Energy Game

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 14

It was JJ's shoot. JJ was a hyper active person who gets angry faster, annoyed faster just like a kid. For him the main lesson of the day would be Patience which would lead to directing from distance. JJ picked up the camera and tripod from my room right in time. Everyone else was not responding to my constant plea of getting the equipment. Anyways,when the equipment were collected and I did reach the set JJ was missing. JJ had gone to Sir's room to discuss. We set up the first shot as we knew it from the previous day. Then we started fooling round a bit with the camera.

JJ came a bit later and he seemed calm (which was very strange when it came to JJ!).He had decided to go for a long take approach as he was using f11. He wanted to play with the deep depth of field. JJ's stories are always approached in a bit offbeat way. This story had it too. Tanmay Sir and Kirti were acting. The lighting was done completely by artificial light. 

JJ started the first shot with Kirti in foreground and pulling away a suitcase, while in the background we see Tanmay Sir packing his suitcase. The main essence of this shot was the distance between them.

Tanmay Sir believes in creating moments. So during acting he created moments. He tried showing us by varying the movements how the energy keeps moving from one place to another. I realized that the play of energy is the thing that keeps us glued to the screen. The going apart and coming together of energy is what composition, lighting, cinematography is all about. We took few takes of this shot with variable actions and went and screened it in big screen. Weirdly, the shots many of us liked was not liked by JJ.


In one of the takes, Tanmay Sir and Kirti were apart to start from, then suddenly they came together just by crossing each other and again went their own way. A beautiful moment was created which probably could not have been scripted(specially not by novices like us!). Adding to this Subhodro Da says a beautiful thing. He says that if you want to capture a shot of 10 secs then direct the actors for a action of 40 secs starting a bit earlier than the moment and ending a bit later than the moment. Somewhere in the middle you will get the moment you want.

After a hurried lunch, we were back at the floor. JJ, Ashok and Hindol were setting up the shot. JJ had gone into a block over the condom packet sequence. He didn't know the actions, so Kirti and I improvised and found the action. As the proper actions were not written, the first take went completely out of the script. JJ quickly stepped in to say that the actors should stick to the script. Now came the problem that the condom packet was not seen properly in a long shot. He was adamant about establishing the condom packet, so Kirti was instructed to put the packet in certain position and in a certain movement so that audience could identify it as a condom packet. This made kirti's actions and movements highly unnatural. This is where Sir stepped in and pointed him out to take the inserts. So we quickly finished this shot and went for the inserts of her putting the condom pack in the suitcase and her reaction and dialogue.

Now came the last shot which Kirti had been dreading since morning. This was a intimate shot. Where Kirti sits away from Tanamay Sir. There is a power off and the room becomes dark. Kirti comes and sits beside Tanmay Sir and tries to get intimate but at this moment a car's head light cross their faces and Tanmay Sir points out the the cab of Kirti is there. It was a difficult lighting but Hindol was doing a great job.

Tanmay Sir lodged the first question.
So what do you think the girl is thinking about?
She is sad that whatever they had will be no more. She is thinking that how the relationship could have ended. She wants to probably give it another try.
So, what relationship? How is it different from any other relationship?
And then the point hit us, physical intimacy. Why do we all cringe from it? Are we afraid of it? Cant we approach this emotion when it was such a vital emotion in all of us. Like JJ puts it, why are our stories all asexual.

Sir asked us to remember the most beautiful moment of our relationships. He said to portray what the girl was thinking we should show what she was thinking. Kirti went into a nostalgic mood and became emotional. It was a vulnerable position for her. But once this shot was taken, it was wonderful and so real. There was no forceful cliched actions like "about to kiss"... the magic just happened.

Now we were set for the fantasy shot which would be placed where Kirti is thinking. Obviously she longs for physical intimacy. How to show that without diving into cliches. Sir made Kirti sit on a table. Then went and stood in front of her. Then he asked her to put her legs around him. The moment was made. There was no doubt they were intimate and since it was transformed from an emotional thing to being a mere physical action of putting your leg around it was easy for Kirti to do as well.

Moral: We should know what we are asking from our actors or in that case from any of the crew member. We as a director should know how to get that without making it too complicated or stressful for them. 

We got back to CRT to view our footage. The moments were captured beautifully. The session continued with a song that Sir played. "Love will turn you around".

All of us were in peace. For few minutes the silence ensued and it was blissful. We all knew there were other people but we knew they were our people. TRUST. That was the first question that was asked by Sir when he came the second day. We had achieved trust...not only in all of us but on ourselves.

