Somewhere in mid-2016, around May, my two friends, Kadambari and Shanaya, and I decided to participate in a movie-making competition called 'Reel to Real'. We were to make a short movie of about 5 minutes and the theme was to be 'What If".
After a few hours of brainstorming whilst sitting in the library (actually an excuse to bunk our classes 😈) we came up with a basic plan for our movie. Rather than focus on a single 'what if', we decided to focus on multiple 'what ifs' from a child's point of view. With the outline in mind, our next task was to find a willing actor 🙇 .
I persuaded one of our good friends, Akshit, to play the lead, and we set out to shoot our movie. And Oh my Lord, what a hell of a ride it was!
I asked my mom to gave me our Handycam (which I later realized was a bad idea because it was old and did not record very high-quality stuff, meh), invited the team over to my place and started shooting. And only when we actually started shooting the movie, did I realize what a pain in the ass this was going to be.
After meeting once in May, we decided to postpone our movie-making to June, when we have our summer vacations. And for a while, we completely forgot about it all.
June came and we finally woke up and decided to get over with it. So we met over the vacations and shot most of the movie. I still remember how difficult it was to decide a day and time which suited everyone because we are all such cooperative, adjusting and understanding people, aren't we?
Though we had shot the movie, it was still in bits and pieces and the most important step, editing the movie was yet to be done. But very conveniently, yet again, we decided to go off to sleep.
In late August/ early September, Shanaya and I woke up and while reminiscing our summer adventures, remembered that we still had to edit our movie. Now a major problem came to light. None of us had neither a movie editing software, nor did we know how to use one. Being the most tech-savvy of the lot, I downloaded a software that had a free trial, got lazy (duh), and wasted the free trial. Then I finally told my mother to find a solution to my problem, like all children typically do, conveniently transferring all our problems on our mother's shoulders. Thankfully one my mom's friend knows a few people who are involved in movie making and theatre and she managed to find us a guy who could edit our movie. Forever indebted Harpreet Maasi, forever indebted!
Towards the end of one of the school days in September Shanaya and I were loitering in our friend's section, passing time and during one of our many free periods and were casually reading the competition poster. It was then that we realized that when we were to burn the movie onto a disk (we still had to edit it but yeah, dream big!), it had to be furnished with some relevant details too like the exact duration, the name of the members etc. Now we were already tensed but this was like the last straw, so when school ended, like the badass that I am, I sneaked into the classroom an stole the poster 😎(because obv I couldn't remember all of the important details and also so the rival team no more had access to it).
Finally, I fixed up a date on which we would meet the guy who was going to edit the movie for us (Mr Deepanshu Sharma, an absolutely wonderful and interesting young man). He was to come over to my place. Since Akshit lives nearby, he came over on time, but Shanaya was tied up which actually resulted in a mini fight between us over the phone 😔. She eventually turned up and we edited a major chunk of the movie. But the final touches were yet to be done.
Again we were in a fix because we could not decide a day on which we all could meet. And just like that, it was 30th August and the last day to submit the movie was 1st September. So I called the editing guy to my place on 31st August and he and I edited it till late in the night but alas, the editing was still not complete. So Mr Deepanshu told me to message all that was left to edit and he would do it at night at his place. So I texted him the details and with a bated breath, waited for tomorrow.
On 1st September I went to school without the movie in my bag. Mr Deepanshu was to hand over the edited movie to my mother who was to deliver it to school. Anxiously I waited in school and after recess, my mom delivered the movie. So Kadambari, Shanaya and I headed over to the teachers who were in charge of the competition and my oh my you won't believe it, they were completely unaware that today was the last day of submission (a round of applause for the responsible teachers). Anyway, we showed them our movie and the male teacher liked it but it was quite apparent that the female teacher didn't even though she tried to express the contrary (she favoured the other team). I admit the movie is not Oscar worthy but for first-timers, it was a pretty good effort.
We did not qualify for the next round but hey, I'm so not complaining. It was one hell of an experience full of fun, laughter, memories and learning. And if nothing else, it really put my creative cells to work, they had been idle for way too long!
So here it is!
