Resolve

I am in Indore wondering how it is possible for the temperature to drop down below 10 degrees.  Rakhil Akkali (friend, photographer, partner) and me were eating Tandoor and mayonise when karthika (friend, Designer, architect, dancer) call me up and ask about a video to be done.

The budget was stringent and hence i come up with a scipt that can be shot in the budget in the time period given. I reach bombay and meet the client. grabhouse (To find out more about Grabhouse, visit- https://grabhouse.com/ Follow Twitter- https://twitter.com/grabhouse ) 

These are normal smart people who might not even understand what they will end up missing in the video when they pay one rupee less or give one day less to complete it. Concealing that is the art. One back-light will change the way the video look. A single steady cam will take it to a new level. One makeup man can make it a 100 times better. Concealing what they will miss I choose show them what they will get. They are not convinced but its a business in which both of us are dicy. They give a thumps up. 

Meanwhile Akhil Vinayak (friend, engineer, comic book colelctor) is here in Mumbai primarily to see me and I have a shoot. Himanshu katara ( actor, casting director, friend) takes up the responsibility of casting and production and things are easy. We start shooting and in the next 5 days the video is ready.

Pritam

Aakansha Gode

Chaitannya Kanhai

Produced by- grabhouse

Cinematography and Direction - Krishand

Sound Design Mixing - Shantanu Yennemadi

Sound Effects - Ambu R

Music by Ambu & Sreeraj

Production Controller and Casting - Himanshu Katara

Assistant Director - Girish Atuvalaipil, Jishnu Krishnan

Associate Editor - Anmol Adhikari

Creative Contribution - Rakhil Akkali,  Karthika Ramanujan

Concept - Krishand, Karthika, Grabhouse

Cast - 

Chaitannya Kanhai, Himanshu katara, Prashant Goswami, Anmol Dharmadikari, Sravanthi Mamillapalli, Viveek Sharma, Kaivalya Chheda , Aakansha Gode

Voice Over - Amol Pathare

Additional Voice Over - Snigdha Banaerjee, Shyam Gaur, Vajra Pancharia, Girish Atuvalaipil, Krishand

Color Correction Associate - Hari 

Production house - kaffeiene media

Equipment Rental - Accord Equipment, Andheri

Special Thanks to Viveek Sharma for appearing in this piece

Special Thanks - Karthika Ramanujan, Pankhuri Shrivastava, Ritu Singh

shot by Sangram Behra

shot by Sangram Behra

A little bit of technical innovation was done on the cinematography part. Especially achieving the hipster look and color. Mostly done with using an old hazy lens and putting as many as two ND filters and two UV filters so that the light that reaches the sensor goes blur and behave in flare and ray manner. This will have a retro (instagram look - which i hate ) look. However in order to complement that grey, shades of grey, browns were mostly the prefered colors in the costumes and back ground.

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

Debtor's Prison

Why Kochi ? KOchi is the new Chennai ? the new hub for malyalam film industry. So with my script I found a space (thanks to valuable help from valuable people) in Fort Kochi.

Fort kochi is an organism which had not changed much in the last 150 years. Enveloped in the shattered glory of the Dutch, Portuguese and English, fort Kochi lives like a woman whose lovers have left her but their love still lingers.

Staying by the shipyard watching unknown vessels make dragon whimpers,  inspired me to do so many wonderful things. However the lethargy of a beach holiday spot can get only 10% of the work out of you.

                                                      The monsoon makes it way into Kochi (photograph by Rakhil Akkali)

heavy rains and buoys learn to survive ((photograph by Rakhil Akkali))

The backyard of the space where i stay in fort kochi ( photograph by Rakhil Akkali)

 ((photograph by Rakhil Akkali))

 ((photograph by Rakhil Akkali))

 ((photograph OF Rakhil Akkali) at the pepper house cafe

me with a DVD's and a nice expression

There is the library of visual arts in the pepper house cafe where i spend days watching films and reading random books on film theory and visual communication.

Budget is stringent, People i meet are big, friends are fresh and new, Inspiration is a daily activity, trust is a luxury and people around are survivors.

mermaids in fort kochi ( photograph by Rakhil Akkali))

Fort kochi is a survivors hub. like 'backyard civilization' (https://www.facebook.com/backyardcivil ) claims- a Debtor's prison