The Energy Game:

Each shot is about energy games. How the energy comes together and again part.
Each scene is an energy game. How you place one shot after the other and build the energy upto a crescendo. It is a mix of magic and your craft.
Each crew operating is an energy game. How you keep all the energies together and not let them fade or dissipate. It is a mix of authority and humbleness.
Each day of our lives is an energy game. How we channelize the positive and discard the negative is what we need to learn.

 Personal take away:

Generally when I like any character of any story, I place some or the other characteristic of that character with some character of my "The Ex". I find him in those characters. It bugs me sometime as keep feeling why the hell do I do that, why do I keep remembering him. The same thing happened today. But when Sir asked me to find the most beautiful moment, I did. And that was kind of a revelation coz I suddenly realized its not a bad thing. I remember and that is why today I could get my moment. It's all good. And because I was at peace with this matter it did not bother me as it bothered Kirti. I mentally gave a pat on my shoulder for being raw and at the same time knowing one self. 

"How do you know when to stay or to go
And how do you know when it's real
You don't need a sign to make up your mind
You got your heart at the wheel
You wanna start sharin', carin'
Carin' again"

Back in class as I closed my eyes in the darkness and listened to the song, I cried but not in loneliness but in hope. We were all sitting. Few days back it didn't matter what happened to to others. We kept fighting our own demons but never shared. But suddenly in the dark, I remembered Sumana was scared of darkness and I wanted to know if she was fine. I cared for her. I thought I had lost it.... to still let people in. I was more attuned to myself.

Let there be lights..

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 13

The started with my remaining shots. We have decided that I would shoot in the first half and JJ would start his shoot in the second half. 

We have become a it lethargic. And our blogs take the toll. Everybody was writing the blog and not responding. Sumana was finishing her blog, so JJ opted for being the camera person for the mean time. But electricity was not there.

We started the day off with a grammar lesson - Verbs. Sir pointed out that there are Active verbs and Passive verbs.
[For more details check: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/activepassive.html]
He asked us to underline all the verbs in the script once we did that Sir said we generally write in Active verb but sometimes we falter and write in Passive. That should stop, there cannot be a passive sentence for an action line. "The kettle was put on the stove." Arre by whom? Or did the kettle magically appear on the stove! "The tea vendor put the kettle on the stove" - that's the way to go. Subhodro Da who was standing by, added that we can write what ever but directing has to be in Active verb as we have tell the actor playing tea vendor to do it.

The remaining shots for me were all interior. The first shot was of Kirti moving the files and sitting on the sofa and giving a look at Hindol. JJ framed and took the shot and I loved the moment captured but it was a rough take as the lights were not up. Sumana came in the middle and took over the camera. I told her the shot, but she just didn't give me what I wanted. I showed her JJ's shot too but every time she gave me something else. Anyways that shot was done in some time. But I was getting impatient.

We moved to the next shot. This was a dressed up shot. I had designed it in a way where the bottle would be in the fore ground and the first chunk of dialogue would happen on the bottle, then there would be a tilt and focus shift to get her face and second chunk would be on her face. This was definitely a dressed up apple. Sir asked me what the shot was about and I told him. He asked me to get the actor in the zone. So I asked Kirti to do the action for me once. She got into the zone and did the action. O my God! What fool am I! the whole action was so potent in itself, and here I was, dressing the shot up for what joy only God knew. So before Sumana set the camera, I actually went to her and said, "Kuch bhi lele, bottle shift focus kuch nahi chahiye, mujhe sirf moment dede."[Just take the shot, I don't need any bottle or shift focus, just capture the moment.]

Sumana set the camera at a low angle, below Kirti's eye level and also at an angle where it was not anyone's POV. After seeing the frame, I took Sumana aside and tried telling her that I didn't like the frame as it gave a distortion to the character. Obviously, I had no clue what I was talking about except for the fact that I didn't like the frame. Sir intervened. Sir let Sumana take the shot, while he asked me if I had a sweet spot of my own from where I wanted to take it. He also clarified that, I had said too many words to Sumana and that just showed my impatience and also portrayed disrespect for for my camera person. He said, to speak in Active verb. "Tell her what to do to make it better or don't speak at all." Then he told me to find my sweet spot for this shot, which I did. By then Sumana had made the frame from her sweet spot. Sir asked me if I wanted to stop her, I didn't. I decided to let her finish and then we can try the other one. 

