Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Shoot n Run


When Vinamra Pancharia spoke to me about making “Shade Away” (as it was previously envisaged) I thought to myself. WIIIFM. (What is in it for me ?)
I had brought a 1984 manual lens and made a lot of adjustment to mount it on my camera. The kind of bokeh’s it gave was truly breathtaking and when an ND filter is placed on it,a natural vignette is formed.
Vajra Pancharia (artist, animator) explained the script and visuals to me. It was explained that the final colors would be warm. So I decided to shoot it cool so that finally the color is increased to yellow(warm) the blacks would thus remain black. (this never happened since colr correction was done on After Effects which has more presets and gimmicks rather than just controlling contrast and making the blacks black)
The director had already arranged everything in favor of the shoot. The team was ready and early morning on a cold January me and Girish Atuvalaipil who helped me in Cinematography travelled to the location and shot it.

I had decided to frame everything as a candid observer.  Since Vinamra had envisioned it like a theatrical performance it was easy for me to push in the idea of a candid secretive observer encroaching into a kids life. He totally agreed to my frames and soon we were shooting it all around Mumbai..

The film turned out to be a visual treat of its kind. (here I Flatter myself) and the pacing and story telling helped to tell the content in the right direction.


However the film failed .



Where did we go wrong ? In inception or conception or in content. Probably one of my best learning regarding visual story telling. Had fun working with Vinamra pancharia and later his brother Vajra Pancharia the editor.



Why do we make films ?






Transient shade aka Adhoori chaav
Direction
VInamra Pancharia

Editing
Vajra Pancharia

DOP
Krishand

Sound Design and Mixing
Shantanu Yennemadi

Music
Ramprasad Sedouram

Associate DOP
Girish Atuvalaipil

Associate Director
Himashu Katara


and 
The team at Black Salt film
Rishi
Vishal
Anish Kumar
Gaurav