roads, celebrate birthday near a lake or throw surprise parties at a garage. They are the first people you call when you crash your car or drag to hospital if you have a broken back or discuss about your marriage plans or for whom you click pictures they can upload on shaadi.com. Suddenly I feel I am in my autumn years and wonder if all of us from the desi gang of "Ghar se door seattle mein" will ever be together again. What the heck - I even have the abandoned link of our super-flop blog:http://gharsedoor.blogspot.in/ with the older posts (http://gharsedoor.blogspot.in/search?updated-max=2006-09-22T10%3A34%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20&start=20&by-date=false) containing where we first met each other. P.S: How cheesy were we ?

Web Designing for non-web designers

Now - I am not a web designer. But actually web designing is not tough. When we wanted a simple site up -  I started talking to web designers and they started quoting outrageous rates.

The curse of being a software engg is that you know how much work it requires to do a thing (everyone takes advantage of information asymmetry). So I thought since I wanted to make a simple website and I had a day off, why not do it myself. It took me half a day(6 hours - but non-stop and full conc) to come up with something nice and decent (and lot of that half a day went in taming photoshop). And yes I have subscribed myself and every person I care with a online Adobe Photoshop course as nothing is frustrating to have an idea in the mind and not being able to do it. Even if you hire someone to do it - it is good to know the complexity.

So anyways I used Kompozer a source forge WYSWYG html developer (which actually purges out neat html codes that you can edit yourself if you want) and I was done with the html part in less than an hour including installation. A lot of time went in testing the website in various devices - ipad, phone, galaxytab, mac, small tablet (last thing I want is a broken site).

However, though I was gloating with my simple website (yes I am a big big fan of simple websites). Clutter free- tells you what you want, loads in 1 sec - doesn't waste people's time. But my teammates vehemently opposed a simple site. They wanted anim, they wanted php. Initially I told them - it's not democracy. Secretly I don't have the budget to fund that. But anyways till I have the budget, I could jazz this even more. Here are some links to cool website designs that might trigger your imagination.

http://www.instantshift.com/2010/05/05/77-latest-examples-of-creative-single-page-website-designs/
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beautiful-enticing-designers-websites/
http://creativedesignmagazine.com/30-elegant-minimal-web-designs-for-web-design-inspiration.html

And here is the simple site I designed:

http://www.tangelo.in



Also for new website developers and domain registerers - do submit url of your sites to google and bing.

Revisit before every startup idea

1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)
3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)
4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)
5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
6. Why now? (market window)
7. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)
8. How will we measure success/make money from this product? (metrics/revenue strategy)
9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
10. Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)

Accidentally in love

Got a new pup - a beagle. When we found out about her, I was totally against getting one as I thought my film is my pet, but when we saw her, I and Saurabh immediately felt that we wanted her. Now, I am not that much of a dog person. Infact I hate lots of condescending dog owners whom I sometimes run into a petshop (btw pet shops are chors - another blog on that). But it has been one week, she is quite a handful but a superduper cute, sometimes naughty but mostly a loving puppy. Every evening I feel that I am really asking too much of myself, working, shooting, handling people and then after giving her a brisk run in my roof I feel dead. But the love she gives me so much compensates for it.  It's been a week and gradually a strong, beautiful relationship - of a friend, of a parent is blossoming and I am realizing what an amazing thing is happening in my life.

And see this video of Juno - they say a dog becomes like her owner after a while. Now ain't she smart ;)?

P.S:
Advice for new first time dog owner:
- Be patient - invest time in first 4 months - you and your dog will reap the joys for remaining 15-20 years.
- I adopted marker training: http://leerburg.com/markers.htm - used nope (with sharp sound), yes with a friendly sound and after that rewarding a good behavior . In a week she learned sit, down, come, she understands the gestures for going to her bed, tries to pee and poo on paper (am still not 100% successful).
- You don't need full days but you surely need to give her 10-15 mins in morning and 10-15 mins in eve. I share the duty with my husband. It's advisable to teach her fetch command. That tires her without troubling you. I try to really tire her in the morn before I have to go for long hours of work. This puts her to sleep.
-

The simple pleasures

Well we all have our own journeys that lead us to making films or doing the job we wanted to do. Mine was simple - the joy of doing so. The obsession in shooting oneself, editing overnight and seeing if its looking right.

