Film making like every other thing is basically story telling. All of us have stories to tell and we share them with our family, friends and colleagues. I view film making as an extension of one’s own self – you not only tell stories which you have experienced but also tell stories which you have imagined.
As a kid, one of my passions was reading all kinds of books and my parents always encouraged that. I loved reading them, so much so that I would hide comics in my textbooks and read them whenever I could. Everyone thought I was a dedicated student while I was enjoying my guilty pleasure of reading stories all the time.
During my carefree school years, I started writing short stories and an occasional poem here and there and was also helping out with the editing of the school magazine.
One of my first ambitions was to become a doctor, which soon changed to being an MBA because of the blowing winds of privatization at that time. I went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s degree in business administration at M.D.University, Rohtak – a small town located about 60 Km’s away from Delhi. During that five-year period, my writing was limited to writing seminars, presentations and thesis.
I did training in various functional areas of different companies and was in a job at an Information Technology company in Delhi. I was getting frustrated by the whole routine of an endless cycle of work without satisfaction and decided that this is not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I quit my job and sat at home for a week. I was thinking on what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life and realized that I did enjoy stories a lot –whether reading them or telling them and media seemed to be the only path laid out to me.
I rang up one of my classmate’s dad, who was a journalist/writer, to ask for his advice on how to pursue my dream of trying to do something in media. We got talking and I never knew before that point that he was a director/producer as well and that he was one of the most influential writers in Hindi literature in the past half decade. Uday uncle remembered one of the stories, which I had written in school and he asked me if I would be interested in assisting him in various projects that he was doing. It was a great opportunity and I jumped headlong into the unknown waters of media with him. I assisted him in writing scripts, production work, liaising with his publishers, writing concept scripts and proposals and that is where my love for media became stronger and stronger. His stories were so touching and emotional that I also tried translating his short stories from Hindi to English, which combined with Bob chacha ji’s {Robert A. Hueckstedt, a world renowned translator} guidance and refinement of my stories and his own earlier translation of Uday uncle’s short stories, got published as a book titled ‘Short Shorts, Long Shots’ by Katha, a leading translation publisher in India.
After working as the 1 st AD on a documentary with Uday uncle, I realized that I really enjoyed the process but I really needed a technical grounding to understand and enjoy the field more. I started researching film schools around the world and found a unique film school in Auckland, New Zealand. I followed my heart and did the course at South Seas Film & TV School. The year at South Seas was fantastic and it proved to be the grounding I was looking for. I also formed good friends with people who were as passionate about telling a story as I was and we slowly molded ourselves into a team to make short films and now this feature film.
During the year at South Seas {I did the course in 2003}, I dabbled in directing, producing, camera, audio, editing till end of term-2, before deciding that the best way to understand the technical processes combined with story telling process was to delve more into editing. We formed a small group of film enthusiasts: Lance Wordsworth on camera; Benji Dalton either editing, composing music or co-directing; me – writing, producing and directing with other significant members like Dan West, Kate Oliver helping out with acting. We started doing short films with a cheap consumer Sony handicam. All of us were experimenting in different areas and started learning more and more with each project and at the same time really enjoyed working with each other. By the time we graduated from the film school, we had produced about 7 short films and a music video, out of which two of the short films and the music video were aired on a regional TV Station and one of the short films was screened at a film festival. The movie, “Memories of Tomorrow”, is our ninth outing together as a team and is our first feature length effort.
Genre is a broad categorization of stories and I love to make all kinds of films. ‘Memories of Tomorrow’ is a thriller drama and I am currently developing a gothic sci-fi script. At the same time I would also like to bring ‘Warren Hastings Bull’ – which is a period epic drama set in 18 th century India, based on the short story written by Uday Prakash, to the screens.
Every director has his own style and I enjoy learning from what each director is experimenting with. I really enjoyed ‘Ghost in the Shell’ by Mamoru Oshii and I absolutely loved the way philosophy, drama, action is mixed together and the story has so many sub layers. His vision is unique and his work is ground breaking.
I attended South Seas Film & TV School in 2003 and I had just graduated from the course and I was unsure of my future. The school was looking for someone to help out with the post production department and I applied for the position. Getting a work permit at that point of time was tough because NZ Immigration had tightened the rules and I was unclear whether I would get to stay in the country or not. My Christmas holidays were spent worrying about the work permit.
I got up on Jan 1 st, 2004 and made a New Year resolution. I decided that I was going to make my first feature film in 2004, whether I got to stay in New Zealand or moved back to India. With the resolution, I started writing the script on 1 st January, 2004 without having any idea of what the film was going to be, in terms of story or characters or genre. I started jotting down ideas, characters and plot lines and I finished writing the first draft of the script on 12 th January, 2004. I then passed the script around to friends to get feedback. With the script in hand, I also started to get cast and crew interested in the project. The first one on board was Lance Wordsworth, who is the DOP {Director of Photography} and also took on the role of producer alongside me. Things started falling into piece with people evincing interest in the project. Around the same time, I got to know that I was granted work permit, which meant that I was employed full time at South Seas Film School and Lance got a job as a cameraman at Studio2. We decided that the only way we could make this movie happen was by shooting it over the weekends. Gerben Cath, the school director at South Seas Film School, who came on board as the Executive Producer, supported the project from the beginning.
