An excellent start to October, really! A super fun day!
Highlights:
a) We were back at IOK shoot - this time taking the shoot outdoors. We chose a pretty nice location, away from mankind, lovely with plenty of trees and a foliage. Such was the natural beauty of the place that we even saw a few "wild hens" in there. Am not quite sure if that's what they are actually called, but a member of the team seemed absolutely certain about the nomenclature, so I shall go with it.
The main shot of the day was to be a moving shot throughout, i.e. we wanted to capture a conversation between the cast, as they walk down the road. Which basically meant while shooting, the camera guy had to follow the cast to record the video, the audio guy had to follow the cast with his boom mic pole to record the audio, and I had to follow the cast making sure they are acting the way I want them to. And figuring all this out wasn't exactly easy but was definitely a lot of fun!
b) We shot for an hour or so and then it began to pour cats and dogs. Despite my best attempts at praying for good weather, the rain-gods decided to lash out. Now if you remember, we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere during the shoot. So such a situation could have easily been catastrophic with all the equipment getting drenched. But as luck would have it, a member of the crew had come in his car which was parked a little away. We rushed to the car, dumped all the equipment in first, and squeezed our precious selves into it. Given that the rain-gods didn't seem to be on my side this time, I decided that we can just all go back to my place, and get some brunch. Such suggestions are usually agreed to pretty unanimously, and it was no different this time!
c) Given that it didn't look like the skies would clear any time soon, post the brunch, I cancelled the shoot for the day. Instead three of us decided to watch the footage taken so far. That's when we realized that all that "following" of the cast with a handheld camera simply doesnt produce stable footage. Not even close to stable. One guy suggested that we should probably just put this camera on a tripod and shift the zoom/focus as the cast walks and see whether it works out. Since that sounded like a better option, we went down to the street and did some mock shots. And yes, it did seem far better than our morning efforts! Sometimes you can't really blame these rain-gods. They do have a good reason to lash out the way they do. If we had spent several hours shooting in the morning, we would have had to reshoot the entire thing! Now at least only an hour has been wasted. So thank you rain-gods!
d) After that successful test shoot, it was time to have a totally different kinda fun! A Bengali friend of ours took us to the Durga Puja Ananda Mela - a fair with lotsa Bengalis, 90% of them looking like they are just out of a Kumaran Silks advertisement (or its Bengali equivalent), tons of yummy food and of course a huge display of Goddess Durga! We prayed first and then explored the fair under the able guidance of the dear friend. Over several spurts of gorging on cutlets, pani puri, dhokla, pav bhaji, jalebi, kathi roll and kulfi, we were educated on some very interesting insider insights of the Bengali psyche! Such fascinating people - I love them and the awesome Durga Puja Ananda Mela!
All in all, a super cool Saturday!
319 more to go.
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