Let me say couple of things about Rabi Kisku & Co. These folks are IIT Madras Alumni (2005 graduates i guess) who have an unflinching passion for film making and have committed themselves in it. I can imagine how hard it is for them to take this road when they could have made a successful career (As we and the world consider it to be) out of their engineering degree from a prestigious technology institute in country. But they have taken a big game in their life and not treading the well known path for sake of it.
This film making workshop is two weekend course usually conducted in St.Josephs College, Bangalore. Since I had some conflict with date of first session, I chose to attend the first session in workshop conducted at Chennai.I attended second session in Bangalore and eventually made a short movie with Bangalore participants. I was lucky enough to mind share with different people in Chennai and Bangalore.
The workshop is divided into these aspects of film making and spread over 4 days. Script Writing, Cinematography, Direction and Short movie production.
In script writing section, we get to learn the basic element of script writing, structure & format of a script etc. Well these concepts can be read from a famous book by Syd Field "Screen Play", It is informative and insightful when explained with short clips of movies shown from some interesting scripts (For eg. Little Miss Sunshine, American Beauty etc).
Cinematography is covered in another day of workshop and can learn about role a cinematographer plays in the movie and all basic fundamentals on photography. I never knew that renaissance art has made such an impact on cinematographers and in general the art of photography. Great cinematographer such as Vittorio Storaro (Dick Tracy, Reds, Apocalypse Now) was greatly inspired by renaissance artist Caravaggio. Also we learnt about different aspects of lighting and how an actor can be projected under soft/hard lights and different contexts that these lights are used. (Remember the lighting from maniratnam classics Anjali, Dalapati ??..Bright lit edges of hairline and dark lit face of baby anjali as she enters the screen for first time )
An unexpected incident happened while we were in cinematography session. While in session, there were some visitors to the venue. One was a middle aged chinese and other a Caucasian (american?). They were being shown around by the owner of the venue.
Much to the shock and excitement amongst us, we came to know that the chinese man was none other than a well known and Oscar winning director Ang Lee of such movies as Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk. It's really an irony that we had such a distinguished guest around us while we were learning "film making".
I met many interesting individuals who were participants in the Chennai workshop and one of them was Subbu (subramanian) who is an architect by profession and film maker by passion. He is also lead vocalist/lyricist for a well established chennai band "Oxygen" (http://www.reverbnation.com/oxygentheband). To his credit, He has assisted vasanth and prathap pothan in few tamil movies and has also made few short films on his own using his cinema mode Cannon HV 40
In Chennai workshop, I had also written a script for a story idea given by Subbu. I couldn't in Chennai for the shoot but it seems they took my script when they finally shot the film. Story is about an young college kid who goes out to smoke at a petty shop and goes through some embarrassing moments. here is the link to the script..http://www.zumodrive.com/share/923gY2UwMW
The "Direction/Editing" part of the workshop was equally interesting with many concepts thrown in such as Screen Balancing, Camera Angles, Orientation, 180 degree rule, 3 character staging etc. We also explored editing world with an overview on advanced editing tools such as Avid Liquid, Adobe Elements and Apple Final Cut Pro. It seems Apple Final Cut Pro ("FCP" in film editors lingo) is the preferred editing tool for most high budget movies.
Well now we enter the most crucial and exhilarating part of the workshop. It is last sunday of the workshop and it is movie making part of the workshop. As a group we are supposed to come up with a story, screenplay in standard format and we are provided with a professional movie making camera to make a 5 minute short movie. The group I had aligned with in the bangalore session had already come out with a story idea but did not have the script. It was so learning experience that i am meeting a totally strange motley group on a saturday evening and we together are collaborating on a movie next day !!!.
We had to arrange few resources for the shoot and rushed to commercial street to buy and left for the day with an agreement that me and saiprasad (the story author) will give a shot on structured script. I burned some mid night oil to hammer out a structured script.
On the shooting day, I left early in morning to pick the camera and helper and headed straight to Platinum City Apartments on Tumkur High way.
Saiprasad insisted that his script be taken as a base for which i agreed immediately (this is collaboration effort and i am not a boss here.) I began chipping the script according to a workable structure and had to drop many things from the ogirinal. I greatly cut down many dialogues since it does not bode well for a short fare.
We were into lunch time when script was in final shape (see script here..http://www.zumodrive.com/share/923eZTc2ND) and sat for a sumptuous lunch with our host and participant suja sukumaran (http://serenemusings.wordpress.com/)
Well, Let me tell you that film making is the most involving and sometimes muscle aching effort. At least that was the experience for us rookies. To make a 5 minute movie, we shot some 20 minutes of film with various re-takes, different sequences etc. Initially we were shooting in a linear fashion as per the script and this is not unusual for us rookies but later got profession by taking nonlinear shots. (non linear means the shots which are not necessary sequential in the script). This saves time and effort and is how it is done in actual movies. If you have restaurant scenes in various points in the script, it is all shot in one single day or time.
Oopsy toopsy!! finally we made a final cut of the movie with editor ravi (..sweating out 3 hours.). We had made a goof up in one scene where we had turned off the mic. Fortunately it was a single actor voice missing and he was with us during edit. We made an impromptu dubbing right there and there we go..
Here is the link to the final cut of the short film..http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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