But Kirti took the cake away. She was completely in the zone and what ever she did it just looked beautiful. Once Sumana had taken the shot, as Kirti had acted so well, though I wasn't satisfied with the angle, when Sir asked me if I wanted to take from my spot I said no. But then Sir started explaining. 

When characters are interacting there is an energy transfer happening. So when one characters is talking to the other a cone of energy is being emitted towards the other character. To get the emotion or the energy we need to be in that cone. This cone is created between generally between the eye levels of the two characters and it starts from the character speaking and diverges as it reaches the other character. Next choice is whom to be close to - or whose POV are you talking about. So, who ever's POV you choose, you need to be closer to that person.

We took the shot and moved to the last shot of my shoot. We wrapped it up quickly. I felt happy. I hugged Sumana and told her it was a good shoot. Sumana replied that she was happy that I was so happy. Isn't it all about that. The point where we had started this journey from. In pursuit of happiness.

A quick lunch and we were back on floor for JJ's shoot. We gathered props and set things up. But this time the rules were changed. We would be using dramatic lighting scheme. That is we would be concentrating on lighting up the characters and object and not the background. We would be using the artificial lights. So, we went ahead to get familiarized with them. We got introduced to a Solar(2K), Panja (5K), Baby (1K) and Dinky (300 watt). These were all fresnel light.  There was knob which could make the light hard and soft, this happened by moving the bulb back and front. The other type of lights were the Multi 10, Multi 20. These were not fresnel. We went ahead to mounting and setiing up these lights. We tried our hand with barn doors, cutter stand and wires. We learnt about fall off. Fall off is a factor which determines how much the subject os getting light and how it varies as the subject is moved horizontally as well as back and front. We figured the max light is recieved by the subject when the subject is bang in the centre of the light beams. As the subject moves right or left slowly the light decreases. Similarly, the light is greatest when the subject is bang in front of the light and decreases as he moves away. 

We decided to go with an aperture of f11, so that we could achieve greater depth of field. We would introduce more lights to compensate. JJ had not thought of such dramatic lighting scheme. We started arranging for a shot but it was too late. So we packed up for the day.

Today JJ shoots. With many many lights.

Me in frame

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 12

Today was my shoot. We were a bit late to start with. Sumana and Ashok were doing camera and sound respectively. 

Generally when I go for my shoot I am calm, and I tend to trust my camera man a lot. I have always believed in working in a team and trusting it completely. I have always told my fellow mates that I would rather go for a person I trust as a crew member than going for a person just because he is the best. So I was pretty much happy with my conduct with the crew. Though I know I must have goffed up here and there but that's fine, I am still learning after all!

I had made up my mind to shoot with lamps today. I chose 18mm on P2 as my lens. The first thing I did once I fixed the lens was to measure my angle of view. With that set we went forward. Hindol, Kirti and Himel were acting for me. We started with the exterior shots.

Sir generally let's the Director of the day to start the shoot and get his conduct right, only when he sees that it is going towards messy waters that he intervenes. So, Sir came in at a situation where there was a bit of a confusion about a shot where I wanted to establish that the door of the house and the teashop were bang opposite to each other. This shot was a safe shot that I had planned on the go. I for one was not really sure of the shot thus all I could visualize is a long shot. Sumana started working on the shot and it became more complicated. Now we had a situation where a whole shop needed to be propped up for this shot to be taken, which ensured that a lot of time being wasted. I should have taken a call but I was not sure myself so I was trying to get a hang of it. Tanmay Sir came to rescue with his exact questions. This is one thing about Sir that he generally doesn't provide you with answers at first go- he provides the perfect questions and lets you come up with the answer. He asked me simply why I wanted the shot. Once I explained the reason. He asked me about the shots I had taken before. After patiently listening to my shot he looked at me in that one eyebrow raised way that he does and said, "Then why are you taking this shot. Tune fir itna mehnat kyun lagaya pichle shots mein? What more would you establish from this shot?" And the beautiful part of any confusion is always that you actually know the answer its just that validation that you need. Sir went on to explain that if you show everything as an apple for an apple then nothing is left to imagination- the space is fully defined. JJ enquired about which was better. Sir smiled and said, "You decide!" In spite of Mithoo da and the others working so hard to set the extra shot up, I gave up on the shot as it was JUST not needed! And I am terribly sorry for their hard work going to waste.

Moral: 

• Do not take a shot if you are not sure.
• Do not take a shot when that shot doesn't add to any information in the narrative.
• It is always better to leave somethings for the audiences' imagination.
• Take control of the situation when things start getting confusing. Ask your self why it is confusing. More times than not, you would discover you are not sure what you want of the shot.