And sometimes when you are struggling to make the film, and you start breaking your head over it, meeting 5000 people, getting planning and schedule in place, our favourite Michel Gondry gives a gentle reminder.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/12/michel-gondry-remade-taxi-driver-adorably.html

The video there is good at so many levels. Primarily because it reminds one of the amount of joy a video gives to its creators.

Smooth stop motion - Hello World

So we spent the afternoon doing a cool stop motion.

The goal was simple - make a cup rotate but make it smooth - it should look like a video and not series of photographs.


 And in the process get all the software requirements in place (Remote camera clicking, animatorDV (with webcam - still ND), FCP settings etc).
I had some colorful sheets for BG. They were expensive and all the ideas that we had required them to be cut into pieces which I was vehemently against.
As a solution I found some clay. 3 years ago Zenish had given me some colored clay to play with. I still had it. So we thought we could use those to make letters. I made the W, the doughnut shaped Os and the purple D. Ofcourse it is not hard to guess that the black coffee was made by Zain and the coffee cup was actually Zenish's :).

In programming language - the first program one writes is printing "hello world". So well -this is our hello world in stop motion.

P.S 1: You require the remote clicking to make the animation totally jerk-free. If anyone who has lost their Cannon CD and wants to make use of it's suit use this link's video (cannon doesnot allow u to download from its site, u need to have an original dvd): http://www.nextwavedv.com/canon-eos-utility-download-and-install-for-mac/
Here is the link to the update site at cannon: http://software.canon-europe.com/software/0029171.asp 
We couldn't find the animatorDV (nor could I successfully find the webcam).

P.S: Also we made sure we use royalty free music from here: http://publicdomain2ten.com/. The music is by Duke Ellington, “Louisiana”

Algorithm for Clothes Management - how to fit everything in 3 shelves

Prologue:
Someone once told me that there was a study that said - the way we arrange our data in our computer is exactly the way we arrange our clothes in our cupboard. My arrangements can be described by one word - haphazard.

The Story:

Any average or non average woman knows that it is impossible to fit ones clothes in 3 shelves. Look at the categories of dresses we have - shirts, t-shirts, home clothes, jeans, office pants, sports wear, salwar suits (Indian), sarees, skirts, frocks/dresses, extreme formals, extreme maintenance (shaadi type clothes), micro dresses (in hope that we will be slim enough to wear them someday) socks, scarves/stoles/shawls, belts etc etc.

Also: I hate giving away clothes. I have clothes from 10 years ago that I feel difficult to part with because of emotional reasons. Some bought from my first salary, other bought by my dad and was very expensive at that time, one my brother got from his trip to Bangalore, one saurabh got for me after winning a sodexo pass in a quiz contest, one was a lucky shirt for exams, one my mom bought - very old fashioned and I hated it but she absolutely loved it so well i got emotional..and so on. There is a story behind every cloth. But lately (under the influence of my mother and maybe alcohol) I have given away some of my clothes to a poor man with four daughters - reasoning that they will use them and probably will take good care of them (my clothes sentiments were exactly like Andy's toys in Toy story-3)

Last week we moved into a new place.

So I and Saurabh thought instead of constantly negotiating the closet space (which is almost akin to fighting for armrest space in a movie theatre) - lets divide the closet space exactly by half. I could anyways use the guest bedroom's closet to fit in all my clothes. This was an unfair demarcation because contrary to me, my husband is a man of fewer means. He has three kind of clothes - office clothes, casual clothes, gym clothes all in single digit cardinality. (his computer's are stateless, he has no data files, no pictures, no favourite movies. Hard disk crashing has no emotional impact on him - infact he has no harddisk). For him clothes are just clothes and not an abstract entity like sister's love or wife's tears.

But I went along with it as - I had the whole guest bedroom wardrobe for myself. (I didn't want to put all my clothes in the guest bedroom as I used the master bath and there was 5 min inconvenience in taking clothes from one room to another)

After giving him all the shelves and using up some of mine for other things like bedsheets, towels, socks - my share was around 3 shelves.

Problem:
It was very obvious that I couldn't fit all my clothes in 3 shelves.

 But then I realized when I looked at my cupboard (mini-musuem) - that actually 80% of times, I only wore 20% of my clothes. (almost like 80% of time we use 20% of sites, or access 20% of files in our computer). 20% of my clothes could have been fitted in those 3 shelves easily.

But then how to choose that 20% from the variety of choices available to me. How many dresses, how many skirts, how many jeans etc etc.

