48 HFP Dubai 2012, Screening of "Ebb & Flow"

Well, if the genre we got this year were time travel, it may have proved apt as the blog now skips straight from last year’s 48 hour project to this year’s edition. I still may upload the earlier film and we shot another short ‘Ransom’ in between—which was essentially just to flex some of the new equipment. I intend to get all those posts up eventually, so please bear with some anachronistic blogging in the future. (Yes, that means all three of you.)

Our short film for the 2012 Dubai 48 Hour Film project “Ebb & Flow” is to be screened later today at The Fridge, Dubai. It has been a roller-coaster ride and I will be putting up each days events during the crucial 48 hours shortly. 

For now, here is the poster of our film:

48 HFP 2011, Day 3

Exhausted and drained from the days exploits, the team dispersed after a quick dinner. In front of us loomed the monster: Editing!

A quick shower, pots of coffee, and matchsticks in the eyes were the order of the day, or in this case night. In between editing, I had to shoot a scene from the balcony of the traffic. Somewhere along the way, I decided to forego sleep for that night. Again, in hindsight, that may have been a wrong decision. If I had managed even a couple of hours of shut-eye, I would have been in a far better frame of mind come deadline. I was simply mortified by the possibility of over-sleeping and having too much to do once awake to allow myself to sleep.

By the by, our final figure for cast and crew was now 21, out of which 20 were on screen; not to mention the families and friends of the cast and crew that constantly chipped in during the process with tons of help and support.

Come morning, and the rough edit was complete except for the scenes from the night before that were to be intercut with the scenes yet to be shot. The edit did throw up one nasty surprise though: A crucial shot in the establishment scene with the mother and baby had not been recorded! This, in all likelihood, was because the @#&% shooting the scene had forgotten to press record. I mean, how daft can anyone get? It’s that big red button on the screen, dodo. No prizes for guessing that yours truly was behind the camera at the time.

Frantic calls were made to the poor Mother who we had accosted on the street and who had so graciously helped us out.  Basically, erm, could she be available again, at the same spot, in the same clothes? I mean, if it isn’t too much of a bother. Wonder of wonders, she agreed!

On to the shoot: There were two locations, one in the parking lot behind our building and one on the terrace, not counting the re-shoot of the pram scene, which was in an altogether different place. By noon, we wrapped up all the shots as per our schedule. Only the re-shoot of the pram scene was left. A team went off to shoot that scene as I started to wrap up the edit.

By the time the satellite team got back with the rushes, I had the edit almost ready. The music was being worked on simultaneously, but we ran into major hassles with transferring data across computers. The music was being worked on a pc, the editing on a mac. Getting the two to play nice with one another became a nightmare.

Editing got done around five in the evening. The first edit, predictably, had many crinkles to iron out. I was hopeful that we should be done by six, but there was still the music to bring in and the sound to be cleaned. In about half an hour, we realised that things weren’t moving fast enough. A mad scramble to get things fast-tracked simply made things worse. Renders were skipping frames, clips were getting mixed up; it was just crazy.

Even if we got done, there was still the drive to the hand-over point, in traffic. It slowly started dawning on us that we weren’t going to get done. Our sound was in deep trouble and that would take some fixing. The edit was done, and if we rendered it as is, we could still make a mad rush to get there in time. The event organisers had announced a half hour grace period. So there was still hope.

This was the crucial moment. We had to decide then and there what course to take. For me, it was more important to be happy with the finished product than to submit it half baked. Luckily, the team agreed. And we decided to finish the film properly and hand in a late submission. At least it would get screened for the audience polls, even if it would be out of competition.

A few hours later, all our attempts at fixing the sound proved futile. Our initial decision to not record live sound was fatal. At around ten in the evening, we gave up hope of even a late submission. In my mind, the film had to be how we had visualised it; otherwise it would tantamount to belittling the effort that so many folk had put in to the film.

And that was our 48 Hour Film Project experience. Harrowing, but enlightening as well. Will wrack up the nerve to put the film up online shortly.