Now, the last point of the above set of thoughts brings me to an important thing that I am not addressing for a very long time: Positive approach to a Problem.

First identify your problem. Once the problem has been identified, think of the positive actions that can be taken to solve that issue. You can either break down the task to be taken to solve the problem and delegate among the others or if it requires your own intervention, you go about it.

Sir keeps re iterating this point so like in my childhood days I choose to write it down to make this real, so that I can follow this approach.

Once the exterior shots were done, we moved to the interiors. The first shot was of scattered files where Hindol's hand would come and search for a file, find it and leave. I had designed a series of these kinds of shot to prove my point that this man did not care about the call he was getting, instead he chose to be busy with his work. Sir presented his barrage of questions.

What is this series of shot about?

To prove my point that this man did not care about the call he was getting, instead he chose to be busy with his work.

So, what is it actually about?

Him being busy.

So, you want to say that he is busy?

No, I wanted to show that he didn't care about the call.

So, what are you wanting to show?

His aloofness.

So does this series show aloofness? Yeah probably it does, but how much screen time would it take?

A LOT!

Now Sir started demonstrating the same point across but in a much precise manner. He designed a shot where the phone is in frame and as the phone rings we go for a small track out to get Hindol's face in frame, where he gives a wayward look at the phone and then puts on the earphone. Tough we did not take the shot then but the moment Sir said it I could visualize and in Himel's words, "The juice was there".

Moral:

• Be sure of what the shot is really about.
• Be precise about the information you want to give.

We broke for lunch. Some food and some smoke down our throat, we were back on floor. We decided to take an easier shot first and then go for the  track shot.

This shot was of Hindol typing in his laptop while listening to music, while he notices Kirti knocking on the window in front of him and thus he looks up. We had taken Kirti's knocking on the window shot separately so this was fully about Hindol's action. I personally wanted a close up but Sumana couldn't get a proper angle - so, both of us settled for a ticght mid close shot where a part of the laptop is seen and the table lamp is seen. Once the shot was taken, Sir asked again the same question, what was the most important thing in the shot. It was obviously Hindol but we all realized since the table lamp was the most brightest part of the frame, that over powers Hindol's action completely.

Here, Sir demonstrated the different things that grabs our eyes in the frame. He asked us to close our eyes and open when he asked us to. At first go we opened our eyes to an image with a single bright source of light, and after a glimpse we close our eyes again. We all had noticed only the bright source. Second time around the image had a bright spot but then the eye is drawn towards the lines which were the sharpest part of the image. Third time, our eyes went for the movement in the frame. These just proved that our eyes perceive information in a certain manner and unless we can place information properly in our frames we would not be able to express the correct message.

In this shot there were two sources of light. One was the table lamp and the other was the laptop. While the table lamp was tungsten, the laptop gave a blue light. To top it, the blue light was very faint. So, we decided to use a Dinky(300 watt fresnel light- tungsten) to simulate the laptop light. We used a blue gel but still it was  not blue enough. We threw in more nets and blue cellophane, even we tried using a thermocol with a blue cellophane but it just didn't work. The light was still more. We could go for a white balnce to tungsten approach, where the tungsten table lamp would seem white but the blue would look more blue. And then we could go for a 85 gel on the table lamp to make it yellow but that would take a lot of time, finally we reached a point when we decided to use a florescent rather than a tungsten light. So a Kino was got in position and we used a thermocol and a blue cellophane to diffuse the light. This gave us perfect simulation. Sir told us to try and simulate the lamp light by using the Dinky. But no matter what was done I was not getting satisfied because the light became more and more forced. So I came to a point where I stepped in to say I liked the lamp light much better. This just proved a simple point It was always better to use practical lights. With film cameras a lot of light was required to get proper exposer but with today's digital cameras which were highly sensitive even to low light conditions, it was better to use natural sources of light rather than trying to simulate it.

Now, as Sumana worte in her blog, that there can be 2 types of direction that you can give your actor.

• Active actions- Where you give concrete actions to your actors which are doable, visible and simple.
• Passive actions- Where you will tell your actors about the emotions you want to convey through his actions. Here you don't really give exact actions to the actors. The actor himself has to interpret and do the actions.

Sometimes, a passive action does not come out the way you want. Thus its easier to give active actions. The same thing happened with Hindol in this shot. He knew the whole pretext but the emotion, that he could have got the phone call but he chose to listen to music other wise was not coming through. Sir instructed Hindol to actually sing a song in his head and then type. He did and suddenly the typing became less important and the listening to song became more important and the emotion came through.

