Couple of weeks back, while contemplating on how to use my more than three weeks of paid vacation, I shortlisted few places to travel. I always want to travel, but it’s been a while since I have really travelled outside North America for a vacation and seen a new country/culture. So, I was sure that this time I want to travel outside North America; either to central Europe or to South America. Then suddenly a thought occurred to me. I thought why not take this opportunity to travel the length and breadth of India and to see and experience both the new & the old India. That India which I always wanted to see, but never really got an opportunity. That India which I think I know, but in reality I dont really know.

How many times I have heard myself and other Indians, who are living outside India, say that one day they want to go back and travel whole of India. That one day, when they will have plenty of time, they would like to see this place, that place and what not. But the reality is, more often than not, it doesnt really happen and we keep on postponing it. Most visits to India are short, hectic and they basically get over soon in catching up with family, friends and relatives and in visiting only those places where our parents/family lives. I’m not sure that after I leave my nine to five job, something which will happen in near future, I will have that much paid vacation time in one go. I mean I can always travel to Europe, or to any place near by, in near future, but having a month to travel to India might not happen soon after this. So, I finally said to myself : ‘man,  just do it now rather than ’sometime’ in future’. Hence this post.

So, the purpose of this post is to get some ideas and suggestions from you guys. My focus this time is to mostly travel outside North India, because having grown up and lived in North India, I have seen most of the major places there. After talking with friends etc and after doing some preliminary research of my own, I have shortlisted following places. But, I would love to get more suggestions/ideas. Regarding what interests me most when I travel, let me tell you that I’m always interested in both the modern and the ancient. I’m as much interested in heritage sites, old temples and mountains/beaches as I’m interested in visiting shopping malls, discotheques and lounges which are part of modern India now.

West India; 10-12 days (Mumbai, Goa, Ahmedabad, Kutch region in Gujarat, Pune? Ajanta Ellora caves?)

South India; 11-13 days (Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty, Kerala backwaters (will need 4-5 days just for that I suppose?), Cochin, Kanyakumari? Pondicherry?)

East India; 5-7 days ( Calcutta, Darjeeling, Puri?)

I will be travelling in India from end of Jan till end of Feb 2010. I know that one month is not enough to cover a vast and diverse country such as India, but I think I will still get some good idea this time. And, I can always visit those places again in future which I find really interesting this time. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

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 best things happen when you least expect them. Yesterday evening, there was this special screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the movie theater very near my house. A local movie club was organizing it. I went there expecting just to see my most favorite film, and unarguably one of the greatest films ever made, one more time on the big screen. But not in my wildest dreams, I had imagined to see among the audience the famed Dr David Bowman of 2001, the Hollywood actor Keir Dullea himself! Mr Dullea was actually invited by the movie club to be a part of this screening.

And, there he was; all agile, animated (looking at least a decade younger than his actual age) and excited to answer the questions after the film ended. How I wish I had known about this and brought my digital voice recorder, something which I generally carry with me most of the times, but didnt carry it yesterday!!  He talked about the film and answered quite a few questions from the audience. The questions ranged from the extremely articulate and profound ones (from people who had obviously seen, read and thought about the film a lot before this screening) to some trivial ones, posed by few first timers among the audience. I have myself read quite a bit about this film’s making and about the various interpretations associated with the film’s ending. So, there were no surprises in that regard. As Mr Dullea reiterated again yesterday, the film, like the monolith in the film, remains a mystery and is open to interpretation all the time. According to him, and something which is very well-known now, Stanley Kubrick didn’t just want to thrill us with this film but instead he wanted to inspire our awe for the unknown and force us to look for our own answers from the film.

Nevertheless, Keir Dullea shared some interesting tid bits about the film, about it’s making and about Stanley Kubrick which are not that well-known and which I wanted to share here.

1.The first segment of the film, The Dawn of Man, was actually shot in the end during the actual shooting. But, the more interesting part is that the segment was shot in Africa without Kubrick ever setting his foot there!! It’s well-known that Kubrick had a fear of flying, so he directed all that segment over the trans Atlantic phone line giving minute instructions to his assistant director and cameraman; Kubrick had studied all that area geographically through pictures.

