After a long time, I'm settling down to write.
Writing is one of those things- when you do it regularly you have the time for it, when you get a break in the routine, then you can't seem to find the time.
This year I made a resolution- I must try and write a blog post a week. Its good practice, helps you trace where your time and your mind went in the year.
You could say the year is still new, so I can very well afford to make these proclaimations. The proof is in the writing.
So let's begin for the first blog post of the year.
GHERAO
My Diploma Film at FTII, made in 1984.
Technically, its my Post-Diploma Film as I already had a Diploma Film made as a part of my Diploma in Film Editing. That was a documentary called 'A FILM ABOUT COMPUTERS', but the year was 1982 and computers weren't talking points yet (Pre- PC days).
I got hold hold of a DVD copy of GHERAO recently. A friend got it smuggled out of FTII, no one really knows if any film print or video copy exist there anymore.
This copy is incomplete- the first reel is missing from a three reel film. So it's really a copy that can be viewed by people who already know the story.
The reason GHERAO was known a bit in 1984 was that it was one of the early student films to have a known Mumbai actor in it- Dr Sreeram Lagoo. For reasons that remain unknown to me to date, I wrote a script that was pretty uncastable by student film standards. Typically, as students we do films about young people and cast our friends, this one needed an elderly college principal as the central character.
Dr Lagoo, as a Puneite and a bilingual actor (Marathi and Hindi), used to come to Pune to do plays. I went to see after a show at Bal Gandharwa Theatre one Saturday, he asked me to meet him with the script the next day. So I went on a Sunday morning to his family home, he agreed to read the script and called me the next Sunday to meet him.
When I met him next week, he simply said when do you want to shoot, he gave me four days, one for outdoors and two for the indoors, plus a morning at Pune Station for the climax. I was thrilled, only that I didn't have a crew! Unlike the regular courses, this Post Diploma Course had only Directors, so we had to find our crew. Luckily FTII is always full of recent alumni who are avoiding being termed unemployed by sitting under the wisdom tree. So I got my old friends Niranjan Thade to do the camerawork and Sanjeev Punj to do the sound. My then fiancee, now long suffering wife, Sonal, was also around to edit and generally help with the production.
Casting the other actors was a problem, but finally Pune theatre actors stepped in and helped out. I think the opportunity to act alongside a legend and star like Dr Lagoo was the attraction.
The production was uneventful except that I learned how to direct different actors differently. The story in my mind was how Dr Lagoo would only work out the physicality of the role in the rehearsal and perform full on in the first take. This would rattle the other actors who assumed he would act as he had done in the rehearsals. After the first few shots, I took the others aside and told them to just watch Dr Lagoo in the first take, I would call it NG (No Good) and claim a technical problem. Then in the second take Dr Lagoo would act like the first one, but the others would pick up the tempo.
Incidentally, Ketan Mehta was shooting his film HOLI on the FTII campus in those days. Based on Mahesh Enkulchwar's play, the subject of HOLI was very near to GHERAO. To add to that there was a student strike at FTII in the middle of our production. And I got engaged shortly after completing shooting, so eventful times.
In those days we used to shoot with the Arri 3 cameras in 35mm, which made a royal racket at the time of shooting, but you dubbed the dialogues so all would be well eventually. I was given dates from October31-November 2 by Dr Lagoo for dubbing. As it happened October 31, 1984, was the date when our then Prime Minister was assassinated, throwing the country into turmoil. Dr Lagoo couldn't travel to Pune to dub.
We began looking at alternate dates for dubbing, but there was a crackdown on students due to another of our failed strikes. I had to finish the film by the end of December 1984, couldn't get Dr Lagoo's dates to dub within that. Reasoning that a finished film is better than no film at all, I finished GHERAO with camera noise in it.
Before that dear old Rajat Dholakia managed to compose background music for the film.
But the film remained a sort of half way house between complete and incomplete. A few friends and well wishers appreciated the film, but it wasn't really ready for prime-time. Would it have changed anything if it had been allowed to be finished? I don't know, its one of those 'ifs' of my life.
Now, watching the film after a long time (close to thirty years later), I can see its strengths- the storyline and my adaptation to the screen make a gripping narrative. Bits of shot taking and cutting are as good as any other film, even in black and white, non colour corrected video downgraded to DVD. Makes me proud of my work even today.