Once we got the emotion right. Now came the question that if he was so engrossed in the song how would he notice that someone is there at the window, and say if he does notice how do we make the audience notice it as well. Thus it was decided to use the Dinky with a 85 gel to simulate a street light and Kirti would stand at the window to cast a shadow on Hindol's face which would be captured by the camera. 

Personal realization:

During this above shot, at some point while checking the frame I found it too tight so I kept on insisting to go a bit loose. Sir turned and said, "You are scared of going close to people!" For few seconds I didn't know how to react cause Sir had just said a truth that I just couldn't deny. This made me wonder how much of ourselves we put to display when we make a film. We think we are telling others' stories but actually each of our frames are about us being in frame- a part of us for everyone to see.

We went for the track shot at the end. Sumana was having problems getting a proper frame, so Sir stepped in. He chucked out all unnecessary details from the frame and went for a beautiful shot. Though we had a late pack up around 6 and the floor dadas and the light dadas were annoyed, we had a great day! I was happy! 

Extra things we learnt:

• Dinky - 300 watt fresnel unidirectional tungsten light.
• Baby - 1000 watt fresnel unidirectional tungsten light.
• Kino - Kino Flo is best known for its fluorescent tube arrangements that are used for the color of film and digital video. These lights provide a relatively compact and efficient way of providing soft lighting. Compared to the original workhorse of motion picture lighting, incandescent lights (and, more recently, HMI lights), Kino Flo tubes produce less heat and fit into smaller spaces, two significant advantages that have made them popular with professionals. [Information Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_Flo]
• Fresnel Light - A focusable spotlight used in film, television, and theater lighting, which can be adjusted via a knob on the back of the light from "spot" for a narrowly focused beam, to "flood" for a wider beam.  This type of focusable lighting instrument is called a Fresnel because it features a Fresnel Lens, a glass lens with concentric ripples that is visible on the front of the light, casting soft, even illumination across the light's beam.
  The Fresnel Lens is named for its inventor, the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), who designed the Fresnel Lens to efficiently project beams of light from lighthouses.  [Information courtesy: http://www.3drender.com/glossary/fresnellight.htm , ]
• Examples of films that use natural lights: Barry Lyndon, Jesus Christ Superstar, Amadeus etc

Later, once the shoot was done Kirti, Sumana and I were sitting down for a chat with Sir when Sumana popped a question which was there in all our heads.

Is there any exercise or process that we can follow to practice finding actions to replace the emotions in our scripts?
Try thinking in terms of metaphors. Not literal ones but visual ones. An apple for pear. 

It doesn't come easy but I am definitely going to try it!!

It was a good day and thanks to my whole crew for making it possible!! Cheers to us!! Tomorrow we shoot some remaining portions, and I am sure it's gonna be fun!

Blueprint...

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 11

Today I was much more in control of the situation. I woke at the right time. Finished my blog and was at CRT for the meeting at 9 am sharp but no one else was there. JJ came along and was equally shocked to see that no one was there. We started calling people. JJ had met up with Sir and he had given proper instruction that the blog needed to be finished right away. Then we would head for the floor. Himel, Sumana and Hindol were yet to submit their blog. So I sent them sit and write the blog. Today was Ashok's shoot and Himel was doing the camera. He was outside the department, so I asked about his shots and story. He scared me a lot when he said that his full story was a single shot. I tried to make him understand that he should break the shots. Long takes will not only dynamize less but also give a proscenium approach. But Ashok did not understand what I was trying to say. 

Meanwhile, I got the floor open. Mithoo Da and I started to prop up the Kitchen. JJ and Kirti were acting.  While they rehearsed their lines outside, I rushed to finish propping. We started shooting by 11 am. We had put practical lights wherever necessary. Ashok's story was about a gambler who beats his wife and takes all her money. So Kirti needed some make up to show that she was beaten up. We used lipstick to make a bruise under and around her eyes. 

Kirti's make up

f 4.5, 1/60, ISO 6400, focal length- 30mm

The first few shots were taken but all the shots were very stagy.  But one commendable factor was that Ashok was conducting himself properly. He maintained his calm and distance. But he too resorted to coverage style. 

