Thursday, 21 May 2009
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Gorky on celluloid
An article by Muralidhar Khajane, which appeared in today's (21st May 2009) issue of The Hindu (link)
GangwayZ, a group of youngsters from Mysore, has produced a 130-minute Kannada feature film Jaaga Doreyutthade (or Spaces for rent (sfr)), based on Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths.
The director of the film, N.S. Islahuddin, is a gold medalist in Journalism from the University of Mysore and has a Masters degree in Media Production from the University of Sunderland, England. “I have made sincere efforts to contemporise the play in the background of economic slowdown,” says 27-year old Islahuddin.
On the adaptation of The Lower Depths, he says as a student he was impressed by its content and when he decided to direct a film, the play came as a natural choice for adaptation. “Of course adapting the play to the present scenario is quite a challenging task. Bringing the modern day elements, while retaining the essence of the original play, is not easy. Jaaga Doreyuttade is set against the backdrop of recession and panic related to it and so needed a completely new treatement,” he says.
Islahuddin describes the experiment as “community or cooperative film making”. He speaks of the difficulty they faced when a person who had promised them financial support could not do so following which the group members themselves pitched in their resources to complete the film.
The group adapted various strategies to bring down the production cost. The team members decided to shoot the film in an empty house that belongs to one of the group members. Art director Badal Nanjunadswamy remodelled the house to suit to the needs of script. The entire film is shot in a house. To meet the requirements of the camera and lighting, Shivashankar and James Mani and their team made the best possible use of basics provided. As the cast needed actors in the age group of 20 and 27, those from the group who fit the bill were retained and the the rest of the members were involved in production.
Theatre director C. Basavalingaiah is making a comeback as an actor after 20 years with this film. “However, this film is a litmus test for the actors who have to do justice to the characters they play,” says Islahuddin.
Will GangwayZ be able to create space for itself in the film world remains to be seen. The film will be screened in Mysore from May 30 and then it will be screened in all other places across the State.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Spaces for Rent: Of lost hopes; regained- Concluding Part
Next was Artifying:
The house was to be made into a character itself. We had to make the empty house look like a place where bed spaces are being provided for over a year. The whole house got a new dimension after we brought in the junked wooden bunker beds borrowed from Navodaya School. It was only possible because, Nagabhushan was a former student there. We are really thankful to them because those bunker beds gave the whole house a new appeal.
Later the whole art department was taken over by Badal and his assistants Manju and Praveen. They began giving the worn-out touches to the whole house. All of our team mates contributed the other cots and beds and bed sheets and other necessary items for building the spaces for characters.
I sat down with Badal and we discussed about the story and about each character with him and came to conclusion that each bed space had to be unique. We had to create a separate, temporary compartment beds for the two unmarried women characters living in the house amidst drunkards and gamblers. The point was to make it logical enough. Badal symbolically related the characters to his artwork and it stands tall in the movie.
The entrance hall had three bunker beds and they had to be placed in a way that we get maximum shooting space.
Another highlight of the set was the big mirror in the passageway between two halls. I wanted to make the best use of it and I used it amply enough to connect between two halls and between characters in the film.
Badal got the signboard of the film ready and made it look like the signboard is about 2 years old. Though it was newly built, the signboard looked really old.
A dummy also had to be made for the film for a shot of about two seconds. Though it is a laborious process to build a dummy, we went ahead with it because we did not want to compromise. Manju finally made the dummy and we used it for the shot we wanted.
The painter’s room was like a world of fantasy. It was always black and dark when the painters wife is alive but it comes to colour only after her death. I have so much to say about the room but I don’t want to reveal anything before you watch the film.
All in all, Badal did an excellent job and gave the house a new, I mean an old outlook.
Costumes:
Kuldeep did an excellent job with his costume designing. The characters look so real and comfortable in their attires. He worked laboriously to arrange the costumes and finalise them.
Make-up Ramanna Sir, also helped us by providing us the costumes for the police officers in our film. He is always obliging and has never said no whenever we have gone to get the costumes from him; despite the fact that we hardly pay him. But I am really thankful the way he helps struggling people.
He even introduced us to Make-up Narayan Sir, the Make-up Person for our film. It just needed him one session to get used to the style of make-up we were using for the film. Though a senior person he was very humble and went along well with us. We are really thankful to him.
Behind the Screens:
Apart from the actors, we had different departments for the whole film making process. It is as follows. I would definitely come up with another write-up focusing the working pattern of the non actors. As of now this is all I can present.