So I thought I could let my own usage pattern decide that. And I came up with the following algorithm to select the top 20% of my most frequently used clothes.

Algorithm:
1) To begin with - my 3 shelves were empty. I would fetch the clothes from another room.
2) Whenever I wore something. I told my maid - after they dry not to put them in the closet of guest bedroom but in one of the 3 empty shelves of master bedroom.
3) Whenever I didn't want to wear what was available in those 3 shelves I would go and fetch it.
4)  In a week's time I realized that I had lesser need to go and fetch my clothes - as I had my comfortable choices of my favorite categories already in those three shelves.
5) Again if the shelves were over flowing - all I had to do was take the bottommost clothes and put it back in the guest cupboard (used this as a close approximation of least frequently used strategy).

This is a simple algorithm we use anyways for memory and cache management  of data. In my daily-cloth-retreival task it reduced my 5 mins of trip and crib. That came to 2 hours per month.

And I still have one shelf empty :) !


P.S: I am watching Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (Bollywood film) so I am right now only thinking of first world problems.

Fiction writers -

"Fiction writers as a species tend to be oglers. They tend to lurk and to stare. The minute fiction writers stop moving, they start lurking, and stare. They are born watchers. They are viewers. They are the ones on the subway about whose nonchalant stare there is something creepy, somehow. Almost predatory. This is because human situations are writers' food. Fiction writers watch other humans sort of the way gapers slow down for car wrecks: they covet a vision of themselves as witnesses.

But fiction writers as a species also tend to be terribly self-conscious. Even by U.S. standards. Devoting lots of productive time to studying closely how people come across to them, fiction writers also spend lots of less productive time wondering nervously how they come across to other people. How they appear, how they seem, whether their shirttail might be hanging out their fly, whether there's maybe lipstick on their teeth, whether the people they're ogling can maybe size them up as somehow creepy, lurkers and starers. "


http://www.thefreelibrary.com/E+unibus+pluram:+television+and+U.S.+fiction.-a013952319

....

"....For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood or desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with his capacity for wonder..... "- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I will make my heroines look like this

http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/4/30/hyeres-2011-erwin-blumenfeld-films

see the vid

why movies will always cost if we continue to use traditional sources of distribution ?!

Earlier movie-making was expensive. So people made lesser movies or rather lesser people made movies. Hence the marketing cost was lower as we had lesser issues of differentiating our movies with other's movies. Or lesser work to establish our brand equity to attract eyeballs. Also you needed to be part of the system to make the movies.

Now since the digital technology has become cheaper, and more portable, people can use videos to shoot guerilla take new non-actors and substantially bring down the cost of making a film.
However the cost of making movie has gone low not just for you but for 1000 others. So they all will make movies. So now the problem is finding an avenue to showcase the film.

Now with low cost films, we neednot stick to traditional medium of distribution.  So the question is - are we ready for non-traditional mediums of movie distribution ? Online, DVD, TV ? But the original problem of having an initial critical mass is still there.

MATISSE and ME

When I was 10 years old I copied a painting and stuck (with fevicol) on the walls of our living room - much to everyone's horror. As I grew up, I later found out that I had reproduced one of the million reproductions of Matisse below.

I was later reintroduced to Matisse by Fareeda when I picked up a book that contained all Matisse paintings in the WWI library. I had taken that book and reissued it weeks after weeks looking at his paintings. The library guys later made it a reference book (wtf) and I had all my plans to steal it before I left college. I still haven't been able to buy that book (out of stock in amazon :( ) or for that matter steal it :).

Matisse had family business of textile industry. He grew up amidst bright colors. His earlier work had all the details of the contemporary painter but later he started making detail free clutter free images. Esp. after his tryst with death after a cancer operation, he became bolder with his art forms hardly cared about the critics and developed his inimitable style. He took the post impressionistic style of painting to another level and we still use his paintings, bright colors, color combinations and style in our day to day life.

Ipod and Matisse

Infact good example is ipod ads and various ipod colors themselves. Here on the left  is an image of ipod advertisement and on the right is one of the Matisse works (the read dot is his heart).
The olympic logos 2012 and 2016 Rio ones are inspired by matisse paintings.

On left are matisse paintings  (circle of Life and the Snail) and on right are olympic logos of 2016 and 2012.

