this week has been partially productive. yesterday jada and i shot just a little bit in the pool about an hours worth that’s probably just gonna use EVERYBODY was staring at me.man it was tough.
after the pool part i went to hang with jada and Isiah. it was aite. got …. as hell though.
would you believe it…i just lost 6 hrs of editing!!!
OMG who says macs dont fail…?this damn mac ate my movie up…now dats all on my agenda today edit..edit…edit…shoot..shoot…shoot…
oh god. when is this going to end?!
last nite was quite an experience.
we continued to shoot bebak bibagi’s music vide0 concentrating on the parts of me and jr together umm “the romantic parts” and it was quite a challenge. My script had parts where i am sitting on him and he lifts me and turns his back towards the camera – little did i think about how hard it was gonna b wearing a saree. After a lot of improvisation we finally did it…and i think the part of the sofa is the most sophisticated part of this whole video.
another part of it was the bedroom where he is taking my saree off and we managed to somehow pull that off too. havent looked @ the footage so dont kno how it looks on film but i think it should be good.
i am so stiff on camera…so damn camera conscious..its weird coz when it comes to still camera i am a pro but on video my body just tenses up. anyway so jr n i had a little kiss to do on this scene where he is painting and i enter crying he wipes my tears and gives me a tiny kiss…
the kiss is kinda memorable. 2 seconds of not only lips touching lips my lips touching shun’s..yeh although it was for the sake of the video..it still is kinda special to me.
the last bit we shot was jr layin drunk on the floor and u can just see my legs doing some bharatnatyam…i think that bit is gonna b kinda trippy coz i was too tired to get into it..so i concentrated on the leg parts but not really giving it much effort. am afrait it might show on film.
so im here trying to edit early morning n im so damn tired but i really needed to get on the top of things.
pray for me.
i think it’s every small time film maker’s dream to be shooting at a graveyard in the darkness of the night. Or is it just me?
After reading “Gorosthan e Shabdhan” by my idol Ray – it had been a long lost dream of mine – being in the Park St. Cemetery – just chilling there @ midnight just as feluda, topshey and lalmohon babu had done. But park st. cemetery to durer kotha – after being in the US for 4 yrs i still hadnt been in a cemetery.
The chance came along as I wrote the script for Bebak Bibagi’s music video for class. lashkata ghor eikhane koi pabo – cemetery e shoi. Jr (my actor), jada (friend n photographer) and i set out at 11 pm to a local cemetery to work on the shoot. My brilliant and flawless planning was such that the temperature outside was 6 degrees C and i was in a red chiffon saree and jr was in a cotton panjabi. Sounds great doesnt it..wait till jr n i had to take our shoes off – it felt like we were walking on ice. The wind was blowing hard – the moon was hiding somewhere – it was pitch black.The only things i could see were the tombstones -umm not exactly what i wanted to see at the time.
If nothing else was eerie – wait till we heard all these screams and yells of children (jr claimed they were from the houses around) and jada coincidentally dropping the light at the exact moment when jr and i were to walk thru the middle of the cemetery. Oh did i mention it was unlawful to be there between sunset and sunrise? Well yeh – add that to my misery.
We rushed through shooting and it still took just about 2 hours. There were these shots i wanted jada to take of me leaning against tombstones but everytime i leaned on them things – i could smell the wet earth and my oh my flashbacks of azimpur gorosthan came back to me and i just said to myself – lord have mercy.
So I also sported a nappy long haired wig for my part (i didnt think my afro would look “bengali”) and sitting on those graves – the hair was touching the ground. When i came home – i seriously felt like i had brought something back with me from the cemetary.
If you cant tell already – i am quite a bhitu.
before i went to sleep i remembered some names i had read on the graves – neil, mark, gail…I wondered if they knew what i was doing sitting on their graves..and how disrespectful was it..if i was 6 feet under – wud i care if someone was filming something around me…i dont think so….
today we will shoot most of the indoors stuff – looking forward to it. im sure though it wont be as exciting as the cemetery shoot.
I could always be wrong.
