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.