My foray into filmmaking

One always wonders, how they came upon something which became an integral part of their life, and usually to find that answer, we have to dig very deep. Luckily for me, I didn't have a hard time figuring it out.

Almost always it starts when you were a kid. In my case I had a distant relative who wrote lengthy letters to our family (when mails were a real thing, and to those uninitiated the non electronic form of long distance communication). I loved looking at all those stamps, but didn't really care about the envelope it came on or the letter in the envelope. So I collected all those stamps and together they became a collection, a hobby, a past time and maybe even a passion. 

But then again could it become a thing one did for a living? Ask a philatelist, and he will concur. But not me, for there was something bigger than a 1 inch by 1 inch representation of color and art waiting on the horizon. This was the 80s and I had a new hobby until my grandfather bought me a colorful book with a lot of pictures aka a comic viz, Phantom and the legend of the Flying Horse. 

I remember being so enamored by the artwork and story telling that I started drawing little stick figures of my own. Suddenly I wanted more, this was starting to fuel all those images in my head, so we signed up at a small library near the masjid close to Metro Cinema, Mumbai (unfortunately it is no longer active...).  Here I read all sorts of comics, X-Men, Superman, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Nagraj, Chacha Chaudhary, and what not. My grandfather also used to buy me different comics that I could  own like Archies, Champak, Tinkle and Chandamama. This was my first introduction to story telling of a visual sort. I also had my school library where I would pick up novels like David Copperfield, Heidi, Oliver Twist, Greek Folktales, etc. The combination of illustrated and descriptive content helped me hone my imagination. I would spend a lot of time dreaming characters and even mimicking them. I had a superhero team of my own which was available at my beck and call. *cough* *Ektorr* *cough*.

Not much later, we became the proud owners of our first color television a Hitachi, (we had a B&W one before) and soon were the talk of the colony, we had the Doordarshan channel and I used to come back home from school, finish my homework and as a treat was allowed my one hour of cartoons. It was magic, the pictures I had seen so many times on paper could now not only move, but sing and dance too (occasionally). 

This was also the time for some very ahead of their time TV serials that got aired on national television (unlike what is spewed as content today). I too had grown beyond the comics and books that had kept me company, and now watching the serials along side my family for not just the hour allowed previously. We had a sunday ritual of sorts, post mass we would gather and watch the Mahabharata like a cult following of Game of Thrones or on other occasions Nukkad like one family peeping through the windows of another family's home. I would discuss it with my friends when in school, we picked sides, we played, we laughed and we fought. Imagination was running amok in my little mind, it was a good time and a good life! 

Around the same time, my uncle from abroad came down (oh, the originator of all those stamps, lol). He got with him a magical device that could stop time and replay it whenever I wanted namely a VHS recorder (don't ask me what this is, some googling 🔍 would help 😉). Now while I was at school or sleeping or doing whatever kids did those days, my grandfather would record my favorite serials on tape like He-Man, spiderman etc. So my 1 hr somehow got extended and I did my homework even more faster and more efficiently. This system of a treat worked for both of us!
My grandfather had also walked me to this store where they had a lot of cassettes that we could rent at 10Rs. for one whole day.

This was how I got introduced to Bollywood, and Amitabh Bachchan and not once but 3 times in one movie, Mahaan. There's a sort of guilty pleasure, one derives from something new and that is truly pure, regardless of what the world says about it. I remember I was so impressed by it, I watched it twice before we could return the cassette back to the shop! This started our formal relationship with the store and we would frequent it for new films.. In the period of the 90s and until the time I got cable (college days), I saw a lot of bollywood films and a select few Hollywood films too, I was completely engulfed by the worlds created on screen.

