The Show Went On

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 8

The fight and decision had lasted till almost 4 am today. I was mentally, physically and emotionally tired. It was beyond imagination that a man teaching sense and people getting it could create such a magnitude of problem. Suddenly the direction department was in lime light. Everybody wanted to know what was happening. Suddenly the people who never took stand and never felt the need to take any steps to solve our problems ever were standing....but against our growth. Suddenly the picture was becoming clearer as in who to believe and who to be awry about.

Hindol had to shoot but all we were doing was going to one place to the other repeatedly doing meetings. Why? Because in a group of 10 people 2 people thought that they were not comfortable. They couldn't cope and they created havoc and dragged us in a soup. How can 2 people do that to other 8 people? And moreover they were lying, shouting, throwing tantrums, crying and bitching around. Could this win the day? The general answer would be "No". But the way things were going, it seemed like they were. Our mind was so jammed up that we were becoming clueless.

Another meeting. All the parties present. We again tried to get our point across. But Mainak and Sreecheta kept on ranting. The meeting was going no where moving in circles. We were loosing patience. And then it happened. We all stood up and said we had had enough. If 2 persons can create such fiasco, it was better to give up. We walked out deciding that the workshop will be cancelled. This was humiliating for us, for Tanmay Sir (who was doing this for what....I am sure the money was not enough to drag one self through the turmoil he was going through. He was going through this because he wanted good for us ) and equally humiliating for Subhodro Da being the co- ordinator of the workshop.

We were fuming when we came out and went to the studio floor and picked up our equipments and headed out to return- the workshop was over! We had just stepped out of the floor, and Tanmay Sir was standing there. He grouped all of us and said, "Kahan ja rahe ho? Kaam nahi karna?" He led us back in. He said lets start working and we did. We were highly confused now as to what was happening. He sat us down and asked us, if we wanted to do the work or not. We said we wanted to. Then what was our obstacle? The whole fiasco. Then get rid of it. But they keep creating conditions and counter conditions. What's more important fighting with them and winning or the work. That simple. I went back to the Dean's office and informed whatever they were saying we agreed. We just wanted our work to go on.

We just had 2 to max 3 hours to shoot and because of the chaos we haven't been able to prep too. But honestly, as a group I think all of us would agree this was the smoothest shoot we have done ourselves. 

Hindol was told to trust his cinematographer. He was told to be articulate and clear about what he wants. He was told to be calm. He didn't check a single frame. But the outcome was awesome. During a shot we realized that we could cheat positions and make the character stand according to various ruloes of photography but that might just disturb the organic quality of the story. Instead of that we find our sweet spot. Jubraj was doing the camera. He had already taken the shot maintaining the rules, now he set out to find his sweet spot and he did. And the change was awesome. Another thing I learnt was to "identify the magic". There would always be a magic point. We just have to capture that. Our whole purpose should be aligned to that magic. 

Lensing and lighting workshop it was. We all thought we would learn about lights and lens. This workshop is about lights- TRUE- but within oneself!