this year the event came to delhi and i could not resist let us say

and luckily i ended up winning an award and applause so it was good

here is how the whole week leading up to my 2nd 48 hour film project participation turned out:

MON-THU: Time flies, doesn't it? Last year i took part & won few. I worked hard, gave my best & hoped. The audience gave me such a reaction that it shook me to the core.

That was mumbai & this time for the 1st time, the festival came to delhi. Unfortunately for me I was a going through some challenging times personally, when it was being organized. 

With no plans of participating, that week on monday, i told both (last years' actor) friends that its on again & this time in our own delhi. To my surprise they said v'd do it again if you want to, no issues.

So i registered on tuesday, attended the workshop on wednesday still unsure if i would actually get down to making the film & also was sure to miss the kickoff, because i was starting a new job (unrelated to filmmaking i must add) on thursday. Starting a new job and the pressure of not having done any preproduction whatsoever (even the allowed parts like location hunting) on thursday night I had a look at the genres, that what could be done with 2 males & decided apart from "Film de femme" all is manageable and on that note i didn't even bother to read the wildcards. Then i got a call from one friend, he maybe unavailable!!! He confirms next morning he'd b there. What a scare.

FRI- SAT: Now a new worry. I had to concentrate on my day job & most of my friends work in my industry so no one was free on friday. Luckily, mom was free and I explained everything to mom and she was my kickoff agent. The city producers made her comfortable i was told. 7.30 i get the call, as i had explained to her "there is hardly a possibility of film de femme, change it if that comes, everything else is ok", she had changed the genre. I was shocked that out of all the genres we got the only 1 we didn't want, film de femme. In a 2 guy actor & 1 guy crew team, doing this wasn't practical. Who would dress up as the femme. So, we got time travel wildcard genre. I banged my head, why didn't i look at the wild cards before & maybe I could have had a rough idea in my brain what or how to execute. Anyways, I started going through the gadgets I possessed. A mobile phone watch I had, looked the best option as it has camera & plays video. I can play with that, I thought.

Now the 48 hours countdown had started, I panicked, but kept on thinking of an idea simple yet radical. I looked around, to shoot, all i had was 1 living room, 1 very small bathroom  & 1 bed room. and this is where it started. The idea just came to me, i called my actors what they thought. Told other ideas like using the prop (diary) also, but both said everyone'd expect a time travel based on some diary entries etc. & asked me to be radical as always. Having participated last year, i knew the mistakes i did & this time didn't wanna do them. I had already purchased a fast prime lens (as we'd shoot with no video lights), a field audio recorder, 2 lavalier mics & related equipment (which my actors would help me move). Last year I played with the prop as the main element, so much that I kept the story arc as a fun ride instead of anything big coming out of it. It was about those 2 guys. But this time as I was keeping genre as the main element, I straightaway decided it has to have a message or a larger story that fits into anyone's context. I thought, Time travel would involve- discovery, positive, negative, evaluation & resolution. Just looking at it, this is what went in my head- 1) Slow buildup is nice, so Discovery = 2 min, 2) positive can be fun = 1.5 min, 3) evaluation can only be with negative = 2.5min, 4) end = 1 min. 7 min runtime. I had my timeline chalked out already. I planned how i will shoot & how i will import it to the editing timelines so as to be efficient. A look at the clock and it was midnight. Suddenly remembered a time related popular animation used in an epic. I decided to pay homage to it with a scene, started working on after effects & finished it in 3 hours. I was terrified if I wasted time. To break the suspense, in the end I could not even use it in my film. The lesson I learnt while doing was, all ideas running in my head about showing computer graphics with time travel were flushed down the toilet. After effects took too much time on my laptop. The animation was a waste of time, but maybe I would have been stuck while exporting in the end If i didn't learn this lesson. Then, I wrote the script in 2 hours and slept for couple of hours after that, thought of many cool things I would do traveling time. Acting the 2 actors in my head, setting their characters & traits.

SAT-SUN: 7am sat, called my friend, turns out due to heavy rains they were stuck. They reached my home 1.30 PM (I polished my script during this time). Narrated the story & did basic rehearsals. Straightaway headed to the Landmark (as it was the first time in Delhi), came back & it was 5.30 PM. Whatever little scenes we wanted in daylight we rushed through till 6.30 PM. We had lunch & started shooting again, gained experience what on paper is 1 minutes turns to 3 hours if you are a 1 man crew. And also to make sure we were not making any continuity errors as brain functions were deteriorating. Long story short, we finished shooting 3.30 AM sunday. This was mostly because in one year, they had grown as actors & I got performance/coverage greedy. My friends left for the "day" & drove home and I worried if they were awake enough to drive. I sat and put my laptop on, realizing a cardinal sin- i forgot to split my SD cards & should have started ProRes conversion for first half while shooting the latter half (like i did last year). While the conversion went on, I started to go through audio, imagining what cuts to make. Also, completed the documentation & had dinner (5 am). Started to sync sound at 6.30 AM (newsflash:- we didn't use any slates) by matching peaks of using in-camera & external waveforms manually. 160 video clips,  29 audio files (as we'd mostly let the wav recorder running scenes). The nightmare of syncing started and I was only half way by 9am. Realising that it would be noon if I went this way, without any cuts. I started cutting scenes individually of whatever I had synced. And thereafter, I was syncing and cutting, scene by scene. I dreaded that the runtime would turn out to be over 10 minutes & I won't be able to trim it to 7 minutes without losing the story. I put scenes in order and Voila! it read 7:15 min. I had few shots of me still left  to be shot which i thought i will act alone using tripod. Only to find- its 4 PM. I processed every creative idea I could think off at full concentration  & came up with an idea to bridge scenes using text if not shots as I could not waste any time getting up from the editing table. I trimmed my cuts, adjusted audio levels (had no time to blend or frequency correct) & started export. It was 6:15 PM.

I asked my driver (who played a small part too on screen, the character element) that "if you want people to watch you on screen, drive like you have never BUT make sure there are not too many bumps as I will be burning 2 DVDs, so no heavy jerks". Armed with this ambiguous request he rolled. Meanwhile I started the export & dvd burning. Reached the venue with burnt dvds in 1 hour. Prayed to god & submitted at 7.25 PM. On the way back looked at the export to see if any issues were there. While editing, I was many times in the dilemma whether to choose a perfect technical cut (no sound glitch, perfect focus etc) or the cut that makes the performance look the best. I am glad I chose the latter. This was only the 4th time I had shot with them but I am glad I as a filmmaker could do justice to their work like they have done for me.

Lessons learnt- technical: buy that thingie to sync sound automatically, test if it works. -production: start early, have food on time -story: always stay with the story, that animation was not essential to the story, could have used sleep instead. And many others but apart from the huge mistake of starting the shoot very late, there were a lot less mistakes than last time. Hope this gives a read an idea into how things panned out & how few were managed.

catch it here