48HFP 2012, Day 2

Friday 07:30 – November 2nd, 2012

The morning shoot was planned at my place, and I woke up bright and early to get a head-start on the revised script before everyone turned up. The previous evening’s experience forced us to re-think the original visualization. In about an hour or so I had pared the script down to much more manageable proportions. The added advantage was that we now had a bound script. Well, of course, things would change on the fly, but we had a tangible structure with dialogue on which the crew could work.

We had some more excitement overnight as one of the cast members had to back out. Everyone had scrambled for a replacement and we finally succeeded in convincing a friend to take the onus on herself. We all breathed a sigh of relief when she agreed, and duly turned up on time in the morning.

I must make it a point to mention here that, throughout our shoots, both for this year and the last, the above is more the rule than the exception. People have always gone out of their way to help us, and whenever we faced a roadblock, someone unflinchingly rose to the challenge. Heartening indeed!

The day was an endless series of shoots; setting up the equipment, getting the shots right, packing up, and re-locating. We minimized the locations and at times tried to use the same location in a way that we could get away with it seeming like an altogether different place. This strategy worked well and we had the film in the can by the end of the day. We just about got some day shots in before it was too dark, but for the most part, we were pretty much on schedule and wrapped up shooting by around 22:00.

It was still a shift of over twelve hours and the exhausted team dispersed for the night. A small core team stayed back at my place for the main event: Editing. After our experience last year, we had made up our mind to separate the editing function; that was the only way to stay ahead of the curve. And this too worked well; the only problem was that our editor worked Saturdays so he wouldn’t be available to finish everything.

Again, it is worth mentioning here that each and every person on our team participates on a voluntary basis. Each of us has a day job and sometimes, when you sit back and reflect, it is truly astonishing to see how much can be achieved by a dedicated team of like-minded people banding together.

Getting back to editing, the thought of how much would be left for Saturday was freaking us out. Sleep? Well yes, that was the last thing on our minds as the bewitching hour faded into memory, and the submission day loomed ahead.