Low Budget-Small Unit Productions

We all know the story: there isn't enough of a budget so the main people on the unit- you and your family do more than one job.

The result- a few sloppy things remain on-screen, a few mistakes here and there. In a bigger unit, with more assistants who tend to not get very emotional with those dreams playing out on-screen, there are typically lesser 'tiny' mistakes. Why, because those assistants who aren't passionate about the project catch minor errors better than you and me, the ones who are emotionally involved with the project.

I went back to work on a documentary recently and ran it through once, to just bring myself up to speeed so to say. Hey, it was embarassing to watch the screen- mistakes had crept in of a totally starter kind.

Why? I am a reasonably experienced filmmaker, usually pretty meticulous in my work.

But then I realised what I stated above- its the too many job syndrome.

The problem is that what do you do? You don't have money enough to pay an assistant, in any case then you may be relying on someone who may not be trained for the job you are giving them. So you opt to do things yourself. And make mistakes.

OK, the point is to not make mistakes, to do everything yourself perfectly. Rid yourself of all emotions and do the job.

As we all know easier said than done.

Why am I stating all this? This project that was recently revived had a roaring reception, but a few tiny errors had crept in, and I wondered why.

Life being what it is, I got a chance to correct all the errors on this project.

And what the hell when you get to see the project I won't tell you where the problems were, so it will look like a perfect project to you.

The 'Craft' in filmmaking

Traditionally, we were taught that filmmaking has three broad components:

1. The Technology
2. the Aesthetics
3. The Business

These are pretty much well known parts of filmmaking. The technology was one used for image capturing and later the exhibition and distribution of the images. The aesthetics was what provided the backbone to the way your filmmaking project was structured and generally your guide as you went about structuring your project. the business side governed who financed your project and who determined where it was finally exhibited and got a chance to recover the money invested in the project.

The part that one actually learned most about filmmaking was the fouth part- the craft of filmmaking. This was all about making sure your pictures were decently exposed, your sounds were clear to hear and your storyline remained 'legible' to viewing audiences. These were more or less the 'basics' of filmmaking, that you had to maintain in any situation.

The point was driven home to me all over again on a recent documentary project. The owner of the post-production house where I work assigned me a bunch of newcomers with sub-standard equipment to handle the job at hand. The boys and I toiled but the documentary remained scratchy, uneven and muddled looking. I protested about it but the other machines and manpower were occupied elsewhere. The project was eventually turned down by the client and we stopped working on it completely.

After three months, the client decided to pick up the project again. So I got a friend who has an edit system to work on the project. We just sat and did all the common sense- craft -things, placed the subtitles in the correct place, smoothed and leveled the sounds, matched the colours a bit so that shot-to-shot transitions became 'smoother', re-did the cuts so that the basics of cutting on motion were followed. 

Then I showed the documentary to the client again, and he actually clapped, thumped the desk in joy. Suddenly there was a documentary that he could show to the world.

It was the same documentary, same technology, same aesthetics, same budget, but a better application of the craft had changed everything.

When we learn cinema in film school, this is all that we learn- what is the story we are telling, what is the point of each scene, the shot and the cuts that we made. In the hurly-burly of shooting small budget projects (where everyone plays multiple roles) we sometimes overlook the basics. And when you come to the post production stage, well, we're kind of stuck and have to sort matters bit by bit, applying good old classical 'craft'. 

The class distinctions in technology

From the title itself you know that this blog post has an obvious point: there is a distiction between the image making that happens with an Arri Alexa and your mobile phone.
The difference is related to the money you have at hand for any project.
That statement above is the bottom line for everything that we image makers do.
I've spent the bulk of my career doing commissioned projects that are on tight budgets. So the equipment you use and the crew you hire are what you can afford. Occasionally, friends (technicians/ actors) have chipped in to lift projects above their budget levels, but usually the narrative is that the budget dictates everything- the style of the project to its technicians.
For a while I was doing projects in Kenya, Africa, and there the divisions were even more stark. Their were people who worked with overseas crews, on projects designed for international markets, and they did have budgets that were up to those marks. There were projects designed for local markets with budgets that were of a very different order, often less than ten percent of the 'international budget' projects. So quite obviously the equipment and crew were of a different level. We could compete on the 'ideas' or the 'creative' fronts, but often due to the expertise level of the crew, even the technical standards with which we operated were quite different.
Right now, I live and work in Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh. The work that I do here is mainly local documentaries, with the once a year bigger 'national' project. With local documentaries, the budgets are 'local'/low, so the same principles operate again. With the  'national' projects you can access better equipment and technicians, but these are smaller budgets than the still bigger projects with a corporate or international broadcaster backing.
All this was driven home to me when I went to a friend's place and new equipment was being demonstrated there. Yes, the equipment was great, the controls on those cameras were worth dying for, but the issue was where could we afford that gear? In my situation, on very few projects.
but of course my projects were going to look second grade compared to stuff shot on these new cameras and lenses. But my backers do not have the budgets to afford this equipment.
I suppose I could hike up my budget so that I get better gear to shoot. But I'm trying to create a market for low budget but high concept documentaries that can in budgets that are possible for the local businesses. Am I right? Who knows.
Will I get the time to be proven right? Or will I too move away to bigger cities in search of bigger, better projects. Again, I don't know.
This is all the truth today.

