WHAT IS A PLOT?

Today suddenly , this word… ‘PLOT’ sounded a lot more interesting than before. The word just got stuck in my head …. PLOT! And I thought I should write about it. 

What could a Plot actually mean? There are various reasons why one makes a film. 

Personally, I make a film only when I have something to ponder about. 

It could be an image, an incident, a character, a phrase, a sound, a news event..the list goes on. Different filmmakers make different films for different reasons. 

Some want to explore the medium of cinema, some indulge in form, some like telling a story, some like retelling a story, some make a film to not tell a story at all, some make films to entertain..so on and so forth. Whatever the inspiration is to make a film, it all boils down to identifying the PLOT ultimately.

 ‘What is the plot line for my film?’ is one of the most favourite obsessions of a filmmaker.

I personally feel that  a good plot line should actually help a viewer understand that the film has more to it than the plot itself. The unsaid is important too. 

It is true that the plot has got to be interesting for the audience but engaging the audience in  the plot itself should not excite the filmmaker so much that he forgets communicating the bigger ‘aspects’(I choose this word for want of a better word) that he would want to communicate or explore by way of making the film. 

But in a mad rush to outbeat previous records of collections at the box office, filmmakers seem to have morphed the meaning of the word ‘PLOT’  to their convenience. 

For many filmmakers today, the word PLOT has actually turned into a ‘PLOT’ of a different kind , a ‘CONSPIRACY’ literally wherein the filmmaker, the writer and the producer  all sit down together and PLOT… the next punch line, the next whistle moment, the next thrill and in the process lose opportunities to explore the deeper aspects of their original PLOT. 

So.. what actually is a PLOT today after all?….

The digital handycam

Early, FRESH 2000. I had just then decided that I would pursue cinema as a career. The choice was because cricket was ruled out. I still dream that I have bowled a reverse swinging toe crusher to a batsman such as Rahul Dravid, though actually he is supposed to be in the team I play in..:-)
Moving on from the Cricket C to the cinema C ... was simple... easy because Cinema and Cricket are similar in many ways.
Now, please don't tell me that one is an art and the other is a sport. They are the same and I know it.

I had just then finished a filmmaking course and had also started working under an established filmmaker as his assistant director too. I wasn't satisfied with going to the shooting spot and shouting silence before the shot is taken and 'field clear' every two minutes.

So I decided to explore. And that was when I realised that I loved editing. I got into a course, a course in post production and those days really where the best days of my filmmaking life. I had some wonderful teachers in Sudheendra Satwick and Ravindra Satwick , both of whom really helped me understand what digital was all about. Those were early days for digital . They were the digital handycam days. We had our own 'video capture cards' that had firewire cables on them to capture native dv content and we used to edit our captured footage on ADOBE PREMIERE , the earlier versions of the software.

We, the students of digital discovered a whole new life. We suddenly realised we could take shots, shoot a short...edit it...add music...and ... last but not the least...even act in our own videos.
Crazy short films cropped up day after day.. one was called Impulse... one was called REMIX...
They were all efforts at understanding the medium. The medium of cinema that we still try to comprehend. The medium that we still try to wrestle with.

Those were not the Facebook days ..those were not even the Youtube days wherein we could just upload videos shot on phone. Those were days where we had to burn our films onto cds...yes...not even dvds. We then travelled with our cds and showed it around to all friends, foes and filmmakers.

I grew up with the digital handycam in my hand. I edited shot footage day in and day out and the results varied from crazy to bizarre.  Those were the days of name dropping. Throwing in names like Martin scorcese , like Brian de Palma made us feel proud of who we were. Wannabe filmmakers.
Me and my dear friend Santhosh Radhakrishnan ended up making a classic too called
'Hi..am I on time?'.
Santhosh,, if you read this... lets plan Hi AM I ON TIME ? again... What say??
Fifteen years and a lot of cinema exposure later, I still owe all my cinema understanding to the minidv Panasonic/ Sony camcorders that we laid hands on back then....

DIGITAL NOSTALGIA.

My friends Vijay Shetty, Santhosh Radhakrishnan, Phani Simha , Ashwini Kumar, Anil Kumar, Sandeep will understand what I talk about.

KIRIK PARTY-HIGH ON CINEMA

WELCOME BACK..

AM STILL HIGH ON CINEMA. I WRITE THIS BLOG POST A COUPLE OF HOURS BEFORE ME AND MY WIFE SHILPA GO AND WATCH MY DEAR FRIEND 'RAKSHIT SHETTY'S KIRIK PARTY.
I AM SURE IT WILL BE A FUN FILM . I AM SURE I WILL ENJOY IT.

RAKSHIT SAYS.. KIRIK PARTY'S STORY LINE IS ALL ABOUT HIS COLLEGE EXPERIENCES, THE FUN TIMES ETC .

