My experience: Shooting a short movie!

It was a fresh sunny morning.

The morning sun as usual didn’t hesitate to shower its bright rays through our windows to remind us that bed time was long over. Jogging in the morning is one of the best things I get to do but the sweat plays spoilsport. After getting fresh from my morning routine, I settled down with the morning newspaper. The news these days are occupied by ones’ related to our ever-‘green’ neighbouring country. Just when I was about to lose my temper on one such article, my cell-phone beeped with the message reminder tone. It was a message from one of my friends. It was an enquiry of my free time in the next couple of days. Generally, during the morning time, I am rarely free but as the day progresses, my uselessness reveal loads of spare time! As a common phenomenon, I dedicate much of my unoccupied time to my sleep-deprived cells but my friend had other plans. As part of IFP, a film fest, my friend decided to make a short film and wanted me to be part of his team. Now, if you know me as a person, talks related to these topics literally unnerve me. But after a series of discussions, he convinced me to be part of it and quite reluctantly, I had to say: ‘Yes’.

What followed that little conversation was something which was completely new to me. Life always wants you to analyze some paths which would be otherwise left unexplored. According to the guidelines of IFP, you have a total of 50 hours in hand to shoot, edit and upload the film on their website. So, with very little amount of time, we set off our schedule in the morning itself, with 12-hours of our time already gone since the announcement was made the previous night at 8. A full-day of shooting lay in front of us. The sun above our heads made things a bit difficult but excuses seldom lead to completion of tasks.

Initially, my role in the team was arranged by me for just holding the camera and helping with other frivolous tasks. Sounds illegitimate but my part got illegally extended by my friend to the movie itself and it was a total of about 3 seconds. Those few seconds seemed like light years to me. I ran out of excuses to escape from that situation. Never in my life was I that nervous and circumspect. I felt the load of earth behind my back. Passers-by stopping mid-way to check out the shooting made matters worse for me. But I couldn’t actually show these demure going on within me to anybody. I had to show them how confident I was. Like, an overconfident goon, I stepped up for my first shot. I had to crack some invariably silly jokes to make them believe about my fearlessness and upbeat. Somehow, without any damage, I completed my shoot. I felt as if I was the main hero of the short movie whereas actually my role was even shorter than Anil Kapoor’s role in the Mission Impossible movie! I am so bad an actor that the terrorizing guy, whose face is 89% covered with a ghastly beard, and who has produced, directed, acted, scripted, composed, danced, sang, kicked villains and maybe even held the camera in the two MSG movies would win an Oscar if he competes with me.

I have to thank my friend Trishanu for giving me a miniature yet appreciable experience in movie-making. Notwithstanding the virtual emotional-stunts within my mind, I have to say this was something completely unusual and exciting! And yes, more to such opportunities in the future!

You can watch the cute and short movie by Trishanu above. Hats off to this guy for using it for also promoting a completely new sport, Roll-Ball for which he represents the state team of Assam!

Hail Roll-Ball! Hail the movie!

Enjoy, friends!