Direction Department: Vishal, Hariprasad , Nagabhushan, Sunil & Islahuddin
I have no words to thank my direction team. They stood like a backbone for me. They made me sit in front of the monitor and direct the film whereas they would endlessly work for making this film better. Vishal even managed to come from Delhi to help us in this project. To be honest I would have to write a full length article if I have to say how our direction team worked right from the scripting process to rehearsals and then from production to post production as well. I can really boast of their skills.
Production Department: Ashwin, Shashidhar, & Kuldeep
One of the most difficult departments to work in is the production department. Ashwin Shashi and Kuldeep managed the whole thing quite well. Though they the most important of things for the film, it is very easy for their kind of work to go un-noticed. But despite these difficulties, they did an excellent job. They fed us, they purchased for us, they ran around the corners and did every possible thing to make this production smooth.
As I said earlier, I will have to write another article to explain their kind of work which I will do soon.
Camera Department: Shivshankar, Jayram & Mahesh
Shivu, was like a saviour. He worked for the love of his work and not for money; which itself speaks about him. And he lifted the whole film to a new level. With the Sony DSR 400 camera he has done wonders. Alas, we could not provide him with more equipment which would help him showcase his skills even better. The framing and composition was very neat. I made his life miserable by blocking the actors in a complex pattern, but he never complained. He did a fine job.
His assistants just had to take his orders for the work to come out well. Again a separate article for this is required.
Lighting Department: James Mani, Roshan, Bhanu, Madhu and Sanjeeva
It was definitely not easy to do the lighting of the film as we were able to use only 2 KV lights maximum. If we dared to use more, the circuit would trip. It was hell to light the Master Shots.Mani made it for us. He ran around instructing and working along with the light men to give us beautifully lit scenes. Roshan and Bhanu also showed the same enthusiasm and did all they could. It was a very good learning experience for them.
Sound Department: Anand
Anand has also done a fine job. We could afford only three radio mikes. But he has done well with whatever resources he had.
Art Department : Badal, Manju & Praveen
Costume Department : Kuldeep
Editing Department : Habeebulla & Soma
Soma sat beside me for every shot and noted down all the Time code readings. If he would not be there we would take at least a year to finish the editing of 10 and half hours of rushes I guess.
Habeeb has grown immensely as an editor, not only skill-wise but also aesthetically. His work also demands a separate article.
Music Department: Dharmesh, Habeeb, Vishal, Haneef, Naga, Dhananjaya, Murali Sringeri
Dharmesh has composed the music of the recession song and also some themes and BGM for our film. He was supported by Habeeb, Vishal, Naga and Haneef. I have written the lyrics for the recession song and Dhananjaya has written another song called “O baduke”.
Murali Sir has played live music in the film and we are also planning to include his music in the BGM score of the film.
Transportation Department: Ravi Hunsur
He dropped in within two hours from Hunsur whenever we needed his help. Despite his heavy schedule he managed to help us.
All these people would regularly drop by and chip in with information and suggestions to promote our film. They were looking after all the promotional aspects, marketing and reach of the film.
Muddu would look-out for the reach, Rajesh would look after the marketing bit and Venkat would handle our affairs with the Media.
Despite having no financial gains; all the above-mentioned people have worked extensively well for the project given the limitations we had.
It is finally a dream come true. (for us at least J)
By N S Islahuddin
Spaces for Rent: Of lost hopes; regained- Part III
Since the whole story happens in one place itself, it would be very much convenient for us to actually shoot the whole film in one particular location. This factor also determined the making of the film. Now we had to finalise the location for the shooting. I don’t know how but a miracle happened. Monish’s house (60x40 ft dimension) had been lying uninhabited for more than a year for the reason that it had to be renovated completely. He said we could use the house without rent for about three to four months. Sometimes the intervention is divine. I went with Monish to see their house in the night and in the very dark of the night, Eureka! It was like made for our own film. I decided that this is going to be the house for our filming.
I called up all our gang mates to assemble to let them know of my recession era discovery. I had the whole picture in my mind. Discussions and talks were held and within two hours, Rajesh and his wife Saritha handed us Rs.2000. It was the first donation for our film. We were really happy; I was overwhelmed by this gesture of goodness.
The next day we invaded the house with brooms and buckets and mops. The house welcomed us with a carpet of one inch of dust all over and the cob-web decorations. We were possessed! We imitated the brave soldiers; we swept, mopped, cleaned, washed and sanitized the whole house with disinfectants. And lo! The house was looking amazingly empty.