We were taking a shot of the glass in which rum would be poured. Now that was the biggest mistake. The sub text of the shot we were missing completely. JJ's character was angry and the shot needed to portray that. Sir came to the floor in between the shot. He sat there watching us work. He then pointed out that Sumana who was doing sound, was holding the boom very far from the action. Sir explained that the boom mic should be kept as near as possible and the mic should ideally face downward as then the boom would also get the sound that would be reflected from the ground. Sumana tried doing that but in that the boom shadow was coming in frame. Once Sir checked the frame Sir pointed out that there was a lot of things that were unnecessary in the frame. KISS! Sir pointed re arranged the composition of the shot to chuck out all the extra things. Once that was done the boom could be held much closer.

Moral: Do not hesitate to move the frame. It is easier to move the frame than to move everything else or to keep everything else in a limbo. 

Moreover Sir asked JJ to pour some rum in the glass take a pause pour some again, this time a lot more and then pick up the glass. And voila! The subtext was clear. The shot transformed from being the shot of a glass getting filled with rum to a man's anger.

Moral: Use actions to depict emotions.

After this shot we broke for lunch. Kirti and I were walking together towards the mess when I asked Sir that how to decide if to take the action and reaction together or to take it separately and edit it together? Sir said that it was depending on the passage of time it would take to travel from action to reaction and if something important or interesting would be in frame during the travel. Moreover it was also dependent on the script line. I realized immediately that this confusion arises when we are not that clear about our script lines.

This generally happens that we want to portray something but we get stuck. This happens generally because we see the magnanimity problem. But Sir states it right when he says that we should not see the problem as that. Instead we should think of positive actions that can get the problem solved. If there is a will there has to be a way.

We resumed shooting after lunch. We started with THE SHOT of Ashok's sequence. It was again a long take with a chunk of dialogue highly charged with emotions. JJ and Kirti had mugged up the lines. The first take went very nice acting wise but technically Ashok was not happy with the shot. So now started the barrage of retakes. With each retake acting deteriorated and the actors started getting mixed up with their lines. Sir was listening to us from outside the shooting area and stepped in at this point.

He sat both the actors down and told them to write out their dialogues. This would help them to memorize. Then he told them to say the dialogues mechanically for few times. Then they took the shot again and it went fine. When we reviewed the shot the shot was obviously very proscenium like with characters doing a kind of choreography. On the other hand Sir hand taken a shot with his camera from where he was sitting. Here he had captured certain moments before JJ went into the kitchen with his dialogues. Even the dialogue itself was very interestingly shot as it had a different feel to it- almost voyeuristic in nature.

Hindol after seeing the shot commented that the moments captured by Sir of JJ was very original but how do we write it down when writing a script. Sir explained that it was probably not possible. That is why what we write on script is a blueprint. We should know what we want from that shot but we should also be open to different moments as and when they happen.

Sir showed us some footage that he had taken of the workers working in the campus and he portrayed how it was possible to draw attention to what was wanting to be said. 

 

Miles to go...

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 10

Yesterday night I felt sick, so couldn't write the previous blog, couldn't wake up early too. I was just not feeling well. Anyways, it was Sumana's shoot and one member less in a small crew as ours would be disastrous, thus I picked myself and reached the floor.

Production meetings have not yet happened for any of the shoot yet and that is a problem. I had already spoken to Sumana and the requisition list for propping up was huge. She had decided to shoot in 3 spaces. One was the living room, a tea stall and another space too which would be a bedroom. I was not sure why was she asking me to prop up so extensively but JJ and I anyways started running about propping up the spaces. JJ went to get things from Bimal da's shop for our tea shop while I rumpled around to get all the props and costume. But with the help of Mithoo da, Bikash da and Dilip da we got all the spaces dressed in remarkably short span of time.

JJ and Kirti were the actors. Sumana's story was of two strangers meeting and getting closer. Hindol was doing camera today. He wanted to use proper lights. So we replaced the tube light by kino and placed a tungsten to get the feel of a street light. The first thing that caught my eyes was the fact that Sumana had not written her dialogues and thus a lot of improvisation was happening on the go which was taking a lot of time. More over Sumana was constantly standing with Hindol checking the frame. She had chosen normal lens which was 12mm in P2. The first shot was done before Sir came in. Sumana was resorting to coverage style shot taking overlapping the same action in 2 shots. Just before taking the 2nd shot, she felt that Kirti needed a bindi. Inspite of me telling her that it would be difficult to find she wanted me to check in the costume department. I returned without a bindi and opted for a sindoor bindi. This was a long wait. Sir intervened. 

Everyday Sir was re iterating certain basic rules to which we always nodded but almost never followed. 

• The first and foremost being that the director has to distance himself from the whole activity on floor, so that he/she can concentrate on directing and delegating the jobs. 

