While watching reruns of some cult Bollywood films, a thought occurred to me. That how interesting and well crafted characters, more than anything else in those films, have always fascinated the Indian audience and perhaps those characters were the single most important factor in ensuring success and their following even till now. If I think about many cult Hindi films starting from the 50’s, I see a common thread wherein an interesting and an identifiable character- reflecting the times- had always been at the center of those films’ success; when I say success, I mean either box office or critical, and many a times, it was both.
The newly independent India of the 50’s, a nation not only recovering from the bruises of partition & the long colonial rule but also facing many problems- economic and otherwise-, found echo with such characters as sensitive poet Vijay (played by Guru Dutt in the film Pyaasa) or with Devdas (played by Dilip Kumar in the film Devdas). Both characters are love-lorn, misunderstood and also doomed, but both were immensely loved by the audiences for the same reasons; the intensity of these characters and also for some sort of identification with such fatalistic characters. This brilliantly worded song by Sahir Ludhianvi, from the film Pyaasa, captures the ethos of one such character. Other notable examples of this period where the character dominated: The character of Nargis in Mother India and the affable and the Chaplinesque Raj Kapoor in many of his films.
The pre-production of my still untitled short film has finally started. Although I’m bit behind my intended schedule, I’m happy that finally things are now coming out of the scripting stage and the ball has started rolling. Regarding the script, I’m satisfied with the way the story has finally turned out. There are still some loose ends to be tied and some more pruning to be done -something which will continue until the rehearsals I presume-, but overall I’m satisfied with the story structure and how each character has turned out to be. Few friends of mine, whose opinions and sensibilities I conform with, have liked the story and have also given some good suggestions and insights which have helped my script. I continue to talk with few more people whose insights might help and tighten the script further.
In terms of casting and crew, casting is almost 75% done and crew hiring & hunting is on. The fact that my story has now seven characters, each equally important to the story, makes the process of casting actors quite daunting. Getting the right crew is equally important too, especially the Director of photography (DOP) and the Editor. Few people I were counting upon earlier have sort of back tracked. But the positive outcome of that is that after I started looking for alternatives, I talked with one DOP who seems now much better than the guy who I was earlier relying upon. So, as they say, problems could be in fact opportunities in disguise.
Till the scripting stage, you are the boss; living in the world of your story/characters and controlling everything. But once the pre-production starts, your different type of skills are tested and you seem to start losing control of things one by one. Whoever said that scripting is perhaps the easiest part of the film making challenges and headaches was quite right. The real battle begins when you start working with other people and with uncontrollable variables to realize your story on screen. But hey, that’s the real fun..right?. I mean I’m doing this because, for more than anything else, I love this challenge of creating something out of all these impossibilities; a challenge which only filmmaking could provide for me.
The main idea of your story can come from any of the sources or combination of sources. The script I’m working on currently, for my short film, had it’s genesis in my first ever script I wrote for my scriptwriting class. When I first decided to make the short film, around 3-4 months back, the first idea which came to me was something very different. As always, I had a theme first, which in that case was about moments. That how small moments change the course of relationships. It had six different characters and one setting. Now, the more I thought about it, more I started seeing problems in that story. Even though most people I discussed the idea with liked the story. In fact, my one filmmaker friend still thinks I should do that story about moments rather than the current one. Anyways, for around a month, at least four other completely different ideas came to me and I spent some days each before rejecting each of those ideas. I started getting restless and said to myself that enough of fooling around and I will now choose one of these five ideas and go ahead. And then suddenly one day, while I was in a bank chatting with a teller, this current idea came crashing down to me. And, I knew that this was it. Later I realized, as I started developing the outline in my head, that how this current idea sort of combines at least three of those earlier five ideas plus some important elements from my first script which I wrote last year.
