Day 15 | jubaraj baruah | Cut

Day 15 – A 2 week workshop officially comes to an end. We draw the curtains of the workshop with Kirti’s shoot. A self reflective process is unfolding as this event in our lives wraps up. Sir had ensured us that the journey will be fun if we trust him. In the beginning I had a problem trusting in this process. This happens when a huge tide is about to happen and you are not ready to face it. As Subhodro sir puts it, without humility, a director won’t be able to go along with any kind of crew whatsoever and would be left out however talented he was. If I had to mention one takeaway from the whole workshop it has to be humility. When you are told on your face you seek attention and when all of the fellow batch mates gather up the interest to point it out, you feel conscious of your bad habits and you try to get rid of them. The ride had to come with its share of bumps to enjoy the smoother road later. Kirti’s shoot had kicked off at 10 : 30 AM. Himel who was second in command was organizing us to arrange the props. Hindol was doing the lighting for her. My job was to do sound. I went through the script – It was a one page moment to be captured.  Apparently Kirti had different ideas but then owing to some kind of block, couldn’t  come out with any of those new ideas. The lighting was being done to simulate morning. A 2K was kept in front of the window. A gateway was put on it. Then a 1K placed was inside the living room to bounce off light from the wall on the background of the first frame. A china lamp for additional fill was also used. I would like to watch Kirti’s footage to understand if this lighting setup really worked in simulating morning. Another alternative could have been putting gateways in the whole window and putting a 5K in front of the window. What was simulated was sunlight simulation and not skylight simulation. Direct sunlight through a window happens only in a portion of the day  and it is very time specific. Kirti is a calm and a person at peace. With such a composure, the shoot was bound to be peaceful. There was no intention to hurry and we had a grab of things happening in the set. All duties were properly assigned and everybody was engrossed in some way or the other  in the shoot. But then the orchestration was still happening. The golden points were still being made. The organic approach had been picked up in terms of crew handling but  in terms of the craft, the traditional method of manipulating the complete shot from exit to entry was being followed. There was bread and butter on her prop list. Our actor Sumana had to put butter on the bread and keep it aside. This helped us ensure a late lunch with the breakfast being taken care of by the props that came in. Post lunch the notion was what follows would a difficult shot. By this time a news had already disappointed me. I was all excited to watch Still Life which I have been wanting to watch for a really long time. But the FRO had  a longer process in mind. We will try to fix the screening in the OAT today without fail. The next shot was a track shot. Kirti usually asks a question “Why?” whenever she has to criticize a film. That’s how she usually starts “Why?”. This was the same question that Sir had raised and she didn’t have a complete answer to it. Getting the  track was another hassle. First the bits didn’t match each other. Then the trolley that we got didn’t fit into the bit. I had the wrong notion that all trolleys to be set on tracks come in the same dimensions. The effort taken was double and the time to do the formalities was additional. From one space of Sumana, we come to the other space of Sumana having a conversation with Ashok(with golden points sketched and movement predecided). An improvisational to this traditional method could help in finding some energies and dissipating them. With Sir’s suggestion and a number of retakes already, we finally decided to work on the improvisation. I was doing sound. I had to walk with the track and still point the boom in the right directions. I am happy I managed to pull it off  without any glitches. Himel did a dry run for sometime and he too fell in sync with the characters and the track shot finally worked out. We had done away with the choreographed points and this was much more powerful. It was 5 o clock by the time we finished this shot. The word was out – Pack up.

There was this realization too at the same time that the workshop had come to an end. How to take the lessons forward is what actually matters now. We hence didn’t scatter and go to our respective rooms, have a private party and slept off. We rolled a smoke and watched Chal Chaliye, a short film directed by Tanmay Sir. All the organicity that he talks about was evident in the film. Plus the close ups, the extreme close ups that give away finer details of a spontaneous moment were also present. There was no architecture to create distinct spaces for two characters. To create such spaces, no construction was required in this case as he effectively used the surrounding(the woods and the mountains) to demarcate the spaces.  I was reminded of the last sequence of La Notte in the garden after watching this film. This was followed by us meeting Sir in the guest house. Subhodro Sir was also present. We were definitely missing a can of beer in our hands. Hence we had to get it. Finally we all settled in 204 with our beers and there was this small nice session. Subhodro Sir talked about the dearth of original ideas. How back in their years, the fight was with form and how today it has faded away. He also brought out the hard reality that in the last few years of our college, nobody has been able to come up with unseen images. The whole equation of two batchmates sitting together and talking about their scriptwriting class with Sagir is already one experience for us as we immediately relate it to the scriptwriting classes we have had. The red marking of the adjectives on the script was a beautiful way to sum up a memory.  The beers were over and the tipsy mode was on. So there were a lot of things said and a lot of things forgotten. But the reality had posed one question –  how to take the lessons forward?

How do we cut from where we are now to what we want to be, from a level of mediocrity to the kind of films we want to direct. The cut becomes important. The cut is what we lived through for 15 days. Lets keep rolling.

P.S. If you want to watch Chal Chaliye online you can follow this link: http://www.tanmayagarwal.info/