• How to understand the normal focal length of a camera?
• If we put one eye to the view finder and open one eye we will see two images getting formed. If we keep adjusting the focal length, at some point we will get one image. The focal length at which we get this is normal lens of that particular camera. When the image in the view finder is a bit wider and the objects look a bit smaller, it is wide. When the objects look bigger and the frame becomes tighter, it is tele.

• Once you have set your lens, if you stand where the camera is placed and stretch out your hand fully in front of you and measure the two extreme edges of the frame, this is your angle of view. Now with this measurement if you can stand anywhere and see the angle of view from that spot(ie, the position of the camera would be the place where you are standing).

• Once you have found the angle of view, we need to choose the sweet spot, before taking the shot.

• Do not go for coverage. It does not allow you to find the sweet spot.

• KISS (Keep it simple silly!) Don't waste time over extra things. If the script line is coming through it's always enough.

• Best friend of the director on the floor is the cinematographer and there should be complete trust between them.  The director should be able to explain what the shot is. Once it is done the cinematographer should be allowed to take the shot. Once this is done still if the emotion or magic is not coming through then the director should intervene. 

• Melodrama makes no sense. Give your actors proper actions to portray the emotion.

• An hierarchy should always be maintained. Director is the commander. S/He should trust people on his/her crew, but the ultimate decision would be his/hers.

• People should be engaged during the shoot. Delegating work to everyone is also a process of engaging them.

• Not everyone needs to know everything, thus the director should talk to personnel personally regarding their duties. If someone has a suggestion they should go up to the director and have a talk.

Sir looked at our light arrangement and asked why we needed it. He explained that earlier we needed heavy lights as the sensors were not good enough so to expose we needed them. But now the sensors are strong enough. So we switched off the kino and the tungsten. Instead of the tungsten we put 2 tungsten bulbs. Again KISS! Lights are for seeing. If we can see it should be enough.

We went into the next shot. This was of Kirti opening a lock and then deciding to lock it again and leaving. The light source was a over head bulb, thus when she looked down her whole face became dark. Hindol tried taking a mid shot of this. First the cam was on the lock- she opens the lock, pause she puts the lock back- Hindol tilts up to get her face. Sir intervened. Sumana had given a complicated direction to Kirti, to show hesitation, thinking, confusion- and Kirti being Kirti, just like me had gone into melodrama zone. Sir spoke about the Bressonian Process of shot taking. He said that the action was important.

• He asked us to move the camera close. 
• The camera was placed 2 inch lower than her eyes as she was looking down.
• The lock was important as that was the action. Kirti's face was important as that was the reaction. Thus, take the 2 shots separately.
• When close up of the lock, Kirti was given direction while the shot was on. Sir said this could be done in a way so that the actor's concentration doesn't break and you get what you want.
• "Surgical lighting"- As Kirti's face was in shadows, Sir took 2 pieces of the reflector and reflected some light on her temple and on her chin. The point is to see, where light is needed we can feel it in using reflectors.

After the lunch we got back and shooting resumed. The bonding between Sumana and Hindol had improved. Sumana was trying her level best to keep away from the camera but the amount of shots left bogged her down. She was loosing her calm and all the things that Sir keeps mentioning about the "conduct of the director " kind of went for a toss. But the brighter side was we were able to take a lot of shots- finish the whole sequence that was planned.

It was a good day! Though we didn't do everything the way it should be done but we somehow managed through. We are all trying....and I am sure we will get it.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, 

But I have promises to keep, 

And miles to go before I sleep, 

And miles to go before I sleep."

In search of the sweet spot

Lensing and Lighting workshop with Tanmay Agarwal

Day 9

It was Himel's shoot. Sir had informed us earlier that he would not be there till the second half. Hindol was to guide Himel, as Sir had guided him for his shoot. Kirti was the camera person. Kirti and Himel had sat together with their shots earlier. Sir had instructed us to use natural sources of light for the shoot. That meant if the room had a tube light fixed at a particular spot then the light source would be that it self. So, the first thing that we did was to get a tube light fixed in the set room he would shoot in. But the first shot was out side the house. Before taking the shot I asked Himel what light he wanted in this situation. to which he replied that he wanted a street light kind of feel. But we had no clue how to set it up. So we went for the floor lights.

Sir had instructed in the first day of shoot itself that the director had to choose a lens and the whole sequence would be shot with the same lens. But Himel was not sure about his lens preference. He was not clear what would be the angle of view, even Kirti was not very clear. So we all told Himel to see a particular shot in all three types of lenses. Keeping the magnification constant Kirti and Himel saw the different lens and Himel chose a wide lens of 7mm on P2 which was more or less like 24 mm otherwise.

