Movie in Focus

Alright, dear audiences! This, I am sure, is a first of a kind experience for you; and hence this is the first of a kind beginning to the movie as well. After all, as they say (I really don’t know who the fuck says those things, anyways!) all unusual things have a rather unusual beginning.

So, here we are. Here’s a little disclaimer for all of you who are going to sit through this “highly pretentious, filled-to-the-brim with self-indulgence, proclaiming to be art” movie.

What you are about to witness is a movie that you have never seen before, never heard about before, and most certainly, if you have been raised in the safe confines of entertainment-oriented cinema, have never even thought of before. This piece of experiment is sure as hell a movie with all the trappings of a usual movie; but also with a fair share of a twist like James Bond’s Martini. So, while this movie sure is shaken; it unlike Bond’s Martini is quite stirred too…

So, while it has music, it has dialogs – it, well, is our style!

Shyam: Can we just say cut, for god’s sake?

Ram: Are we really going to use this guy’s full disclaimer? Like really?

Ram: He is on a roll, isn’t he? And it’s all just because he is the director and the cameraman…

Shyam: Alright, can we have the movie begin now?

Sree: Of course, we shall…. By the way, that disclaimer was a part of the movie too... Remember Schizopolis, directed by Steven Soderbergh? That movie began with something like this… How many movies, even the so-called path-breaking ones, have you seen that begin with something like this ever?

Ram: None that I can recall…

Sree: See, that’s what I’m talking about…

Shyam: Now, that’s what it’s all about, right? There’s always an adherence, a blind adherence to some kind of unwritten set of rules. And then there crops up a generation that wants to do nothing but break down those shackles, those walls, and those structures. Structures apply to even art. This is what you have to do… This is how you paint, this is how you write, this is how you make a movie – a goddamn’ movie! Imagine, even art falls into this kind of crap mentality.

Ram: But that’s what our movie is all about, right? A protest movie is what this is… It’s our effort to showcase that there are really no structures. There’s just a free world where imaginations are not chained because they don’t exist in reality.

Sree: See, the whole point of art – particularly movie…

Shyam: Wait, why just confine it to the movies? Let’s expand the boundary… Let’s include all sorts of art… Shall we?

Ram: Right… I agree.

Sree: Yeah, so where was I? Yeah, I was talking about – wait a sec, guys, does anyone feel like we might be missing out on something here?

Ram: I figured. You carry on with what you were saying. I will take care of the rest.

Sree: Yeah, to take the cue from where I left off, the whole purpose of art is to make sure 2 things – one) it should primarily be an expression of the artist’s perception of things.

Shyam: And the second?

Sree: Second) the more lucid and the more shapeless it is, the more chances of it being interpreted and becoming a part of people’s lives – either as a loving relationship or a nightmare! And believe me, both those relationships are the ones where the art work has secured a place in the minds of the consumers. Anything other than that – it’s just a condom. It’s meant only for one purpose – “Use & Throw”.

Ram: Wait a sec! You’re implying that art that causes the consumer to have a nightmarish…

Sree: I meant to use the word “nightmare” rather loosely…

Ram: Ok, fair enough… But what you’re implying is that an art form that causes the consumer to have uncomfortable or disconcerting feelings towards it or himself or anything is still a good art form?

Shyam: Of course… See; take for example – a film that you have watched and loved it but everyone else that watched it had nothing but bricks to accord to that film.

Ram: Let’s take our movie, the one we’re filming right now, for example.

Shyam: Ok, great! Now, what do you think is the purpose of the movie that we are making right now?

Ram: Does a movie have to have a purpose?

Sree: Of course, it has to… Everything has to have a purpose…

Ram: You’re taking me to another tangent; but that’s for another day. Coming back to the point at hand – the purpose of our movie – is to express what we feel about cinema…

Shyam: Super. Now, knowing the Indian audiences as well as we do or we think we do, what do you think will be the reaction of our audiences to this?

Ram: They will hate it. They will despise it… I know for sure that my family will give me shit loads of gyan on what the fuck have I made? You see they are the people who love to be entertained when they are watching the movie. They don’t appreciate this kind of little experimental stuff that we are doing. And yeah, by the way, the smoke is ready!

Shyam: Pass it to Sree. Let him light it.

Ram: The doors of the other room and the kitchen are shut, right?

Shyam: Yeah.

Ram: What about the living room lights?