2. All the special effects in the film, designed by Kubrick himself and for which he also got an Oscar, were done mechanically and there were absolutely no computer graphics etc involved in their production.

3. During the scripting of the film-which took almost 2 years-, Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke never emphasized on the philosophical and the allegorical dimensions of the story during their discussions with the main protagonist Dullia and the other actors. Even during the actual shooting, actors were just told to act their parts keeping the basic plot and the basic characterizations in mind.

4. Contrary to popular perception, Stanley Kubrick was not a dominating or a controlling director. Neither did he insist on tens of retakes for every scene, as it’s generally believed. According to Mr Dullia, in his long career as an actor, he found Stanley Kubrick to be the most prepared director on the sets and a genius in every sense. Dullia mentioned how he never saw Kubrick raising his voice or being tough with actors.

After the Q & A session, Keir Dullia went to the main lobby for an informal chat with people and to sign autographs etc. I wanted to tell him there that how much this film means to me and that how much this film has affected me over the years as a person & as an aspiring filmmaker and so many other things I wanted to say and thank him for…But, when I went up to him and shook hands with him, I got tongue-tied and could only mutter “Thank you very much Sir”. Still I’m glad that I had the presence of mind to take my cell phone out from my pocket and request an old lady standing near by to click a picture of us. Mr Dullia put his hand on my left shoulder and the lady clicked the picture. I’m generally not star-struck and would not insist on clicking pictures with them- except for the very few perhaps if I ever meet them-, but this was a different matter. I mean, this man had acted in 2001 and worked with the greatest film director ever!!! By shaking hands with him, I almost touched Mr. Kubrick!!

I know the pic below is very badly lighted and not a kind of picture which one would like to show to people. But, what the heck man; I’m still standing with the man who, on an ultimate journey into the unknown, triumphed over one of the smartest villains in cinematic history,  HAL 9000!!! And, I’m certainly not ashamed to show off that.

Click on the videos below twice to watch the film in bigger screen.

The Last Farm (2005) is an Oscar nominated short film from Iceland. I think that a morose and a terribly depressing story, coupled with the brilliant photography, perhaps got this film an Oscar nomination; I mean we know how much academy loves those morose Scandinavian stories. Because, otherwise, I dont see any great accomplishment in this film. Yes, the performances are good, the film is well shot and the film tries to explore a valid subject, i.e. the treatment & the plight of old aged people in a developed Nordic country. But, is that enough for qualifying as a great short film (not to mention, the very predictable ending right from the beginning)? Well, I didnt think so when I watched the film. Some people might disagree, but do let me know if you find something really good in the film which I failed to notice or perhaps which I didnt mention here.

For better picture quality, watch the film here

Call Register is a British short film made in 2004. The film starts at the point where Kevin, played by Martin Freeman, is planning to call a girl- whom he met in a party-for a date. He uses his buddy Julian’s cell to call because Kevin wants to play safe. Julian’s cell recognizes the number as Amanda’s number and Amanda happens to be Julian’s old flame with whom he had broken up and Kevin didn’t know that! From here on starts the plot building, back and forth phone calls among all three characters. The film might seem predictable towards the end, but twist in the tale is not the point here. The film scores primarily on the brilliantly written dialogues and on the wonderful performance of Martin Freeman. Especially towards the end, when Kevin wrongly smells victory, his gloating is extremely funny and real. The film is about how one seemingly trivial decision- in this case deciding to call from a friend’s cell -could seal the fate of one party and rekindle an old relationship of another. Or perhaps this wrong call was just an excuse, and sooner or later things would have gone that way in any case. Perhaps the wrong call was a blessing in disguise for Kevin, even though he doesn’t realize it now.

The short also proves once again that if the story, the acting and the dialogues are really good, the whole film could be shot in one room with great results!!