Incidentally Matisse paintings were not well-received by critics. But he found his patron in a wealthy Russian textile magnet who bought most of his paintings. He had told matisse: "These people don't respect you, but the future is all yours".
Lots of contemporary prints, color combinations in textile industry are inspired by Matisse's choice of colors in his paintings.

Colors: For matisse colors were emotions and he felt that colors should be depicted in a harmony. They should be used the way notes are used in music - create a visual orchestra. He was called a "Fauve" - a wild beast as he used extremely bright colors and not used the color from the real world. For him his paintings were his emotional response of a real-life visual. His choice of colors were lavish- brighter and shinier than any colors seen before his time. He always worked with a color wheel  - started off with Yellow Blue and moved around the wheel - choosing simple  combinations all right opposite each other or combination of 3 that forms isosceles traingle to more complex ones. Anyone who knows basic color theory today knows that these opposite colors (in right proportion)  cancel eachother in a way that their net effect on the eyes is of "grey". The grey color is soothing to the eyes and hence eyes can stay on them for longer. Hence all the matisse paintings had that stay. He himself said that sometimes to balance the painting totally he would externally use "white and black" that would balance his colors if they themselves did't balance each other. Matisse also used lots of secondary and tertiary colors apart from primary colors.

Color wheel RGB

One of my fav matisse painting

Patterns: Matisse was well travelled and took influences from various traditional art forms - he  was greatly influenced by Russian folk-art forms and  Islamic art forms (spending time in Morocco).

 He also started having interest in human figures and the space they are set in.

Matisse loved the  bright clutter of overtly furnished rooms, patterns in the room created a parallel complete world in each of his paintings.                                                   
Also gradually he started forsaking the idea of 3-dimensionality and treated his painting like flattened space replete with decorative objects.

Matisse Scissors

In my house I have two replicas of matisse paintings. Apart from that I have reproduced two of his paintings. One I have given to my brother and other is with me.

Reproduction with Asim

Reproduction with me

Implications in production design:
Matisse paintings have a richness of their own. And they come from choice of colors, color combinations and patterns used within the painting. We can use them as reference while choosing and designing our production design elements. Use tested combinations and gradually learn to start expementing on our own.
The other thing is the "matisse finish" on walls. A block of red wall will always look jarring to the eyes but if the finish is  like that of Matisse's walls - it is captured beautifully on camera (for example in above painting - the red of the floor has a different finish - he uses multiple adjoining colors to have that finish).
I sometime call it the "choona finish" that they have in walls.
However to have our films look like Matisse if we need to have massive production design and other controls on the environment we are shooting in. Sometimes this translates into higher budget.  So if we are going too indie - we cannot use that 100% control but we can still choose some of the elements like costume colors etc that helps us give our products a "little better than reality" finish (that is if one wants).
Below are some of the  frames of the 3 short films I have made and one can clearly see the matisse influence I had. Amongst all our biggest challenge was Uss Paar as we didn't have the control on the color of the station. But we tried to play with yellow(essentially brown) blue.

Shiva is the ultimate yellow blue God

An extra detailing on curtain and the candles adds details to the frame

The red (instead of white) boat on greenish water looks better

The classical red green frame. Added blue to decrease red

The yellow uniform - imagine if it was blue

Notice the matisse finish on the walls and Tina's dress color. Also a block of red just to offset too much green on the frame

We had specific colors for sarees too but couldn't manage them in timehowever a little color in the form of balloons adds the playfullness.

Purple and red hue to make the place look sensual

Inspite of being a painter, his last work was a chapel where he did lots of  glasswork and it is in Venice. I went to Venice and didn't know about the chapel  and hence didn't visit it. So you know how much angry with myself I am! Here is the glass work - "Tree of life" by matisse.

Matisse was an atheist but he still made the chapel for his nurse who had turned a nun. 

He had once famously said - "I believe in God only when I do my work !" 

Henri Matisse

Academics versus real life

I think our educational system stresses a lot on individual success. Pitching each person against another. The whole ranking system rewards individuals. Most of the time even preps for exams are done individually. This orients us differently as compared to what is required  at the real world. The real world favors team players more. It is important that team wins. Personal goals are subset of team goals.  Except sports period nothing else in school gives basic teaching of working in a group.

Just a thought off my head.

Top moment of the day

I was contacted by a publisher who wants to add my IIT thesis on computational grids (which was published in an IEEE journal)  in his book :)


Addendum:
So my film Uss Paar was shown at Ahmedabad too!! And the great feeling is that so many messages in my facebook inbox after that from the students!!! Some people asking about film and others about "wrestling woods" (they misspelled whistling woods) :).