That night, I slept really peacefully; even my personal worries got sanitized along with the house for the night at least.
Scripting Process:
The Lower Depths is a Russian play and we had the translation of the play in English. We also had an adapted version of the play into Kannada called ‘Ee Kelaginavaru’ written by B.T Desai for reference. We read both the versions and later decided to go on with our own version of the subject. We decided to maintain the skeleton of the original story and adapt the rest of it to the modern times.
The process began with the translation of the play into Kannada and then we began adapting it to our taste. Everything had to be logical and still it had to retain the rustic effect of the original play and story. It was quite a tough job. Four of us translated it with the help of rest of the gang mates and finished the dialogues for the film.
The characters were all the same but their representation and their jobs were different. We desperately have tried to retain the essence of the play. Muddu Krishna Sir was like always skeptical about our venture but his skepticism emerged out of the concern of our group. He was kind enough to have lent us the copy of Kurasawa’s ‘The Lower Depths’ for reference.
The whole script was revised again and again until the time of the shooting and also during its process.
Casting:
The play is an ensemble play involving seventeen characters. All the characters have their own individuality and weightage. The biggest problem we faced during casting was that all of our friends were among the same age group. Between 20 to 28 years. But the story demanded otherwise. We could not approach established actors as we did not have enough dough for it.
Dhananjaya , Poorna, Monish and Dharmesh from our team were casted in where as the others had to stay back as the technical and non-technical crew for the film. Some of them really wanted to act but I asked them to prioritise and they chose not to act. But I had casted Ashwin for the role of the Nasir and then later to policeman in the story but it had to change because we roped in Military Mahadev Sir. Vinay also was casted but he had to cope up for the shooting days for the film by applying leave for his job which was really difficult. Then his role was given to Habeeb but he had some job related problem as well. Finally, Basavalingiah Sir was casted for the role of Satin in our film. I have been sorry for not giving them opportunities but I meant their good, nothing else.
Among our age group we had, Sandesh, Shaji, Haneef, Parvathamma, Supreetha, Shruthi, Neetha, Pushpa, Dhananjaya, Poorna, Monish and Dharmesh. The older group comprised of Basavalingiah Sir, Murali Sringeri Sir, Sudheer, Mallik and Military Mahadev Sir.
We are really fortunate and glad that they obliged to work with us and give the required variety and boost for our film.
Basavalingiah Sir, was acting for the first time after twenty years. When we heard that he is interested to act in our film, we were overjoyed. We could not believe our ears. Murali Sir was like the character of ‘Luka’ come alive. I could not imagine anybody else for that role.
We also tried to include Jayaram Thatachar to act in our film but he had date problems. Anyways, all’s well that ends well.
Thus the whole casting was completed.
By N S Islahuddin
Spaces for Rent: Of lost hopes; regained - Part II
After the failure of Nenapina Pockettu, the morale of our team was in the abyss. I could not imagine facing the wrath of people who would laugh at us for our unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. That is when I decided that we make a film of our own; ‘our own’, in every possible way. So what if we don’t have a producer, we will manage to pool in small investments from the people who still had some amount of faith and belief in our capacities. We set the budget of the whole film to about two lakh rupees. Every body ‘aye-ayed’ the opinion.
There was a sudden surge of happiness on the faces.
I will never forget it!
The idea was not at all vague, but as clear as it could be. I would like to call such film making ‘Community Film making’. Where; a community of people helps in all verticals to come up with a finished film. The story that came to my mind instantly in the present situation was Maxim Gorky’s play “The Lower Depths ”. It was decided.
‘The Lower Depths’ is a masterpiece. It was first staged in Moscow theatre in the year 1902 and was directed by the legendary director-actor Konstantin Stanislavsky who had also played the role of ‘Satin’ in the play. It also had, Anton Chekov’s wife Olga Knipper playing the role of Vassilisa. This play has always fascinated me (though I have never seen a production of the play) since I read it for the first time while I was pursuing my bachelor’s degree in business management. I always wanted to direct it as a play but it never materialized.
The play has already been made into film thrice. First by Jean Renoir in the year 1936 called Les bas- fonds and then by Chetan Anand in the year 1956 called ‘Neecha Nagar’ which also managed to earn the best film award at Cannes Film Festival that year. And then by one of the greatest film maker Akira Kurasawa in the year 1958 with Toshiro Mifune playing the role of the thief in the film. All the three are considered to be master pieces, but I have managed to see only Kurasawa’s version.
