The next step was to select a crew.
I knew I wanted to shoot in Meerut, so I first investigated getting a camera person from Delhi. The budget was too low to afford senior camerapersons, the others that I checked were much too unskilled for my liking. Finally, I turned to Mumbai, decided to stretch my budget, realising that it would be critical to get good visuals. Used my FTII networks to look for people, but till very near to the last dates was unable to get a person as Mumbai technicians get busy very quickly.
Eventually, I got Pooja Sharma, a young FTII alumni, came with very high recommendations as a documentary camera person. With her on-board, a few things fell into place- she got a camera she knew from Mumbai. (A Sony PMW-200 if you want to know).
The sound was destined to be an issue- the PSBT-DD Budget has no provision for a sound recording person. I borrowed sound equipment from a friend in Delhi, was hoping to get a record person too, but eventually could not afford one. So two students who had studied with me, (actors), stepped up and handled all the sound work. A friend doing the still photography, helped them out- he's a Meerut person, a cameraman in his own right.
Actually, still photographs were another problem- no provision for that in the budget but photographs required by contract. Finally, I bought a still camera and this friend helped out.
It ended up being two guys I had first hired who did the bulk of the work on the production. They are both Meerut natives (OK so am I but this was the first film I was doing in Meerut). Their local knowledge is immense and helped to move the production smoothly even when we had to change schedules. They got local vehicles at the best rates, knew what food would keep the unit moving, and all the tricks of production.
One of the challenges of shooting on card based cameras is that you need to download and back up your material as soon as possible. When we began, I had no clue to where to do this in Meerut, but then I ran into the young team at Chimmera Animation, we got along immediately. So Snigdh Bhatnagar handled all those issues, downloading and backing up material onto two drives. Later I created a third back up before editing began, so we were safe.
I hired one of my previous year's students as an AD, but my current class too came along to help and observe the shooting. So we ended up with a 'large' documentary unit.
That's the crew, now we move onto the shooting part.
I knew I wanted to shoot in Meerut, so I first investigated getting a camera person from Delhi. The budget was too low to afford senior camerapersons, the others that I checked were much too unskilled for my liking. Finally, I turned to Mumbai, decided to stretch my budget, realising that it would be critical to get good visuals. Used my FTII networks to look for people, but till very near to the last dates was unable to get a person as Mumbai technicians get busy very quickly.
Eventually, I got Pooja Sharma, a young FTII alumni, came with very high recommendations as a documentary camera person. With her on-board, a few things fell into place- she got a camera she knew from Mumbai. (A Sony PMW-200 if you want to know).
The sound was destined to be an issue- the PSBT-DD Budget has no provision for a sound recording person. I borrowed sound equipment from a friend in Delhi, was hoping to get a record person too, but eventually could not afford one. So two students who had studied with me, (actors), stepped up and handled all the sound work. A friend doing the still photography, helped them out- he's a Meerut person, a cameraman in his own right.
Actually, still photographs were another problem- no provision for that in the budget but photographs required by contract. Finally, I bought a still camera and this friend helped out.
It ended up being two guys I had first hired who did the bulk of the work on the production. They are both Meerut natives (OK so am I but this was the first film I was doing in Meerut). Their local knowledge is immense and helped to move the production smoothly even when we had to change schedules. They got local vehicles at the best rates, knew what food would keep the unit moving, and all the tricks of production.
One of the challenges of shooting on card based cameras is that you need to download and back up your material as soon as possible. When we began, I had no clue to where to do this in Meerut, but then I ran into the young team at Chimmera Animation, we got along immediately. So Snigdh Bhatnagar handled all those issues, downloading and backing up material onto two drives. Later I created a third back up before editing began, so we were safe.
I hired one of my previous year's students as an AD, but my current class too came along to help and observe the shooting. So we ended up with a 'large' documentary unit.
That's the crew, now we move onto the shooting part.
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