2046

I just have huge respect for directors who manage to create mood successfully. For me - WKW will remain the master of mood creators with his original frames and beautiful moments. Grandeur and beauty. The power of cinema. Infact whatever I know of mood creation I have learnt from him. He is my guru. It's a shame they dont cover him in film school classes. Anyone who has seen Reflections  (my 16 mm short fiction) would easily tell my WKW influence.

Amongst his various films, I have really enjoyed 2046. Also watching this movie was my first meeting with WKW. And somewhere I feel a strange deep connect with his movies. Lots of my current colleagues don't seem to agree with me when I go absolutely ga-ga over WKW stuff. Since his movies are not very obviously plot driven, lots of people face difficulties in engaging in them. 2046 and "In the Mood for Love" should be seen together to understand them. Infact if I ever do a screening of reference movies with my cinematographer before we dive into shot breakdown - one of WKW's movies is always on the list regardless of the subject  :).

I clearly remember  2008/or early 2009 where almost for an entire week, I was in full trance because i had seen 2046. I haven't seen it since then because my inability to get out of it and reengage in the real world was frustrating me. I had locked myself in home and just kept playing this movie all week. (I was also doing the shot breakdown of my film Reflections in that week.) I was just heart broken that I might never be able to make a movie like this and this had pushed me in some sort of depression. Even my zombie husband would wonder what's wrong with me. So I had to shun it.

But today, just as one remembers an old friend, I randomly remembered this movie again.

Here is it's horrible quality trailer that i got on youtube. Still the trailer worth watching. This movie is my ultimate inspiration.

Some Mornings

I feel I have the energy to fire the whole  cosmos !

Why would anyone put money in your film ?

I have been trying to ask and answer those questions. I have with me - a list of items that need to be brought to any pitching meeting table. But those are the secondary reasons for anyone to shell out the money. What are the primary reasons ?

To get a solution I turned the table - and asked myself - why would I fund - put crores of my hard-earned money on xyz's film ? What do I have in store. My answers were the following two mandatory things:
1) I get a sense of pride associated with the material.
2) I get my money back (atleast! - even if I don't make millions - there is no freaking way I want to lose money)

And essentially in that order. I really had no more reasons. Just these two.

For 1 - The more clarity on the film the better. The ideal case is the person putting money sees the film. But since we are short of money, we can't give that luxury to him/her. So the best is to provide the best possible approximation of the film - idea of the moments, moods, tight scenes, jokes, look and music of the film. Basically find out elements that represents your film well. Provide past work to give confidence that you can execute what you are talking about well.

For 2 - Again we have to use some data mining -find the best and worst movies of similar genre and try to see - if your film is rightly priced for fail safety. This requires work and research on the cost and recovery breakdown of other movies.

And I guess - in all the pitching meetings concentrate in these two.

It's one thing to make the movie, it is another to sell it.


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Random aside 1: There is a counterfeit 50 rupee note in my wallet. And I can't place where I got it from. Patel stores or Subway. Dunno. But I am stuck with it. 

Five things that I like in any movie

1) Alone unspoken, undiscussed moments - These could be anything-  the first thoughts when you wake up in the morning, or eye contact with a stranger, or a forced smile,  a person suddenly at loss of words and his initial stammering or  a sudden blackout on a crowded train. I like such  moments because on such moments both our subconscious and conscious flood us with so many thoughts that even words fail to describe them. I just feel that capturing those moments is the real power of cinema. I instantly connect with the character. Also contrary to popular belief, I had been a quiet person for the most part of my life. And all my life I have had people with whom I had silent relationships- no real conversations - but a deep sense of understnading.

2) Using associative memory: It is for example if for today if  I say japan - you think of tsunami and a sense of grief, dignity and seriousness dawn upon you. Care has to be taken that it is not very context specific. I like how lots of directors tap into the collective subconscious, use associative memory - of colors, of objects, of events to guide us emotionally. And I really admire that. I was initially a big fan of symbolism. Now I always evaluate a symbol for its entertainment value and context. The biggest high for any filmmaker is when a viewer "gets it". Using symbols from personal memory mostly come in the way of the viewer enjoying it. I have realized the importance of not having subjectivism or not making things too self-important. Atleast for the kind of mise-en-scenes I have, I play a lot with contrasts. Happy moments suddenly becoming sad moments, sad moments bringing smiles. Lots of my friends do get confused as to why am I shying away from holding onto the emotion. One reason is that a single emotion runs out for me after a while. I feel the need to keep audience glued, on their toes.  Prob also because these days I see movies in Gaity, Galaxy with audience reaction. And with girls giggling, popcorn munching, baby crying audience I feel that we have a really big challenge to engage that audience.