Isn't that an achievement?
Writing is one of those things- when you do it regularly you have the time for it, when you get a break in the routine, then you can't seem to find the time.
This year I made a resolution- I must try and write a blog post a week. Its good practice, helps you trace where your time and your mind went in the year.
You could say the year is still new, so I can very well afford to make these proclaimations. The proof is in the writing.
So let's begin for the first blog post of the year.
GHERAO
My Diploma Film at FTII, made in 1984.
Technically, its my Post-Diploma Film as I already had a Diploma Film made as a part of my Diploma in Film Editing. That was a documentary called 'A FILM ABOUT COMPUTERS', but the year was 1982 and computers weren't talking points yet (Pre- PC days).
I got hold hold of a DVD copy of GHERAO recently. A friend got it smuggled out of FTII, no one really knows if any film print or video copy exist there anymore.
This copy is incomplete- the first reel is missing from a three reel film. So it's really a copy that can be viewed by people who already know the story.
The reason GHERAO was known a bit in 1984 was that it was one of the early student films to have a known Mumbai actor in it- Dr Sreeram Lagoo. For reasons that remain unknown to me to date, I wrote a script that was pretty uncastable by student film standards. Typically, as students we do films about young people and cast our friends, this one needed an elderly college principal as the central character.
Dr Lagoo, as a Puneite and a bilingual actor (Marathi and Hindi), used to come to Pune to do plays. I went to see after a show at Bal Gandharwa Theatre one Saturday, he asked me to meet him with the script the next day. So I went on a Sunday morning to his family home, he agreed to read the script and called me the next Sunday to meet him.
When I met him next week, he simply said when do you want to shoot, he gave me four days, one for outdoors and two for the indoors, plus a morning at Pune Station for the climax. I was thrilled, only that I didn't have a crew! Unlike the regular courses, this Post Diploma Course had only Directors, so we had to find our crew. Luckily FTII is always full of recent alumni who are avoiding being termed unemployed by sitting under the wisdom tree. So I got my old friends Niranjan Thade to do the camerawork and Sanjeev Punj to do the sound. My then fiancee, now long suffering wife, Sonal, was also around to edit and generally help with the production.
Casting the other actors was a problem, but finally Pune theatre actors stepped in and helped out. I think the opportunity to act alongside a legend and star like Dr Lagoo was the attraction.
The production was uneventful except that I learned how to direct different actors differently. The story in my mind was how Dr Lagoo would only work out the physicality of the role in the rehearsal and perform full on in the first take. This would rattle the other actors who assumed he would act as he had done in the rehearsals. After the first few shots, I took the others aside and told them to just watch Dr Lagoo in the first take, I would call it NG (No Good) and claim a technical problem. Then in the second take Dr Lagoo would act like the first one, but the others would pick up the tempo.
Incidentally, Ketan Mehta was shooting his film HOLI on the FTII campus in those days. Based on Mahesh Enkulchwar's play, the subject of HOLI was very near to GHERAO. To add to that there was a student strike at FTII in the middle of our production. And I got engaged shortly after completing shooting, so eventful times.
In those days we used to shoot with the Arri 3 cameras in 35mm, which made a royal racket at the time of shooting, but you dubbed the dialogues so all would be well eventually. I was given dates from October31-November 2 by Dr Lagoo for dubbing. As it happened October 31, 1984, was the date when our then Prime Minister was assassinated, throwing the country into turmoil. Dr Lagoo couldn't travel to Pune to dub.
We began looking at alternate dates for dubbing, but there was a crackdown on students due to another of our failed strikes. I had to finish the film by the end of December 1984, couldn't get Dr Lagoo's dates to dub within that. Reasoning that a finished film is better than no film at all, I finished GHERAO with camera noise in it.
Before that dear old Rajat Dholakia managed to compose background music for the film.
But the film remained a sort of half way house between complete and incomplete. A few friends and well wishers appreciated the film, but it wasn't really ready for prime-time. Would it have changed anything if it had been allowed to be finished? I don't know, its one of those 'ifs' of my life.
Now, watching the film after a long time (close to thirty years later), I can see its strengths- the storyline and my adaptation to the screen make a gripping narrative. Bits of shot taking and cutting are as good as any other film, even in black and white, non colour corrected video downgraded to DVD. Makes me proud of my work even today.
Isn't that an achievement?
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