BUT TO ME... KIRIK PARTY WILL ALWAYS BE THE STORY OF THAT ONE KIRIK PARTY CALLED 'RAKSHIT SHETTY'. THE REAL KIRIK PARTY.

DAY ONE..WHEN I MET HIM AT  MY OFFICE  DURING THE AUDITIONS FOR NAM AREALONDINA, MY FIRST FEATURE.. I HAD LEAST IMAGINED THAT THIS GUY WOULD GO ON TO MAKE AND BE PART OF SUCH IMPORTANT CINEMA OF OUR TIMES.

HIS JOURNEY HAS REALLY BEEN A KIRIK JOURNEY. THE WAY HE HAS GROWN FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH... FROM BEING A VERY SHY , ALMOST INVISIBLE MEMBER OF A GROUP DISCUSSION TO BEING TODAY'S CHARMING, INTELLIGENT ACTOR/DIRECTOR IS AWE INSPIRING.

WHATEVER KIRIKS RAKSHIT MIGHT HAVE DONE DURING HIS COLLEGE DAYS, TO ME, HIS BIGGEST KIRIK IS HIS SUCCESS.
THE KIRIK IS IN THE WAY HE PLANNED HIS SUCCESS. HE DID NOT BECOME A STAR OVERNIGHT. INFACT, IF I AM RIGHT..HE NEVER WANTED TO BE ONE.
HE PONDERED OVER IT. HE THOUGHT ABOUT IT. HE MADE GOOD CINEMA.


THE TIMES ARE RIPE FOR EDUCATED, INTELLIGENT YOUNGSTERS TO MAKE THEIR FORAY INTO CINEMA BECAUSE THE LINES BETWEEN 'COMMERCIAL' CINEMA AND
'EXPERIMENTAL' CINEMA ARE BLURRING.
(PARDON ME FOR USING THE TERMS 'COMMERCIAL' AND 'EXPERIMENTAL. PLEASE DO NOTE THAT THE WORDS WERE USED IN A PARTICUAR CONTEXT.
NO.. I AM NOT BEING RACIST.


RAKSHIT 'KIRIK' SHETTY.. WAY TO GO....HAVE FUN AT THE BO!

Martin scorcese- the auteur, the storyteller...

Was the 'wolf of the wall street?" a great film?Maybe...maybe not.. Were Taxi driver ,Raging bull, good fellas great films? Yes.

So , i ask myself the question yet again...was the 'wolf of wall street? a great film. Well ...definitely yes....

When one looks at Martin scorcese's body of work,one observes that he has been a master of various things...exploration of pop culture, characterization, story telling and the technique of making a film..all of them are in place.

I was shocked when Shutter island came around and i was once again shocked when HUGO happened  and I was shocked this time too...when i watched 'WOLF OF THE WALL STREET'.

My first acquaintance with marty's films was when i watched 'raging bull' and was swept away with the most amazing depiction of the life and times of JAKE LA MOTTA. There was drama, there was ambition, there was a look at 'relationships' and failure and their association with each other, RAGING BULL was a telling tale of LIFE...of about how some people just become stories ...growing beyond their roles. ROBERT DE NIRO was mannah from heaven in that movie.

The film became so personal because of its setup, the way it was shot and the way the camera conducted itself in the presence of this ridiculously stupendous actor called ROBERT DE NIRO.

Then i saw many of his other films... from casino, good fellas..to DEPARTED ,SHUTTER ISLAND AND HUGO.

And now ,We come back to THE WOLF.

Actually, like every title is associated with its story, the WOLF as a title is associated with two stories . The central character of the story and also Marty himself cos he too in many ways is like Leo in the film who never gives up

The film is almost three hours long and i wanted more of it. I began to count the number of favorite scenes in the film and actually almost every one of them was a favorite and everyone of them was a surprise. The scene where at lunch and at wall street, an ambitious yet humble leo gets to meet his 'saturated' colleague who exhibits himself and the glory of the life he's leading ...the cocaine, the work..and the madness. As we see the spectator LEO watching all this sitting opposite him, suddenly we see him ushered into this new world with almost an 'invocation' song and small thumping of the chest. TOO CUTE and entry for the kind of world it is and that is the irony of it all.

Also, the scene where a real middle class man comes up to leo and asks him how much he makes and Leo introduces him to this world of 'penny stocks'... there is a small thing about the middle class guy having married his own cousin, a small teaser of what we could expect from this guy's character in the story to follow...

Also, the scene where without any words spoken, both leo and the swiss banker exchange looks and take digs at each other and smilingly get on to do 'business'...
and then there is the scene where after having consuming innumerable number of dud lemmon ludes... both leo and his friend are waiting for a reaction and suddenly when all hell breaks loose..the reaction for the lemmon ludes too coincides... I can go on and on about the film....and all the wonderful moments of the film...but...no...i will watch it again and thats a better 'kick' than anything else.