3) Chemistry between characters - Chemistry is all that is unspoken - or the manner in which the dialogues are spoken - almost similar to point 1 but also involves interpersonal relationships. You can see a couple and tell them they are a couple. You see two extras walking- they will look like two extras walking unless the director or a smart AD has made efforts to make them look like a couple. Every chemistry has to be build and I am a big fan of any director who manages that because I have faltered on this a couple of times.

4) Multiple forces in a scene - Truffaut says there should be 5 thoughts packed in a given scene at a given time. I have kept the minimum rule to 3 - always 5 can be difficult sometimes. Actually some scenes should have 0 thought - a shot/scene between two intense shots - so that audience can absorb the intensity. Also the best is if these things come naturally and organically to you. When you plant it too much - there is a risk of planting something that might be detected. Worst thing is when someone watching a movie feels that he is reading the final draft. Actually I felt that in 3 idiots when I could see all the plants and pay off. But unlike lot of people I am a big fan of revising the scripts. I am also glad that successful humble film makers in India - like Raj Kumar Hirani - also vouch for it (their scripts going upto 20 drafts). I think revision gives you an opportunity to fit the script in mind space and also gives a clearer idea of rhythm and direction of the script. Also it eliminates cliches, brings richness in scenes, de-sharpens the edges of planted thoughts and infact helps make the script more organic.

5) Give orgasm to audience - I like the idea of giving orgasms to audience. And by that I dont mean a sex scene but just the amalgamation of perfect audio and visual that grabs their attention, shake their body and make them prepared for the film. Actually audio plays a very important role - hence the importance of music and sound design should never ever be under-estimated. I have tried to understand why certain scenes give people that feeling (a seperate blog entry for that). I guess that's because these scene present a new unseen image and so when one comes face to face with absolute creativity - all cells in his/her body resonate with it. Even if we achieve it once in our film, we know we have provided atleast one unique moment they would carry it forever with them. Those scenes are our windows to immortality. 

Excerpts from my 3 part article on Stanley Kubrick - Kubrickism part 1- The mind

It is generally said about Kubrick that all his films deal with such diverse subjects that it is hard to believe that it is made by the same person. After having watched 10 of his 13 movies, almost all more than once, I feel that all his films are manifestations of intense philosophical and psychological realizations of Kubrick resulting from long nursing of his stories and plots.
In this 3 part essay I would try to formulate my synthesis with the forewarning that my experience, understanding of human psyche and of the film as an art form is infinitely small in front of the phenomenon I term “Kubrickism”. The initial part deals with the philosophy and the latter part takes about his crafts and technicalities that enabled him realize the above philosophies and create masterpieces.

1. The emotions and the unconscious: One the reasons his movies (some made around 50 years ago for American audience) still continue to strike the chord with 20 year old audience sitting in India  is his understanding of the faculties of human emotions and the unconscious. He once said that a Beatles song is enjoyed alike by a Harvard Graduate and a truck driver even when they hugely differ in their intellect.

Kubrick constructed his mise-en-scenes such that they produced immediate emotional response but at the same time had unconscious bearing that would be revealed on further contemplation. The scenes had very thoughtful and crafty layering and hence most of his movies stood apart.  His movies were quite like the process of individuation proposed by Carl Jung where a bridge was made between the realities of conscious mind and the desires of unconscious mind. He chose stories were the characters were confronted with their unconscious desires coming true.

At the same time he ensured that a conscious autonomy of the scenes were maintained (I found the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey the only place where was lost for some of the audience (including me) who refused to slip into the unconscious world that Kubrick constructed).

Amongst popular Indian filmmakers and film industries there is always a divided opinion about the purpose of cinema. Some says it is a medium that provides escapism where one can forget the daily life and enjoy while others say that cinema should mirror the society to awaken them.  I feel both of the schools should watch Kubrick’s movies because he has a way of absorbing you into a fictitious world and still provide insights that are universal and relevant to the society. He has sometimes used unrealistic – past or future or fictitious settings to convey universal emotions that are very relevant to day to day life. It is remarkable how he has used surrealism (unseen places in physicality) to convey something extremely real.