The challenge that faced us was; that it had already been made into a film three times earlier and how would people react to way of our film making. The fact that the story resembled to our very own lives in a particular way made me very stubborn about converting it into a screenplay. Besides, I wanted to contemporarise the story and link it to present day panic, ‘recession’. Could we do it?
By N S Islahuddin
Spaces for Rent: Of lost hopes; regained- Part I
They said:
“We” were a depressed lot; Jobless! We were an overtly enthusiastic group of people living in a highly imaginative world of our own. Our potential was alien to the world.
Back story: How it all began
We - ‘GangwayZ Media Productions’ (not yet a registered company); defended our forte most of the times but, we lost often. What possibly could we say about our induced incompetence? We were all a qualified bunch without a valid source of income living a parasitic lifestyle depending upon parents, friends and well wishers. It is not a noble life. It hurts.
Wasted talent is a great sin. When the true potential is not realized it hurts “us” as much as it hurts “them”. They wanted us to get into ‘salaried mediocrity’ but we resisted hard. So hard; that we managed to piss the whole world off against us.
GangwayZ was becoming a shattered dream. The wounds of our failed Kannada feature film project (Nenapina Pockettu) were still pristine new. Every vision seemed to have vapourised because of one person’s helplessness. Our ‘producer to be’ ran into financial crunch (thanks to ‘Recession Maharaj’) leaving us and our hopes astray.
We had written on the first page of our Nenapina Pockettu’s screenplay - “This film is dedicated to the people who did not have faith in us. The others always believed in our dedication and commitment”. Slowly we were losing faith in ourselves.
After working day and night for the film for about four months, after re-writing the script again and again to gain perfection, after getting the music composed by a gracious band “Swarathma” (without paying them a single penny), after getting the costumes designed, after finalizing the cinematographer, after beginning to develop the storyboards, after innumerable discussions, after facing the music of frustrations of the personal lives turning sour, after zeroing on the locations, after meeting the producer time and again in ‘Coffee Day’ and after many such endeavors, all we managed and witnessed was a murdered dream.
How long could anybody encourage us and support us? It was our duty to not let them down. Lest, even the few people who trusted us, would deviate. Time was ticking by...
By N S Islahuddin
Creativity and Belief
What is belief? It is all around us. It is the software that drives our brains. It is the engine that runs us. We want to take what we learned about creativity, and apply it to belief. In fact, the two are very similar. I believe, what works for creativity often works for belief! I think, this is the essence of creativity. We can take two things that normally don’t go well together, and create something new and exciting.
In GangwayZ, as filmmakers, we are been driven by many passions- for images, structures, characters, drama, music, design, action and, of course, stories:). Film gives us a vehicle to explore all these things. What I realized during the process of ‘Spaces for rent’ is that to make a good film, one has to be able to see the world from each character’s perspective. Otherwise, the film will not resonate with audiences. All of us in the movie realised that the world simply does not revolve around us. Each and every person on this planet is the main character of his or her own movie.
'Spaces for rent' is a movie based on Maxim Gorky's 'The lower depths '- with recession being the protagonist:). In recent times, recession is the big word on everyone's mouth; actual sufferers as well as those who pretend to. In economics, the term recession generally describes the reduction of a company's GDP for at least two quarters, a period of reduced economic activity. But directly or indirectly, one is certainly affected by it. But an intellectually challenged person like me does understand that markets have slumped so the TRP for business news went up and recession has become a generic topic of every household, whether or not they understand the meaning of it.
Now coming back to my main discussion, at GangwayZ, our goal is to create films of such depth and power that they can somehow capture this new understanding of ourselves. We are an incredibly versatile species, and it would be a shame if we let this very strength be our downfall. Right now, our species needs to develop the ability to step back from what we are doing, and evaluate all beliefs on an equal basis, just as we do during a creative brainstorming session. And we must also be able to honestly speak out about what works for us, and what doesn’t.
You might be surprised at hearing such sentiments coming from a tiny production company. But we have always dreamed big, and we've always known that it's not enough just to build a huge megaphone to speak to the world through. It's what is said through that megaphone that's really important. We don’t have the huge megaphone yet. We're still working on that. But in the meantime, we think our time would be more productively spent on the ideas we want to use that megaphone for.
We'd appreciate your help. We'd like to establish a dialogue about ideas that connect deeply to the world. Nothing could be more important during these troubled times. This is a start. Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess.
By Monish…No rubbish
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