A friend came along, after promising to visit for a long time, to my hometown. He’s producing a TV Series based on some short stories of Munshi Premchand, who is one of the ‘big’ writers in Hindi.
I had no clue of what he wanted and his perspective on the subject. But we kind of felt our way along, starting with bungalows of the army, a army club and moving onto older Islamic buildings scattered over Meerut. In between cropped up my granny’s place, the good old ‘59 The Mall’. That created a bit of a sensation as one of my uncle’s thought it was some house breakers- but overall it helped to make them understand what I do for a living.
Then came the afternoon’s secret, uncovering a bit of local history that had been unknown to me and to most of the others around too. Must check with my local historians how much of it is true.
Finally we came to the classic Indian situations- government offices kept in ramshackle shape in old buildings. But the buildings and their shapes and walls stay in tact- perfect for period re-creation.
Once again the great difference between cinematic space and ‘real’ space became clearly stated, with the trained eyes of technicians trained in cinema ‘seeing’ aspects in a ‘real’ situation and how they would get depicted on screen. I guess I am beginning to realise where the small time film schools are faltering- they don’t have the people to teach what constitutes an image of ‘reality in cinema, how cinematic reality is an illusion constructed from so many bits and pieces of various elements. This is not something you are going to grasp on your own or work your way into through experience.
Location scouting is the beginning of the image building, the foundation on which cinematic images are created.
That was the magic lesson yesterday.
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