The Theme of the Movie: What If...
Title of the Movie: Life is Now
Duration of the Movie: 4 minutes 17 seconds
After a few hours of brainstorming whilst sitting in the library (actually an excuse to bunk our classes 😈) we came up with a basic plan for our movie. Rather than focus on a single 'what if', we decided to focus on multiple 'what ifs' from a child's point of view. With the outline in mind, our next task was to find a willing actor 🙇 .
I persuaded one of our good friends, Akshit, to play the lead, and we set out to shoot our movie. And Oh my Lord, what a hell of a ride it was!
I asked my mom to gave me our Handycam (which I later realized was a bad idea because it was old and did not record very high-quality stuff, meh), invited the team over to my place and started shooting. And only when we actually started shooting the movie, did I realize what a pain in the ass this was going to be.
After meeting once in May, we decided to postpone our movie-making to June, when we have our summer vacations. And for a while, we completely forgot about it all.
June came and we finally woke up and decided to get over with it. So we met over the vacations and shot most of the movie. I still remember how difficult it was to decide a day and time which suited everyone because we are all such cooperative, adjusting and understanding people, aren't we?
Though we had shot the movie, it was still in bits and pieces and the most important step, editing the movie was yet to be done. But very conveniently, yet again, we decided to go off to sleep.
In late August/ early September, Shanaya and I woke up and while reminiscing our summer adventures, remembered that we still had to edit our movie. Now a major problem came to light. None of us had neither a movie editing software, nor did we know how to use one. Being the most tech-savvy of the lot, I downloaded a software that had a free trial, got lazy (duh), and wasted the free trial. Then I finally told my mother to find a solution to my problem, like all children typically do, conveniently transferring all our problems on our mother's shoulders. Thankfully one my mom's friend knows a few people who are involved in movie making and theatre and she managed to find us a guy who could edit our movie. Forever indebted Harpreet Maasi, forever indebted!
Towards the end of one of the school days in September Shanaya and I were loitering in our friend's section, passing time and during one of our many free periods and were casually reading the competition poster. It was then that we realized that when we were to burn the movie onto a disk (we still had to edit it but yeah, dream big!), it had to be furnished with some relevant details too like the exact duration, the name of the members etc. Now we were already tensed but this was like the last straw, so when school ended, like the badass that I am, I sneaked into the classroom an stole the poster 😎(because obv I couldn't remember all of the important details and also so the rival team no more had access to it).
Finally, I fixed up a date on which we would meet the guy who was going to edit the movie for us (Mr Deepanshu Sharma, an absolutely wonderful and interesting young man). He was to come over to my place. Since Akshit lives nearby, he came over on time, but Shanaya was tied up which actually resulted in a mini fight between us over the phone 😔. She eventually turned up and we edited a major chunk of the movie. But the final touches were yet to be done.
Again we were in a fix because we could not decide a day on which we all could meet. And just like that, it was 30th August and the last day to submit the movie was 1st September. So I called the editing guy to my place on 31st August and he and I edited it till late in the night but alas, the editing was still not complete. So Mr Deepanshu told me to message all that was left to edit and he would do it at night at his place. So I texted him the details and with a bated breath, waited for tomorrow.
On 1st September I went to school without the movie in my bag. Mr Deepanshu was to hand over the edited movie to my mother who was to deliver it to school. Anxiously I waited in school and after recess, my mom delivered the movie. So Kadambari, Shanaya and I headed over to the teachers who were in charge of the competition and my oh my you won't believe it, they were completely unaware that today was the last day of submission (a round of applause for the responsible teachers). Anyway, we showed them our movie and the male teacher liked it but it was quite apparent that the female teacher didn't even though she tried to express the contrary (she favoured the other team). I admit the movie is not Oscar worthy but for first-timers, it was a pretty good effort.
We did not qualify for the next round but hey, I'm so not complaining. It was one hell of an experience full of fun, laughter, memories and learning. And if nothing else, it really put my creative cells to work, they had been idle for way too long!
So here it is!
The Theme of the Movie: What If...
Title of the Movie: Life is Now
Duration of the Movie: 4 minutes 17 seconds
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