A series of shoots. Some exciting but most for bread and butter. Brightly lit hotel rooms to dimly lit dharmsalas. A lot of walking in the sun and vegetable thali with rotis.
Above all travelling in claustrophobic sleeper non air conditioned buses.
"When the violent underworld meets a violent household. " Sandhya decide to confront her cheating husband and Chottu decides to help her in the process. The violent household merges with the violent underworld and result in a series of dark and funny events. Ghoda is an entertainer in its attempt.
Meanwhile Rakhil and me started on our small enterprise of imagery, we have been employed in a few event shoots (rock concert, wedding, travel and fashion)
A jist of work to keep me inspired
The Blacksheep is about homecoming. Anmol Dharmadhikari has adapted a story into a wonderful shortfilm about homecoming, acceptance, acclimatization and departure. It is a story of claustrophobia both internally and externally.
The biggest challenge when Anmol sat down with me to make shot division was to create the visuals in such a way that the space doesn't seem redundant.
The storyboard is a result of pre-visualization where the entire animation of the characters was performed by both of us in a room keeping in mind the location and consider the best possible angles to tell the story.
Anmol was inspiring to work with since he listened to my suggestion an would drop it if it doesn't fit into his framework for the short film. He has indeed created a short film that I am proud to be a part of. Amey Ranadive has done a commendable effort in bringing the frames to life. The directors attention to details have brought out the life in the characters without which the skeleton called storyboard would just be a fancy item.
Sandhya, Mukta, Me, shantanu n Anmol
All credits to the cast for taking cinema to a different level and to the crew for giving 100%.
The film like any film made has its flaws but what is flawless . A diamond ?
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
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.
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