Connections in today's world

Its a bit of a cliche to say that the world is getting smaller. But some days it really hits you!

I've seen the trailers and excerpts of an American 'indie' filmmaker called Whit Stillman. I liked the sensibility of the filmmaker in what I saw. So recently, when I found an interesting article about Whit Stillman's work, I tweeted the link. Don't know how people do these things but a few hours later I had a message from Twitter that Whit Stillman retweeted my tweet and is now following me on Twitter. I got a bit dazed by that. I mean we are separated by a few thousand kilometers of land and sea, by all counts I should barely register on an American filmmaker's consiousness. But here it was!

A second example happened yesterday. A college classmate forwarded a junk mail about a French lady who was married to the present Aga Khan's grandfather (the previous Aga Khan). Nice story, so I forwarded it to a friend in Nairobi, who happens to be a follower of the Aga Khan. In a few hours, he sends me a reply that he has forwarded it to a friend in Canada who actually knew the lady (once upon a time!).  Again I was left wondering about how far are we from the most obscure things.

Yes, I too have heard of the concept and the play 'Six Degrees of Separation', loved the idea. But as I said, its another experience when it happens to you.

Studying Indian Cinema at FTII

From the time I have known film studies (not much!), Indian Cinema has never really been taken seriously in FTII or film teaching institutions in India. You studied Satyajit Ray, saw and appreciated Ritwik Ghatak, and that was it. Yes you saw Indian movies of all shapes and sizes- afterall like Indian culture, Indian cinema too has a huge diversity in its output. But that wasn't discussed with the seriousness reserved for Bergman or Kurosawa.
There was of course the issue that Indian cinema was not one whole but consisted of diverse regional cinemas. And there was the permanent problem of Hindi Cinema that it did not belong to anywhere, despite representing a huge number of people with different cultures spread across a large geographic area.
Given the scope of these issues it made a lot of sense to brush Indian Cinema under the carpet, and to go on treating cinema as an international language. The fact that such an attitude denied the cinema going experience with which students began to study cinema; the fact that most, if not all, students were going to practice their filmmaking craft in India; both of these were convineiently overlooked. And we pretended that Indian Cinema was all Ray and Ghatak, perhaps a bit of the FFC/NFDC supported cinema-Mani Kaul/ Kumar Shahani.
The problem was really bad for people from the Hindi speaking regions, as nothing in the film viewing experience of a student featured in what you studied. Indeed the most unique aspect of Hindi Cinema- its music became the point that was just not bothered with, indeed it was looked down upon. So you had a problem- internally, in your mind as an artist, how did you reconcile all that you studied with what you enjoyed and had learned from. Its difficult to reconcile a Miklos Jansco or Tarkovosky with Raj Kapoor or Vijay Anand, but you had to do it on your own- the teaching or the staff were not going to be able to help you with this.
To me, this was a central problem with FTII's traditional teaching model of Indian Cinema- it just treated a student's mind with a lot of violence and created deep chasms in the minds. Its not a technical problem of lighting or camera, its a gut root issue of creation. Unless we treated the movies that students had seen seriously, their minds were never going to be in balance.
This week, talking to a few friends who teach filmmaking I was surprised to note that we were all now using Hindi Cinema in our teaching. Gurudutt, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy and others featured in our teaching.
In a way it had to happen, we had to start being less violent in our teaching and point our new facets in what the students already knew. I have been encouraging students to study commercials in cricket matches to understand structure and film language.
Are we doing the right thing? Indeed is there a right path to teaching Indian Cinema?
I honestly do not know, am just moving on. Passing on the teachings of my teachers to my students.