Shyam: Yeah, that too.

Ram: Sree, fan chala de yaar!

Shyam: So, to continue where we were – you are damn confident that this movie will only make them loathe you, right? But that loathsome reaction is also an offspring of the fact that this movie challenged their already widely-held ideas about how movies should be. So, when they watch this movie, they will be like – What the fuck! How can they make a movie like this? But the great things about their reaction is, and believe me this will happen, they will continue to ask you what the movie was about? What prompted you to make that movie? They will be haunted by the structure of the movie and probably the discussion in the movie too. Even if not the discussion in the movie; they sure will be haunted by the structure of the movie.

Sree: Shyam bhai, here you go. So, yeah, as Shyam bhai said, the structure will continue to chase them. I’d be a little mild in my term usage here.

Ram: If structure or the telling is all that matters and the tool is something that is just meant to enable you to capture the expression, then why such a big deal is made out of the film vs. digital topic? After all, right now, we are shooting digital, right?

Shyam: Now, that’s pushing the debate to another tangent. See, right now, we are shooting digital because one) this is cheap and we can use it too and we don’t need to hire special technical person to help us with all this.

Ram: Second?

Shyam: The story of ours, the movie of ours demands a certain aesthetic. And digital is one medium that more than helps us in getting that kind of an aesthetic. Now, imagine if this movie of ours was shot on film… How would that look?

Ram: I would not even like to imagine that. I somehow have always viewed these kinds of movies with a more digital aesthetic.

Shyam: Here you go Ram bhai.

Sree: Anyone feels like some music?

Shyam: I will play.

Music – Carnatic music featuring John McLaughlin, Vinayakaran, L Shankar and Zakir Hussain plays in the background. (Shakti Pori Jazz Festival)

Ram: Yeh le, Sree.

Shyam: This is awesome. This is really the first time that there is a movie being made that actually shows people tripping.

Ram: I can’t recall any movie that has ever shown people tripping in such a matter-of-fact way. I mean I know Paanch tried to show tripping; but that too seems filmy when we look at the sample of what we have done.

Shyam: That reminds me, are we doing well on the battery? How long will the camera sustain?

Sree: Don’t worry. We all have our mobile phones. Ram’s may not be a smart phone; but yours and mine are pretty good. We can still shoot HD footages on that.

Shyam: Sounds perfect. In fact that will help us in editing the movie too. Rather than just getting shots from one angle, we can get shots from different cameras and choose the best angle.

Ram: See, now this is exactly what I saw in Side-by-Side. They speak about this aesthetic bit and now here we are – perpetual trippers of Nolan and IMAX – shooting digital and talking about editing the movie.

Sree: See, the key thing is this – Digital certainly democratizes the whole movie making process.

Ram: But does it take care of writing loopholes?

Music – Changes to “The Verve” – All in the Mind

Shyam: Have we written any material here? Any material for what we are shooting right now?

Ram: None at all. But this can’t be the blanket rule, right?

Sree: See here it worked because all we decided to do was to make a movie about movie making. But not every plot can be approached like this.

Ram: I know… I was just asking. How many movies have been made on the process of film making or on film making itself? On a certain level – even Inception was about the process of film making; but no film has ever been attempted in such a fashion. This entire effort, if we can afford to be not so modest and be realistic, is very similar to Richard Linklater.

Shyam: Aha, that’s a lot of compliment that we take out of nothing.

Sree: No, in a way, I agree with him. See, Richard Linklater has this kind of style of movie making where there seems to be no plot. His entire film is constructed on randomness and that enables him to embrace certain kind of lucidity in his narration.

Ram: The points are circling!

Shyam: Wasn’t this the thing that we started the entire discussion with?

Sree: Indeed.

Music – Changes to “Tiesto Beautiful World”

Shyam: We are almost done shooting the movie… What are we going to do with the release of it?

Ram: Can’t we release it on YouTube?

Sree: With such liberal display of dope in the movie, we sure as hell can’t get a theatrical release.

Ram: I think that’s the best part about this kind of movie making. We can show what we want, we can do what we want and then upload it on YouTube and wait for some “indie film god” to see and pick it up. By embracing this style, we don’t have to fear the moral brigade, do we?

Shyam: Indeed. Otherwise, imagine what would this film of ours have been reduced to if we had tried to go theatrical?

Sree: Censored.

---------------The End---------------