Back in the News!

If you want to view the video first, before reading the post, so that you can nod along & agree with me all the way, well, here’s the link!

http://www.filmcamp.tv/FilmCamp.TV/Workshops_Films/Entries/2008/7/18_Suckered.html

The video is B-A-D! And here are the reasons why.
1. They spelled my name wrong in the credits!
2. They chose a pathetic name for the movie. What kind of a word is ‘Suckered’?
3. Even if one accepts ‘Suckered’ as a word and figures out what it means who gives a ‘suspense-movie’ a reveal-all name?
4. They skipped some shots which could have turned the video around. Essentially the editing is screwed up!

‘They’, of course, refers to the guys in Film Camp (www.filmcamp.tv). But let me start at the beginning.

It was summertime one year back. My wife was then in the UK. Vibhor wasn’t married yet. We had a lot of free time in the weekend & decided to spend one day trying out the Film Camp which we had been getting email invitations about. Dale was also free & game to join in.

We reached Lalbagh right on time, early Sunday morning, and duly paid the Rs.1000 as fees. (Money down the drain… but I am jumping the gun here. Back to the story then.) The group was quickly split into small teams of 4, one of the Film-campers (the instructors) were to accompany each team, and help them develop a short story, teach them how to shoot, essentially guide the team through the whole process.

Our guide (forgot his name) explained to us what a ‘Treatment’ for a movie was. We came up with a storyline, and went into developing the Storyboard. (I think we skipped ‘Screenplay’ completely, not sure.) The list of shots were decided & we started the shooting. At this point our instructor reeled off a few technical terms like ‘180 degree line’ & ‘Rule of thirds’. He then proceeded to explain each term, wrongly as we later found out. Once in a while, Sanjay Nambiar, probably the only person in the outfit who really knows about filmmaking, walked by taking pictures to publicise the camp. Of course he didn’t have much time to spare instructing us!

Shooting got over by twilight. We were promised that we could do the editing also on Final Cut (Macbook Pro!) In reality, we just had enough time to pick the shots & transfer the footage before we were shoo-ed off, with a promise that our instructor will complete the editing and post the movie on their website a week later.

The movie was indeed posted – in a completely garbled state, with key shots missing – three months and one abusive mail from Sanjay Nambiar later!

The fellow, Sanjay Nambiar, has a big attitude problem. To a simple query over email in the lines “We had participated in the Film Camp in Bangalore on 20th of April. We were told that the completed movies would be put up on the website in 2 weeks time. (Snaps from that day's camp were put on the Film Camp homepage also for a short while!) Any updates on these? It has been almost 7 weeks since!” Sanjay’s reply read: “Wait! All good things come to those who wait. And watch that tone when you write to me. I just taught you how to make a film, not idli-vada! Know anybody else who can do that for Rs.1000? The photos on the homepage are a courtesy. You can thank me for them. If you complain, you won't get shit!” [All quotes verbatim!]

It seems he has continued to extend further ‘courtesy’ to us! Shankara mentioned that he had seen an ad for some ‘Film something’ on Bangalore Times over the 4-5 July weekend with my picture in it! Given that I have not been to any other ‘Film something’, I am pretty sure it is the same picture that appeared on Film Camp website homepage. I couldn’t locate the newspapers, if you can, you may crosscheck if you care to!

I don’t remember the terms & conditions that I signed at the beginning of the camp, so I don’t know if they have a right to put my picture on the newspaper. But do take it from me, I am not advocating to anyone to join the camp! In fact, the only reason you should join the camp is if you have an extra Rs.1500 (they increased the price!) and want to spend a quite Sunday in Lalbagh, handling low end Panasonic Camcorders & switching ON a Macbook Pro. But if you want to learn anything on making movies, just look up the terms ‘Treatment’, ‘Storyboard’, ‘180 Degree Rule’ & ‘Rule of Thirds’ on Google, and you already know more than what you can possibly learn at that camp!