Himel's sequence had a girl called Soumita (the female lead) who is beaten by her husband coming to her neighbor's, Sounak's house to take refuge. Himel's actors was Sumana and JJ. After hearing the story Sumana wanted to back out as she felt that she won't be able to act it out. So Himel changed her and the actress became me. So the first shot was of Soumita walking hurriedly towards Sounak's door and knocking on it urgently. Soumita had to have blood coming out of her nose,so we made blood with honey and sindoor. So, now I had to walk from a distance a bit scared. It was decided to take a long shot of this. But what I kept feeling was what was important in this shot was the fear of the Soumita and in the long shot this was not coming out properly. Maybe a handheld moving back would have been a better option. It would give a jerky nervousness to the shot and also allow the expression to be seen. But today was Himel's and Kirti's day and I totally gave into their choices.

The second shot was inside the living room. So the full set up went inside. Now came the time to shoot only in the tube light that we have arranged. The furnitures have been arranged before hand.

The second shot was of Saunak opening the door and Soumita coming in, in a rush and then requesting him to close the door and he closes it. This shot was taken as a two shot kind of manner. like in the previous one, I still kept feeling that Soumita's expression was being missed because of the angle being used. Hindol was trying his best to make Himel be calm and take decision but Himel was very confused and added to that Kirti was confused too.

We reached the third shot after lunch. By now we were clear that the shoot was going very slow and we needed Sir's intervention desperately. This shot was that Soumita sits on the sofa thirstily drinking water, while Saunak comes and hands her a tissue, she takes the tissue and wipes the blood off her nose and slowly looks towards the window on the opposite side of the room. So, when I sat on the sofa, the tube light was behind me and was casting shadow on my face. Kirti wanted to change that immediately. So the sofa was moved to a different spot. Himel kept saying that Saunak here was not that important. The most important thing was again Soumita's fear. Now because Himel had not written the script lines precisely Kirti was in a lot of confusion. She didn't know to keep Saunak's in frame or not, or only his hand would do. As I sat in the sofa, I realised Sir was in floor and was watching us from the first floor. I was relieved a bit. Kirti started taking takes after takes but none was satisfactory. At some point of time Sir intervened. We were missing something very vital. What's the use of so many retakes? If we can successfully get what is in that single line of the script then our job is done. "Apple for apple" is done. So, what will taking another take do extra. But instead we keep fidgeting with our camera- panning, tilting, moving. Which results in waste of time more so often than not. All this confusion basically arises because we have not found the sweet spot in the first place to start with. 

Sweet Spot- the spot from where we can get what is written in the single line of the script. 

So, when should we take re- take?

Once the shot is taken we need to check if atleast the single script line is coming through or not. If it's coming then the shot is good enough. Now we check if there is any extra information that is there in the shot which was not in the script line. If it's there then we need to decide if that is making any difference to the script line. If not then don't go for a re take. Only when the sentence itself is not coming through or the extra information is radically damaging the script sentence then only a retake is necessary. Sometimes it's better to just let it be and move on.

Sir pointed out very precisely why we were stuck for so long on the same shot. Because neither Kirti nor Himel was sure of what they were doing. Himel own his part had not written the script properly and in the process not gained Kirti's trust. Thus, when Kirti got confused she didn't approach Himel. But Himel could see that we were stuck, he being the director should have intervened then.

We resumed with our fourth shot. Now in this shot I had to get up from the sofa walked to the window stand there and then Saunak would ask me a question to which I react. Firstly, this was way to much information. Second, I just couldn't carry it off and so I resorted to melodrama. Sir intervened. Sir rightly told me to do just the actions, probably mechanically. Which also brings us to the fact that actions should be arranged properly to portray the emotions rather than giving the actors the complete responsibility to portray though their acting (which can be ruined by someone like me with overdose of melodrama !! )

The day went super slow and thus people got disengaged. Probably the one of the most important work of a director was to keep the crew engaged. Sumana and Ashok didn't have a lot to do and it was evindent that they were bored. But these vibes gets the whole crew down.

It was a not so fruitful day! I don't know why at the end of it I was not happy. I realized that Sir was teaching us a lot of things but somehow left alone we just couldn't handle ourselves. But we are all trying and hopefully we will get it very soon.

N.B - This blog came a day late and I am very very sorry for that!!

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!