I was in this pub tonight with some friends and this gorgeous bartender-who could be either French or Eastern European- is serving us. Apart from her pretty face and toned body, I see that there is this very natural charm in her smile and in her other mannerisms. As we while our time there, I notice her talking and gesturing with other people too. I tell my friend sitting with me, ‘buddy, this girl has an actress inside her…look at the way she talks and gestures..not only her eyes, but her whole body talks’. My friend finds her even more beautiful and goes as far as to say that this girl could match any beauty in the world!! Anyways, she keeps visiting our corner and I do some small talk with her now and then.

Now here is what’s going on: Since past few weeks, I’m trying to find a young, pretty girl to play one of the characters in my short film. She is not one of the main characters, but still an important one. I have already tried one casting agency to find an actress for this role, but from the picture album which agency manager showed me, I couldn’t find anybody suitable in terms of the character’s age and look requirement.

So, suddenly this thought flashed into my mind and I tell my friend, ‘man, I wish I could find a girl like this for my film..I’m gonna ask her about it’. And before my friend said anything, I myself said, ‘oh common, it’s a silly thought..forget it’. In the meantime, she came and talked with us again about something. I saw that ’thing’ in her again. Now, I started debating about it. I mean I have never done something like this before and I was not sure if it was proper to ask her about this at her workplace. And I also thought that if I tell her about my movie and stuff or ask her if she is interested in acting, she might very well think that I’m hitting at her and that basically the whole thing is an excuse by me to get her number. After debating for some time, I said to myself, ‘what the heck..let her think what she thinks..at the worst she will refuse..so what?..ask her!!!’. She comes towards me now and I say to her, ‘hey, are you an actress’ and she smiles back, ‘why do you say that? do I look one?’. Sensing a chance now, I say to her,  ’yes, of course..your whole body talks..not to mention you are very beautiful too’. She giggles and tells me that she is not an actress but wont mind doing acting. I tell her about my short film and that I think she will be perfect for a role if she is interested. She says ’sure’ and tells me to call her when I have something. Bingo! I couldn’t believe that she said yes so easily. She went away to attend another side of the bar. As I waited for her to come back, I started having doubts..perhaps she said yes in jest..perhaps she thinks that I’m some rich film guy and will pay her lot of money for acting in this film… Ok, I said, I will clear everything this time. She comes back after five minutes and gives me her number on a card. I say to her, ‘hey look, let me tell you that I wont be able to pay you much money for this..perhaps nothing..but yes, if the movie makes any money-which I said is not very likely though-I will certainly share the profits.’ She says that’s perfectly fine with her and that in any case she wants to do this for the fun part of it rather than for any money! I thanked her before I left and she again told me to not to worry about paying her and to call her at any time for this.

I guess what I did tonight is what they call Guerilla casting! Also, the moral of the story is that if you see an opportunity, dont give up without trying. Who knows what can happen with little initiative and even if you are not successful, you will at least not blame yourself for not trying.

Terry Gilliam of the brilliant Brazil fame talks about the difference between the cinema of Stanley Kubrick and that of Spielberg.

Jim Jarmusch is one of those extremely few American filmmakers who have found success without any big studio backing. He has complete control over his films and Hollywood’s best actors want to work with him. I wrote an earlier post about him here.

Time and again, I read Jim Jarmusch’s golden rules on filmmaking

What he says in one of those rules, regarding ‘originality’, is something which I never forget.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

This post was first written as a comment in response to Scriptlarva’s post, developing a concept

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.

For better picture quality, watch this film here

Our Time is Up is a very clever short film. What I found really interesting in this short was that even after the main character encounters the tragic news, and the story shifts entirely, the tone of the film remained the same till the end. Also, notice that how well this short demonstrates the character arc for each character in the film. Not only the doc, but every single character in the film changes. The central theme of the story, that how impending death can change an emotionally cold person, was not really very novel for me. But, the short still worked for me because of the way the story was told. Each of doc’s patients was an interesting character and I think the dialogues were crisp, very funny and insightful. The production standards and the lighting enhanced the tone of the film. I have always believed that good films are about few moments which work so well that they always stay with you. In this short, the Asian girl’s predictament about how to wash the soap which washes the main soap to remove bacteria was one of those moments for me.