48 HFP 2011, Day 2

Our first location was a cafe, followed by some mall scenes and finally some outdoor shots—all this in the first half of the day. The cafe scene was the longest scene and involved the most amount of dialogue. Our first decision, and in hind sight our worst decision, was to try and do the sound in post. After our experience with Trigonometry, I was sceptical about our sound set up and didn’t want to risk the possibility of the sound giving up on us at the screening. The decision paid off in the short run though, and we were zipping through our takes.

Cast and crew were now up to eight, including the waiter from the cafe; we roped him in on the spot.
We wrapped up our outdoor shots on Sheikh Zayed road en route to picking up our 9th cast and crew member. By the time we reached our lunch cum indoor-shoot destination, cast and crew was up to 10.

All through the afternoon shoot, we were concerned about a baby and pram take that was a crucial establishment scene. It was now getting close to dusk, and the scene was an outdoor one supposed to be in the day. As luck would have it, while we were outside shooting another shot, a lady walked by with a baby and a pram. I ran to her and entreated her to act in the movie. She looked at me in astonishment and then indicated that she didn’t understand a word I was saying. She was Russian and didn’t speak English!

We somehow managed to give her directions with hand gestures, but in about 10 minutes, we realized we weren’t really getting anywhere. I was still willing to plod on as long as we had some shots to stitch together when the mother gestured that she had to leave and would come back. That was, of course, code for, “All right then, I think I’ve had enough. Bye bye now.”

Our collective hearts sank and we quickly moved on to some other shots that needed to be taken. No one wanted to acknowledge the elephant in the room. If we didn’t get the shot with the baby and mother, what was the alternative?

Wonder of wonders, she returned with her husband, who spoke English, and helped us translate to his wife! Suddenly, a friend showed up with his family. He had dragged his kids out of a birthday party, just to help us out. We now had a full family scene that we could shoot.

Our faith in humanity restored, we wrapped up the shoot and rushed to the next location, a clinic. Again we roped in a nurse from the clinic for one scene, and cast and crew by this time was up to an impressive 18.
Cast member 19 joined us later that night to shoot a scene in my apartment. There was still the editing. And we had two important scenes to shoot on Saturday morning. At midnight, we were still shooting downstairs below our apartment block.

48 HFP 2011, pre-prep and Day 1

Absolutelynoscope took part in Dubai's first 48 Hour Film Project held in November 2011. The concept was very appealing and even though we were only one short film old and we got to know of the event barely a week in advance, I thought: heck, why not?

The only pre-preparation allowed was in terms of scoping and finalising locations, equipment, cast and crew. The rest of the work, viz. scripting, shooting, editing etc. is to be done within the 48 hour window. Whew!
The pre-prep itself turned out to be quite a task. Since we only had a few days, there was no time to get people organised. And since other teams were on the task longer, most of the tried and tested resources were already booked out.

In terms of equipment, we decided to go shotgun as with our first film and shoot the whole thing on an iPhone.

Day 1, Thursday 19:00

All teams sent a representative to the kick-off meeting, where the event organisers would announce the Mandatory Prop, Line, Character name and trait. These had to be incorporated into the final product in some way. Genre’s were picked by lot and as it turned out, we were the first to pick our genre and, to a rousing cheer, I stepped up to the bike helmet (not hat) and drew the genre: Superhero.
I was very conflicted when I picked it: The thing is, we could still opt for a wild card and pick one of the pre-listed wild card genres. However, once the wild card is picked, you can’t change it or even go back to your original pick.

As a genre, Superhero is quite tricky. To be true to the genre, the film would need some amount of special effects and the like which are difficult for Indie film-makers to begin with, and nigh on impossible to pull off in 48 hours. Still, it would be an interesting challenge. After much thought, we decided to stick with it and do our best.

Upon much brain racking, we came up with an idea that could work. The general consensus on the idea was favourable, but there were serious concerns that we would manage to complete the film within the time limit provided. Since we were going in blind anyway, we decided to give it our best. Whatever happens, well, happens. So far the available cast and crew had crept up to six people.