2. Man is imperfect: And hence all his constructions and inventions are. And this doesn’t limit to computers and machines like HAL (2001 Space Odyssey) but also extend to the constructions of societies and the formation of nations.   

If it was not so, we would not be suffering from threats of nuclear war and global warming. At a more molecular level prostitution, swim suit round in Miss Universe contest and WWF would not be existing. These are legalized outlets of the feelings that cannot be totally eliminated in the process of domestication. What exists in the man, exists in the society too.

There are invented virtues like non-violence, loyalty, patriotism that makes our societies function so that a man-made institution or concept (for example marriage, nation, society) and is higher than any individual man. I have found Kubrick in many of his movies questioning that. Kubrick tries to bring these marginalized issues in the forefront and brings it at the loggerheads with a completely domesticated society. For me the most outrageous parts Lolita is Humbert who is a civilized English professor (and enjoys the subtleties of any poem and) is in love with the daughter of the woman he has married, contemplates killing the mother. These feelings exist but are never verbalized.  Lots of times Kubrick brings to forefront the desires that exist but not allowed to be voiced in the society.

There is a power structure that exists in the society and majority of the films confirm to it. It provides validation to our belief system.  Anjum Rajabali in one of his classes said that we see movies even when we know there is a happy ending because we find reassurance in the moral values imparted to us where good happens to good people and bad happens to bad people. Similarly there are exalted concepts like police, soldier, religion, nation and our faith on them has to be constantly reinstated. Kubrick tries to challenge this faith and these concepts.

3. Dichotomy/dual nature of man: So what is a better choice: die trying to fight slavery or live as a slave(Spartacus), stay apparently faithful and mentally stray or stray, (Eyes Wide Shit), fight and kill or advocate for peace (Full Metal Jacket). Man is guided both by instinct and intellect. I feel that instinct deals with an event in isolation while the intellect deals with the context of the milieu one is in. Kubrick places his characters in a situation where they are trying to walk the thin line between the two, sometimes stepping here, sometimes stepping there. He focuses their innate human frailties.

Kubrickism - part 2 - architecture

The craft
Kubrick’s films were known for their bold, flawless, impeccable scenes. Below are certain things that stood out.

1. Architecture: Kubrick used architecture in such a way that elements like window, columns, corridors and staircases acquired symbolic and narrative functions in his movie.

Following is the table that talks about some of his architectural pre-occupations. Color would be dealt separately.

Emotion	Movies	Architecture	Function
Battle place, military	Full Metal Jacket, Paths of Glory,  War scenes of Barry Lyndon, maze in The Shining	Straight lines - columns, uniform, simple functional architecture almost like drawn with scale, no decoration.	Military has been associated with precision. Any space is actually container of action and there is no room for frills.
Large groups of men as architectural element	Full Metal Jacket, Spartacus, Paths of Glory, The killer	Long shots of large amount of men arranged in various shapes (like in Triumph of the Will documentary of Hitler)	In Spartacus, he has used large collection of humans (soldiers) as an architectural element. Similarly in Paths of Glory, in the execution scene he has used large amount of men. Similarly in Full Metal Jacket, all men are arranged like columns when inside the room and as group when on the field. In the climax scenes of The Killer (low budget film), in the fighting scene with axe, Kubrick used lots of mannequins and their body parts to add to the drama.
Levels, progression, Grandeur	Lolita, The Shining, Barry Lyndon,  Eyes Wide Shut	The large staircases and the direction in which the protagonists climb them has been used  very effectively  by Kubrick.	In Lolita – the first time she is shown climbing is the first time we see Humbert’s and her interaction, In The Shining the first time they climb is when Jack’s wife understands Jack going crazy. Staircase is also used to effectively show the grandeur of the architecture (like Raj Kapoor).
Going from one space to another	All movies	Long corridors	Corridors have no function. One cannot live in there or sit in there. The function is of connecting different spaces . Kubrick uses thin corridors effectively, almost like a tunnel which puts audience in a position of discovering what should be at the end of the tunnel.  The instinct to discover it, claimed by lots of psychologist is similar to the instinct of getting born  - through a tunnel.
Material used for the architecture	The Shining, Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, 2001 A space Odyssey	Each material lends itself to a different feel. Kubrick tries to exploit it by using sound design.	The Shining: Wooden floor (and carpets) and walls (with a reverb when the ball is hit). The maze is made up of green plants and not concrete. The clockwork orange: The writer has clear wooden floor, the cat lady has carpet, Alex’s own home has a toy/plastic feel to it. 2001 A Space Odyssey:  It has spic and span white floors of undecipherable material, in the end, the floors have light emanating from them. Barry Lyndon: When the kid brother wears the elder brother’s shoes, he clomps on the wooden floor for it to sound more irritating and obstrusive.