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. – Socrates
Of late, I have been thinking a lot regarding how the story of any film begins in the mind of a writer/filmmaker. In various scriptwriting books, courses, workshops etc, we learn about various things related to any good story; the structure, various acts, conflict, interesting characters, beats, plot points, resolution and so on. The book, “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting“ authored by the ultimate screenwriting guru, Robert McKee, is considered Bible in screenwriting. I cannot write enough that how much this voluminous 500 page book has taught me. Unlike most other books on screenwriting which focus more on the mechanical aspects of a story structure, Mckee’s Story turns inwards into human psychology to explain in minute detail how great dramas unfold on screen. He writes, “We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent.” His book, Story, is a path to that rediscovery. In it, McKee offers so much sound advice, drawing from sources as wide ranging as Aristotle, Casablanca, Stanislavski and Chinatown, that it is impossible not to be influenced by this book when you start your journey into screenwriting.
While going through some old videos on You tube, I found these fascinating videos of old Indian TV commercials. Anybody who has grown up in India during mid-80’s through early-90’s will remember these commercials. These videos are listed in no particular order of my liking them.
1. Gold Spot: Till date, no soft drink has tasted better to me than what Gold Spot had tasted long back. And, this commercial looked so hip then.
They say that no book or a lecture on film making can teach you what a real shoot will teach you. I agree. My first real foray into the world of film making happened recently. One of my friend, Paul Landriau, a young filmmaker, shot his ten minute short French film, PROLOGUE, last weekend. He had asked me more than a month back if I would like to play a role in the film and, even though I first panicked and balked at this idea of me being in front of the camera, I still agreed to act; I thought that what better way to build network for my own future film projects & also to learn from the whole experience for free. This is Paul’s third short narrative film & the film is shot with a digital video camera (Panasonic AG-DVX100). Paul is making this film primarily to sharpen his directing skills further & to build his repertoire. In terms of its target audience, the film will be sent to some film festivals and Paul also intends to hold some free public screenings. The story of Prologue, from whatever I understood, is about a surreal dream of a budding actress. In the dream, actress is auditioning for a role in a film & I’m playing the director who is auditioning her. We first discussed about this role more than a month back, followed by rehearsals with the full cast before the final shoot with the camera happened. The following are my notes and observations from the shoot of my part which happened last Saturday.
They say that, in life, everything happens for a reason and that you meet, form relationships, with only those people with whom nature wants you to connect with; the reason that you never meet the remaining ones or never come to know them much is because it’s not meant to be. But, I wonder if this is really true. I see some souls who exist in the same world around me, but our paths never get crossed and will never be. Seeing them from a distance, however, I find them very interesting. I wonder why didnt I meet and know them instead of the ones I knew and know now. I wonder why didnt I fall in love with them rather than the ones I fell in love with in reality. I wonder why didnt….
Do we really make the best possible choices in terms of choosing people in our lives? or even before that, do we really have any control on our ‘choices’ ?
I grew up in a very small town in India and, except for few later years before I came to west, I mostly lived/studied in small towns only. Actually if you go by the standards of rest of India, in terms of population and size, most of those towns were perhaps not bigger than big villages in many parts of India.
I vividly remember many things from my small town childhood. Most of my present day necessities were laughable audacious dreams then. I remember once (I must be around 10) I was travelling with my family in a bus in the interiors of Himachal Pradesh. Those days, we didnt have television in our home yet, as it was considered luxury by my father and so I had to satiate my love of watching movies by sneaking into those rare neighbors’ homes who not only had TV but were also gracious enough to let in a terribly shy kid. Or, if I was really fortunate, I was permitted to watch a movie in a video hall once in while (yes you heard right..there were no cinema halls there). Anyways, so I was in this bus, staring at the blue colored tin in front of me, the tin which was also the back of the next seat. Suddenly, my imaginative mind thought that what if this blue tin in front of me turns into a screen where some Amitabh Bachhan movie is playing. I was a kid, but even my kiddish mind immediately reasoned that how audacious this dream is and can never come true. Years later, I was on my way to London in a British Airways flight and was watching an AB film on the TV screen just in front of me. And suddenly, I remembered that bus and that dream of mine; I smiled at life.
I now realize that happiness, if any, is not exactly in achieving our dreams or specific goals in life, but in the journey taken towards realizing those dreams.
While I go through each single moment, each single day and each single period of my life, I realize that there is constant conflict between mind and the heart, between mind and the body and between mind and the soul; most of the times, the wrong candidate wins.