We decided to meet up on location bright and sparky in the morning. Problem was it had already gone past midnight and all the excitement and anticipation of the shoot meant that sleep was very, very, difficult. I think I must have dazed and stumbled into some sort of stupor around 4 a.m. All the while planning the shots, revising the script, and trying to figure out how we could manage certain takes given our limited resources, not the least being time itself.

Let’s Dance

For some reason, I am thinking of Fellini’s masterpiece 8½ today.

8½ is more than a film really, it’s a dream: Images colliding into one another, seemingly unrelated themes running in and out of each other, the blurring of what is real and what is a dream...

Mostly I’ve been recalling two scenes, one of which is the famous opening scene. There have been many interpretations of this scene, and the movie itself, but for me personally this scene describes an artist’s predicament.

One sees the world around, primarily for what it is, but then one peels the surface to reveal some of its rarefied beauty, its inherent ugliness, its perfunctory existentiality; and then even deeper, its futility. Oh the suffocation! You try to transcend, to metaphorically ‘rise’, higher and higher, each moment bound in ecstasy. Yes, you can see it, it’s in your head, you only have to keep going, and you will truly be free...but of course, you are pulled back by everything that is mundane, even futile—yet oh so necessary.

The other scene that has always stayed with me, and epitomises the creative process in my mind, is a little scene where the main character Guido (Marcello Mastroianni playing a Director) is walking in a wood panelled corridor. The scene, as with most scenes in the movie, comes somewhere between the exigency of doing, and the liberty of imagining. This is one of those exigencies of doing—the ground work, the humdrum stuff, the wrangling with and for the money, the management of what are already very fragile egos—not the least your own, the juggling of the impossible with the won’t happen with the vision in your head. Here we have the director on his way to some such fire to douse and suddenly, out of nowhere, he does a little jig.

I simply love that scene. To me it evokes all that the creative process boils down to. That somewhere in the cosmos, against all odds, there is a little tune playing that only you can hear. And sometimes, when it all gets a bit much, the only thing you can really do is dance to that tune.

Trigonometry, A Short Film

Blogging has been a bit sporadic of late (to put it mildly). So much has happened since, especially a new short film we shot for the 48 hour film project in 2011. But, more on that later...

For now, ladies and gentlemen, presenting our first short film:

Some viewers had a harrowing experience with the sound on the vimeo upload, but others said it was pristine. After a lot of attempts at fixes, I finally re-cut the entire sound on to a new file and uploaded the film on youtube.

I did manage to get a handle on why we had sound issues thanks to Rohit from team Solus (which was also the winning team of the Dubai 48HFP). Turns out it was all due to a little thing called 'phase cancellation'. Whowouldathunkit, eh?

Short film attempt

We attempted to shoot our first iPhone short film Trigonometry, a couple of weeks back. The process was one of discovery, frustration, exhilaration and satisfaction in equal measure. Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, so eagerly waiting to see how people react to the final product (which should be up in a couple of days).

The idea for the film was essentially to experiment; to wade into this often strange yet compelling medium of story-telling. Coming, as we are, from a theatrical background, it was interesting to see how the approach for film is completely different, almost polar opposite really.

Since it’s only a four minute short about relationships, we thought--with all our planning and attention to detail--that we would get the shoot done by lunch. It ended up being a twelve hour shoot!


All the same, the process was thoroughly enjoyable. It amazes me how a bunch of passionate folk can come together and make something happen as if out of thin air. I felt the same way when we did Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross; a play that presented unique problems due to its nature and use of--how shall I put it--colourful language.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the team behind Trigonometry is the same as the one behind GGR. And yet again, the team proved that it is possible to create something purely from self belief and nothing else.

And I believe that is the ethos behind Absolutelynoscope. Of course we know it’s hard, that we might be startlingly off the mark, and that there is absolutely no scope of it all coalescing as planned; but then that’s all the more reason to attempt it, isn’t it?