In times of cinema like HER and the contemporaries..Marty manages to re ignite the fun that casino, goodfellas and a lot of his other films were.. The only element missing in this film i would say was JOE PESCI.

jim jarmusch

I am a gr8 fan of his films 'GHOST DOG' and 'Coffee and cigarettes'... Very minimalistic in approach ,his strength is his ability to look at cultures and characters in a very laid back, non celebratory tone and hence a celebration by itself... For any young filmmaker , he is good strength

“	Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”	”
—Jim Jarmusch, The Golden Rules of Filming

Genre pushing!!!

"Our invention can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever."    --Auguste Lumière

This is just a gentle reminder. Anyways, this post is all about a thought that came to me very recently. When i was approached by a producer to do a 'remake' of a very successful film, i backed out because i did not subscribe to the idea and the content of that film. I also that it was just  not right for a remake to be done . But then, I also began to wonder about what actually can be termed a 'remake'.!!

'A film set in another part of the country or the world comes along with its own sense of culture, its own p.o.v and that p.o.v would be a sum total of all the filmmakers' experiences. The way he has looked at life, at events and the way i would perceive it would be different .And so ,for me to be doing a remake would be wrong...' is what i felt. 

But then, i also began to think about what i call as 'genre pushing' that seems to be happening everywhere , a very dangerous trend that seems like is catching up very fast, mostly among the younger lot of filmmakers. 

What exactly is this 'genre pushing' then? And why is it important for me to be speaking about it...? are the two questions that would find an answer in the note i write below... 

I would not call myself a film critic but as an observer of the art form, I have definitely and constantly longed to keep studying films in my own way and through this study I observe that a filmmaker's body of work in totality becomes really important . For example..a filmmaker 'X' would have made a cult horror film in the sixties , moved on to a 'sci fi' film in the seventies, made a 'political thriller' in the eighties and then maybe went on to dabble with the form and churned out more 'genres' of film in the process.

And maybe we are fans of one of the films... like say ...his sixties cult horror film. 

Unfortunately, we tend to pick up that one film as an example of his body of work and we judge him by that one film and then that film's style gives way to a lot of wannabe filmmakers wanting to rip off the 'style' of that film. And this , is what i call as 'genre pushing'. Genre pushing is where you watch a film, love it for the quirkiness, for the style,for the narrative...just pick it up and then adapt it unnecessarily to make a film that 'looks' like that favorite film of yours. 

Across india today, there people blindly copying these 'styles' of telling a story and making films that come across as 'naive copies' of the classic. 

So, just like one says 'no' to piracy, one also has to strongly go against this whole new wave of 'genre pushing' with a lack of sensibilities.

A harmless remake should still be ok:-)

high on cinema

Have just changed the name of my blog profile and have called it high on cinema.

So , finally our ONETAKE FILM... GALBASKI has been censored...Lots of things have changed over the last year or so in the film industry i am involved with presently.

Finally, both the audience and the people involved in the business of cinema are looking at newer thoughts , newer concepts and newer ideas as a success quotient.

This blog is all about the ONE TAKE FILM and why we did it.

Like i was about to commit a crime, some people suggested that i shouldn't even think of doing a film in ONE TAKE. Some even got confused that i was doing a ONE SHOT film. But...hey guys..mine isn't a one shot' film. It is just that from the time i say action to the point that i say cut... the whole film happens in one go... in a single take with multiple cameras capturing the ongoing action..

Moving on, here it is important for one to understand that it was primarily the content that drove us to shoot the film in one take. It was the content that pushed us to the bizarre thought of doing the whole thing in a SINGLE TAKE.

The film story revolves around drama in the lives of around seven to eight guys ' and  the fact that a two hour high tide can push them to the shores of a totally new life. After these two hours in their life and the drama that unfolds, nothing will ever be the same in their lives again... !!

So, the film is basically the story of all of us. Or at least, the most of us. This film takes us beyond the norms of cinematic storytelling and tries to  draw the story of the film from the lives of the central characters ..all shocking in their own way.. !!

We are drawn into the lives of the characters and even as they speak and suggest what all has happened in their lives before, we begin to see things beyond what is shown on screen.

Writing the film was a challenge no doubt. But, it was a bigger challenge for all of them involved ..the technicians and the wonderfully gifted brilliant set of actors that are in the film.... For two hours , to stay in character and to perform those scenes in one go like they've lived their lives always like that... I must say.. makes me emotional..
So, kudos to Ravishankar Gowda, Ajith, Satya, Kailash, Raghu Shivamogga, chetan chandra, raviteja, achyut rao...and last but not the least..the energetic live wire called Rishabh shelty... these guys deserve what one would call a STANDING OVATION!!!

MORE ABT THE FILM AND MYSELF IN THE POSTS TO FOLLOW