When I was planning this documentary, I thought I'd edit in Pune, do the shooting in Meerut, transfer the material onto hard drives and then move to Pune. As it turned out the editors I wanted to work with were all busy, so I was down to some not so interesting editors.
Later in the planning, I thought of Delhi as an option, but then realised it wasn't near my bases of Meerut and Pune, so a lot of money and time would be wasted.
Then when I decided to transfer the material from the camera cards onto hard drives in Meerut, I realised that I could edit here in Meerut too. The editors or the post-production facility aren't the greatest. But then my last two projects were edited in homes with young editors, so I said go for it.
The edit began slowly, we put the material together sequence-by-sequence, then started putting them together on a timeline. It began to make sense.
Then we screened it in a rough form to friends and realised we had a diamond in the rough.
So my editor sat down to sort out the soundtrack, while I looked for music.
I knew I wanted classical music, 'pop' just doesn't have the correct feel for a deep, pensive work like this. So I found a piece from Brahms for the opening and then another by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia for the end. We put them on the sound track and they felt 'right'.
Did a version of the documentary and sent it off for approval. Then waited, and waited some more.
Got a few reactions, modified the documentary, then sent it off again.
The wait had begun again.
Did a trial screening, decided to change a few more things.
Approval came.
Delighted/relieved.
Now 'finishing' the documentary.
Later in the planning, I thought of Delhi as an option, but then realised it wasn't near my bases of Meerut and Pune, so a lot of money and time would be wasted.
Then when I decided to transfer the material from the camera cards onto hard drives in Meerut, I realised that I could edit here in Meerut too. The editors or the post-production facility aren't the greatest. But then my last two projects were edited in homes with young editors, so I said go for it.
The edit began slowly, we put the material together sequence-by-sequence, then started putting them together on a timeline. It began to make sense.
Then we screened it in a rough form to friends and realised we had a diamond in the rough.
So my editor sat down to sort out the soundtrack, while I looked for music.
I knew I wanted classical music, 'pop' just doesn't have the correct feel for a deep, pensive work like this. So I found a piece from Brahms for the opening and then another by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia for the end. We put them on the sound track and they felt 'right'.
Did a version of the documentary and sent it off for approval. Then waited, and waited some more.
Got a few reactions, modified the documentary, then sent it off again.
The wait had begun again.
Did a trial screening, decided to change a few more things.
Approval came.
Delighted/relieved.
Now 'finishing' the documentary.
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