Here I want to talk about certain movies in particular and evaluate the key points in architecture.

1. 2001 A Space Odyssey : Any fantasy movie should have that illusion of reality maintained and any break or error will totally spoil the effect of the movie. It will break the illusion. Kubrick achieves this in constructing immaculate production design. He also tries to bend our mind by showing architectures one wouldn’t envision with conscious mind but can have unconscious effect on us. Some key aspects of these are:
1. Circular corridors that defy gravity – To see the airhostess or the pilot  go all around in any direction is a feature of a gravity-free environment. But it could be a square one too. He uses circular structure that lends itself to lots of subconscious and mythological impact. Circle also means endlessness, rounded/elliptical structures are more natural in terms of caves and more organic. Perfect squares are too manmade a structure. Eastern philosophies have the circular concept of time (kaal-chakra) where we eternally go round in time. I am not sure how aware Kubrick was (being a profoundly well-read person, I am inclined to believe so),  but it did have that particular effect on me. Also circular corridors lend themselves to smooth passage, where you cannot distinguish one spot from another.  

2. Shape of the spaceship similar to body’s vertebrae: Never before and never later has someone shown design of a spaceship with an immediately recognizable structure. Currently science is trying to take inspiration from human and animal bodies (Eagles for fighter planes, neural networks for artificial intelligence), it is likely that Kubrick extrapolated that to give spaceship the design of human body. But at the same time, giving it relatable structure draws me more to it.

3. HAL designed as one-eyed monster present in Homer’s odyssey.

4. Speed of the spaceship: The doesn’t zoom past. It moves at a relaxed pace.
4. The Shining
1. Maze : The maze is a structure also not frequently seen. It is an inhabitable piece of architecture. Once the person is in it, he wants to get out. There is this fear of being lost forever – not knowing whether every turn is  leading one closer or farther away from the exit. This architecture attacks our primal instincts of security, of having the need to fathom our surroundings, of breaking away from any sense of claustrophobia. Kubrick, tries to compare this maze with the hotel (using various dissolves when the maze is first shown) and tries to bring parallelism between the hotel as a maze (mental) and the outside garden maze as a physical maze. In the climax shots Jack tries to follow his son in this maze while his wife is hallucinating in the hotel’s man-made maze.
2. The hotel: The hotel itself with its long corridors and great sound design employed in mundane acts (ball hitting), cycle over the wooden floor is akin to a maze but is most importantly presented as an unfathomable structure. We are also given a tour (when the manager takes Jack around), but still we do not understand the map of  entire hotel. Also he chose 4:3 aspect ratio for his movie that made those columns of the hotel room more prominent.
3. Element of snow as architecture: When it snows, one wants to be indoors and safe. But what if there is a killer inside and vast expanse of snow outside. Kubrick effectively plays with that tension. Foot prints on the snow is used by Danny at the end to confuse Jack.

    

3. Lolita
1. Dream world:  The opening shot is shown more as a mental space. There are times when we dream, a person we went to school with is with the person we met randomly on the train. The space time limitations are broken. When Humbert comes to kill Quilty the production design has these elements – packing and unpacking, table tennis in the living room, same paintings in more than one locations.

4. Clockwork Orange
1. The decaying society: The milkbar itself has traces of underwater decadence. The locality of Alex and the paintings on his wall also imparts that feeling.
2. Prison as uniform with shelfs stacked with boxes and series of bathtub and with a line drawn for prisoners
3. Cats as architectural element
4. Paintings in cat lady’s house to inform about the upper class orientation towards art  
5. Hospital where he gets his Ludvico treatment is more like a cold military setting. The setting of the actual treatment is quite similar to Plato’s cave (http://www.thatmarcusfamily.org/philosophy/Course_Websites/Phil_Math/Photos/Cave.jpg).