Script If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.writing - Elmore Leonard

Hi,

As we all realises, script development is a very essential part of filmmaking. The better you have in script, the film starts on a better ground.

As for us, the versions gave us a very good insight on making our story as simple as we could make t at this point. Sometimes, even if you get things easily, and it might be the correct thing that you need, its important to explore other areas and cross check your achievements.

When we explored many ways to our story, Prakash missed his wife in different ways. Some were subtle and some were on the face. In this way we had two extremes and then we went for getting a balance in our story.

Josh tried to get us in to a senior centre as soon as he could. In parallel we kept working out the script. Working on the story with Katerina, we tried to understand our subject better. Prakash is a guy who is in grief and wants the presence of his wife. He is secluded and has built a wall around him that forces everyone to stay away from him.  In this we realised which of our intentions were to lead the story. As a director, I had to decide.  That was tough. More days went by and i slowly felt i was starting to know Prakash. I tried loads of concept drawings . It helped me look at him clearly.
Slowly thoughts were changing into visuals and anything that did not warm was taken away.

Things started falling into place. I net my drawings to Katerina and she  took it forward and  wrote it in prose. And then i used to jump in again. This process kept it going. Prakash and his world was slowly coming into light. It was a great collaboration with Katerina and we had so much fun thinking around Prakash. Josh was always our fresh pair of eyes and he came up with excellent points that we just could not see.

The three pillars (Katerina/Josh/Deb) . we built the foundation.

After a while we had to go to the specifics.So we answers a whole set of questions of Past/ Present and Personality of Prakash. Working on his quirks and his hobbies made sense as it became a very important part for the story. Going from broader beats to smaller beats, the script was coming together.

With Paul and Brian's feedback, we came to a point where it felt that we should go ahead to visuals.

Script writing is excellent and can be so much fun with such collaborative people.

Lesson for me was, create with passion, criticise with no compassion. thats the way to make films.

More to come!
:)

It all starts with the Idea

Hi Everyone!

This is the first post for the making of our film: Chhaya( which of course is a temporary name for now)

This is going to be an animated short film. As all stories start, this too started with an idea. An idea that i got few years back while working on another film script. So when we started on ideating on our animation graduation film, I pitched the core idea and to my surprise, people(animation directors, screenwriters and producers) got involved quickly and instantaneously.:)

**Prakash, an old man and his grief of losing his lovely supportive caring wife, Chhaya - the idea**

From there on the journey started.

With my lovely screenwriter Katerina and my amazing producer Josh , we developed this idea into a story. With constant thinking, brainstorming and at times quarrelling, fighting (and brief destruction of smaller properties like crushing paper and breaking pencils) we got to a point where our story was working a  little. The way i wanted the story to go, was a challenge , as i needed to find myself in it and also parallel understanding of the character going through the emotions.

After three weeks of constant aggressive re-writes and concept arts we managed to have three versions of the same story.
One came from Katerina and myself, one from Katerina and one from myself. The first version had all kinds of action/ drama/ emotion but it lacked subtlety.
The second one was dramatic and dark.
The third one was subtle and emotional.

With the support of our brilliant tutors- Paul and Brian we realised that there are good things to each of them that we could use.

But we also understood that we needed to understand Prakash and his world. Once we know him better we would know his reaction to situations. Being a director, is like constant creation and then criticising your own creation. Its HARD!!

I took the first go at merging all the three in the right proportion. I thought of bringing the subtleties of version 3 and the darkness of version 2 to version 1. But after constant rewrites and getting it not to work, i realised, i had to take Ver 1 drama and Ver 2 darkness to Ver 3 subtleties.

There i went. It went as a flow. The outline was ready . I sent it to Katerina and then she made some excellent suggestions. She wrote it down as a prose. She is Brilliant!! :)

From there on we kept loads of place holders and made the beats worked. Also our producer, Josh was arranging our trip to a Senior Centre to study their situation.

The next part of out script writing started from there on.

More to come! :)