For making a film you definitely need money. Even if you are not paying anyone, you need it to take care of art department, props, food and drinks for the cast and crew- that’s the least one can do to show appreciation towards your team for sacrificing their well earned weekends, moreover people cannot work on empty stomachs. I was racking my head as to how I was going to raise enough money to get the production off the ground when I remembered that I had won a bet against one of my uncles and it was tempting to ask him to honor the bet, instead I came up with a scheme which was stupid but possible. I had talks with my uncle and told him that I will forget about the bet, if he doubled the bet amount and invested that in our movie, in return for a 25% share of net profits from the movie if we managed to sell it. He agreed to the plan, which gave us the money we needed to get the production off the ground.
I knew that the movie depended heavily on acting since it was character driven. I had cast the main female lead, Rachel Gilchrist, based on her previous work with me, where she acted in one of my short films and the music video. And the movie needed two equally strong male characters, so I started ringing up actors’ agencies with my mad plan of making a movie without a budget. Kathryn Rawlings from Kathryn Rawlings Agency responded to our madness and read the script and watched our short films that I had sent her and started pushing the script to good actors. After various trials and adjustments, we were finally able to get commitment from Richard Thompson and Ray Trickitt for the weekends. By this time, the script had undergone 3 more drafts and I decided that the only way we could start making the movie was to empower the actors to use the script as a base structure and improvise the dialogue.
The script was ambitious from the beginning and everyone on the team were wondering as to how we would pull off finding and shooting at more than 10+ locations, which is considered insane when you are doing the whole film without any budget. Lance and me started scouting for locations and around that time Michelle Leaity, who was doing the film course in 2004, came on board as production manager and she was fantastic in getting us a few major locations. With most of the locations in place, it was all a matter of juggling everyone’s schedules so that we could get the required shots at any given location. Pre production was the key to the film and I guess that it prepared us better for the production. The production was originally scheduled to start in the weekends of May but we had to push it back by 2 months to July, to give us more time to prepare for the shoot and sort out schedules for everyone.
We have been really lucky that the entire team that came on board clicked from the word go. Each of them brought in their unique talents and skills into the project and brought it to life. Sandra Fleming – the 1 st AD was organized and would keep everyone grounded but prepared for the coming weekend’s shoot. Despite, the constant schedule juggling and adjustments, all of us would be eagerly waiting for the weekends. We used Lance’s Panasonic DVX100a to shoot the movie and Lance produced some wonderfully stunning results with the camera, so much so that anyone who saw the rushes would not believe that what they were seeing was shot on a digital camera.
Although we were working on ‘no budget’ – we had fantastic support from organizations and people. They helped us out with locations as well as providing free services and encouraging us to make this film. In introspection, I don’t think we could have made this film anywhere else in the world. The production of the movie was fantastic and we shot the movie over 20 days {only weekends} spread across 5 months. We did face challenges along the way but the fantastic team work and support for each other helped us tide over the challenges and I think all of us really enjoyed the whole process of bringing a dream to life.
After finishing production, the next major step was postproduction and I knew from the start that this phase would be crucial to the film. Originally, I had intended to edit the film myself but I realized that the movie would definitely benefit from fresh perspective and eyes. The only person who came to my mind for editing the movie was Benji. But there was a small hiccup, which was that Benji had returned to USA, after the course ended. I was in constant touch with him throughout the year and when I told him that I would like him to edit the project he was excited but was afraid that he could not make it because he hadn’t saved enough to travel back to NZ and finance his stay here while editing the film. So the idea went into a limbo for a while but after a couple of weeks Benji got back to me and said he was selling his car and computer to get a plane ticket to NZ. I was jumping with joy on hearing the news and Benji arrived in Auckland, just in time to watch the last scenes of the movie being shot. We moved into postproduction straight away, editing the movie on my Dell Precision M60. Currently we are finishing off the postproduction on the movie and the movie should be ready for festival release and industry screenings by March’2005.
Film making industry in New Zealand is heavily dependent on government funding and financing. Being a small country, there are not enough private investors to invest in films. Despite the success of ‘Lord of the Rings’ and more international productions shooting in New Zealand, the opportunities for local film makers are limited to an extent by finance. There are a lot of government funded short films and music videos, which are produced each year but the funding is heavily sought after and not every budding filmmaker gets a chance to make their short film or music video.
There are only 2-3 feature films produced every year in New Zealand but the trend is changing with the advent of digital technology. The focus is shifting towards producing more digital features, which can be made at a much lower cost than a feature shot on film. There is a lot of local talent and upcoming filmmakers and with the focus now on digital production – opportunities have definitely opened up and things are looking up.
I don’t think I am at a stage where I can give advice but I would definitely like to say that if you want to make a film then you should go ahead and do it. The basic rule of independent filmmaking is to innovate, improvise and overcome your limitations by new creative ways. Filmmaking is a challenging process but extremely satisfying. You get to make so many good friends, meet new people, have experiences and develop a trust and bond with your fellow human beings.
If you want to make a film – then don’t wait for things to happen, for they will never happen or might even take years to happen, but take control and make things happen for you. Change is an integral part of the independent film making process and it is like surfing the waves, you won’t succeed if you fight it but if you go with the flow, you will enjoy it so much more.
If you have a script, fish it around, get like-minded people interested in the project, gather resources and make the movie happen. The path will definitely be filled with challenges and obstacles but in overcoming these lies the greatest satisfaction in the world. When in doubt about your path think – “Is there anything else in the world that I would like to be doing right now?” I am an Indian making an independent film in New Zealand – how absurd can it get? And would I be doing anything else in this world besides this? No, not even in my wildest dreams. |