In my later years, I also had access to a PC at my home, thanks to the family business of DTP, (they always had a PC home for backup work), here is where I learnt to use DOS and also mess up the PC in the bargain rd c:\windows\system32 anyone? lol! My time was now shifted to learning this majestic machine that could make things happen on a fairly large and bulky monochromatic screen. I learnt pascal and logo when I was in the 6th standard, but that was not what got me wanting to do software for a living. I had a subscription to Digit magazine and tried almost all of the software on the monthly DVD and I was very fascinated by a windows app built by a 14yr old kid and I was already 16 by then, so I had to figure out how he did it, and so VB6 for dummies happened 😛. (Little did I know I would spend 18 years in the software Industry with the simple urge to create something truly fascinating!)

Jump forward to engineering days, I was studying software and the days were difficult, and it was during this time my grandfather passed away, he who had inculcated in me a deep love for story telling in different forms. I owe it all to him. Now I was bound by a sense of responsibility to step up and be the man of the house, and so I sought to find passion in software and gladly I did for a very long time. I don't regret that I didn't pick filmmaking as my first option, in fact software was something that gave me an equal sense of joy, building something wonderful, I made some amazing friends thanks to this too!

During my first software job, I found one of my best friends Vini, who also shared an immense love for the visual medium and music. We would frequent Planet M (another store from time gone by), Heck we even had a membership and all the attendants knew us at the store opposite the VT railway station (possibly the biggest Planet M store at the time). I had always dreamt of having a room filled with movie cassettes, from which I could easily pick the movie I wanted to watch, a movie room perhaps (a dream still pending). I didn't realize how soon it would become possible with the advent of the VCD and later the DVD and so I purchased and purchased with all the money I earned, I think I have around 300 movies with me in discs (the rack in this picture still exists in my home, although I don't really use it anymore). I have digitized all of these to my PC, since this medium of storage is volatile.

I didn't realize how much joy watching films of different genres gave me back then, and once again I was united with visual stories.

Around 2 years back from now, I had a sudden urge to go back to the art form I had always loved. I had by now watched more than 500 or more movies, and so I along with a small team of friends, decided we would shoot a short film, and around this time, I reunited with one of my friends and mentor Dr. Vishakhadutt Patil (a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge, and our association stays strong), I wrote my first story at the same time using all that I had experienced and learnt viz,  Back Again, the internal conflict of a young man brought to light by the events of a night amongst friends and foes. This was a revelation to me, that I had it in me to bring a story alive. We shot a very small sequence of the film and I edited it. The experience made me understand the immensity of the work it takes to make a good film and hence this story is still incomplete (read, needs funds, and a story makeover). Silly me to think I could shoot a short film entirely in one day with some Jugaad!

I also learnt a bit about acting and casting through this effort, and the things one has to do for location hunting. New ideas were brimming in my head, and I purchased a lot of equipment to hone our skills and improve the quality of work. I was studying films (under guidance from my mentor Dr. Patil) and what a joy it was. I did this alongside working as a project manager, and for some time I was content. But deep inside me, I knew I wanted a bigger slice of the cake, maybe even the  whole cake!

How could I get to that, I wondered, and then came a competition that would change everything, the Majhi Metro short film competition, where I completed and submitted my first short film, needless to say we did not wow anyone with our effort but I had enjoyed what it would take to make a simple short film, and I was hungry for more. A little later I wrote and directed Won't Tell, a story about betrayal and things got serious for me visually. This film was challenging as we had never shot a film at night and did not understand lighting very well, and the pains of this became obvious during editing, Needless to say, this did not win us any accolades either. But it helped me in making up my mind about wanting to do this not part time but full time.

And so I forayed into filmmaking, not by chance but by choice! I am now a filmmaker and I love what I do. No, I haven't turned eyes or heads around yet, but when I look back at everything, that's not what I wanted to do this for either. I just want to tell stories and be a part of them, coz as humans we tell stories every single moment of our lives!

I continue to study and understand what it is to really be a filmmaker, and after 7 years of being in it, I think have truly earned my 1% of this amazing cake! 😉

So that's the start of my journey and there's more to come, what about you, when you starting?