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First, I bought a newly-released Canon camcorder; wrote a short film script; spoke to a few friends at work; and began to shoot with them. And then, I watched the raw film on my laptop, all alone. Frankly, it was very bad. Silently and sincerely, I gave up my plans to pursue film-making. I thought it’s not my cup of tea. But what I failed to realize was that Robert Rodriguez mentioned in his book about the several poor short films he made before making a festival-winning one. And he made more than 30 short films before venturing into his first feature length film (El Mariachi).
A month later, I came across an attractive poster of New York Film Academy (NYFA) Film course. Now, let me go back a bit here. I have always believed that Art must come naturally to a person; it cannot be learnt. Learning Art, I considered, was a crazy rich-man’s time-pass. Coming back to the poster, I felt this course belongs to crazy people. But just out of an unknown curiosity, I explored about it on net. It’s a short evening program, which lasts for three months. The location of the institute was near Universal Studios. And out of nowhere, the instinct to shell out a few bucks and spare the evenings for three months took over. The keenness on film-making crept back and within a month, I was sitting with seven others in the NYFA class.
My colleagues were from different countries. Dominique was from Switzerland, Florin from Finland, Claudia from Germany, Dana from America, Mike from Armenia, George from Mexico and Nagaraju from Hyderabad. Yah! There was another Indian in our class. He, like me, works in IT and is passionate about films. It was exciting being in the same class with people belonging to different cultures, but having similar passions. We Indians had an opportunity to share our viewpoints with them and they shared their viewpoints with us. Though initially there was a strange feeling of indifference, but that was just because of the newness, which soon died away the moment we worked together on our assignments. The mutual understanding and cooperation during the following days just proved how much Films can bring people together.
For three months, having gone through the course-work and assignments in Screenplay, Cinematography, Lighting, Continuity, Editing, Production and Direction, I realized that Art, not only in films, does have a Form, an Architecture and a Technique to create. Learning Art began to make sense. And Learning Films made even more sense because ….. how can I say this….. the feeling which one gets while commanding ‘Lights, Roll-Camera, Action’ to the crew is ….. Man!!! You just have to be in that situation to really understand the feeling.
© Copyright by Telugucinema.com
We had other exercises in the class like, directing actors, team work, etc. During the team work exercise, I realized how much the cast and crew can add to the director’s vision. It was amazing the way we shot a film in class, with all eight of us taking up different responsibilities – three posed as actors, one cinematographer, an asst cinematographer, two people handled the lights and one director (me). I was totally blank when I was asked to frame a story for those three actors (a girl and two guys). Slowly the team began to prompt, the story materialized and we shot it in four hours, in the same small class-room. And FYI, this one too was a non-sync film, shot on 16mm.
Also, one very important aspect about being in a class with folks from different cultures is that, we were exposed to different themes, perspectives and stories. Being a romance genre fanatic since childhood, I couldn’t expect myself to do anything beyond love stories. But working in a group, wherein there existed different sets of ideas from different people, made me think beyond my favorite genre. I worked on a vampire theme for one exercise and I found it very strange and exciting to think in that perspective. One very good theme, for which I worked as a gaffer, dealt with the story of a man who sees his beloved while he is in coma. There were many other simple, yet great themes, which to mention here, can make this article run for pages.
By the time, we were to shoot our final films, I have learnt the mistakes I made earlier while shooting the film with my friends. I took the same script, casted actors, scouted for locations, got permits and shot the film to my best ability at that time. This being my first sync film (film with dialogues), I felt directing actors to talk out dialogues was a totally different experience. It was tough; but very enjoyable. I have made one of my actors re-do a scene for 37 takes because her dialogue delivery wasn’t correct. The number of retakes for other scenes too was high; but I got used to the process very soon.
The one important aspect which wasn’t covered as part of this course was Sound. But I learnt about sound by reading books and discussing with friends. I recorded sound for my final film with an external mike attached to the camcorder. Later I edited the film on Final Cut Studio. (As a student at NYFA, I was able to get huge discounts on Apple iMac and Final Cut Studio software). It took me around 20 hours to edit – the raw film being 35 min and the final film being 5 mins. The main challenges I faced while making my final film were related to getting location permits, casting and assisting crew; which in turn, made me realize how important it is to have a separate production crew for a film.
All our final films were premiered at a Hollywood theatre (Egyptian Theater-Spielberg Room) in front of a varied interactive audience, who asked us about our experiences and challenges while making our films. And the same day we were awarded the course completion certificates. It was at that moment, I wished I had the chance to do a full-time time MFA program (2 years). I felt there was a lot more to learn in Films.
Post film course, all my colleagues are scattered; some are into making independent short films or music videos, some are pursuing other longer film courses, some are building contacts with TV channels, one person is in talks with producers for her feature-length film, and me... I am preparing my scripts for Telugu cinema! Article by Purnesh © Copyright by Telugucinema.com
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