“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to enterprise a bit route past them into the impossible.” -Arthur C Clarke, British science fiction writer

Over the last few months, the entertainment industry has come to a standstill. But Coronavirus-related limiteds have also impelled young filmmakers to shoot in closed gaps by casting their closed ones, friends, and even professional actors. They adopted the lockdown limitations as artistic hand-pickeds, right from writing the screenplay to shooting the film.

The release of the collection cinema Home Stories , available alone on Netflix India’s YouTube Channel; Banana Bread, a short film by Srinivas Sunderrajan; and Love In The Time of Corona, an experimental visual paper by filmmaker Anirban Dutta, speaks magnitudes about this knotty new process of shooting and structuring films.

Conflicts and intricacies of reality

Clocking 45 hours, the four movies in the collection Home Stories present different categories, wordings, and themes of filmmaking.

Out With It, peculiarity Arjun Mathur, delves into the psyche of an agoraphobe, who refuses to leave the protective restraint of his home during the pandemic, having to confront his worst fears.

Will You Be My Quarantine, featuring Saba Azad and Imaad Shah, narrates the fates of two individuals whose rendezvous for a one-night stand turns into a three-week standoff due to the lockdown.

Delivering Smiles, peculiarity Tanmay Dhanania, outlines the fable of a transmission administration, who records his menu give excursion to customers, in the form of Vlogs, during the problematic situation.

Web Ne Bana Di Jodi, boasting Veer Rajwant Singh and Apoorva Arora, amongst other, sketches the tangled onus of a marry being married during lockdown, while trying their best to go through the ceremonies of an online wedding.

Sahirr Sethhi, the director of Out With It, is an Indian filmmaker and commercial-grade head, screenwriter and creator based in Los Angeles and Mumbai. Graduating from the movie counseling platform at University of California, Los Angeles( UCLA ), he acquired a Student Emmy for his short-film Zoya. During the pre-production of Out With It, he was aware that he had to direct the film over video chat.

So he was originally break-dance the dialogue into simple beats that would be easy to communicate and execute. He went through multiple drawings with his co-writer Kaivalya Kulkarni to develop the characters, create a structure, and layer the movie with allegories and misdirects. He developed in partnership an elaborated look-book with depicts by creators like Edward Hopper and Salman Toor and stills from various movies to convey a sense of claustrophobia and isolation.

The protagonist, Arjun Mathur, got on board enthusiastically and agreed to film in his apartment, knowing well that he “wouldve been” multitasking while acting.

He says, “My experience as an auxiliary lead helped me during the shooting. The restriction crew with their varied sciences had to come together. Moreover, since the shooting was taking place in my home, a cavity I are well aware, I was taking instructions from the superintendent, and too actively involved in the process of storytelling.”

The cinematographer, Jay Oza applied his iPad to be on a continuous video chat with Sahirr. He would use the iPad’s front facing camera to mimic the main camera’s POV( point of view) so Sahirr could block the places. Following this, Arjun would set up the main camera and support the final make to Sahirr. When ready for the kill, Jay manned the main camera, while the iPad would be placed in front of Arjun, so that Sahirr could target his performance.

Tiya Tejpal, the production designer, set the next laid. For instance, while a scene was filmed inside the bedroom, she would set up the scene where Arjun’s character was solving the puzzle.

The process involved a good deal of coordination, fortitude, and confidence. Other actors who appeared in the film, self-shot their incidents on personal devices while the head steered them over video chat.

The post-production was also done remotely. The journalist, Utsav Bhagat, worked a screen-share option to show the conductor his timeline. Neel Adhikari, the composer, discussed music ideas before filming and initiated a scraping racetrack that was played on set to inspire the pacing. It was even used in the first cut.

Sound designer, Soutrik Chakrabarty, had to send exported files perpetually, so that the post-production team would listen and communicate their tones. Colour correction and a little bit of VFX( visual accomplishes) are still done remotely.

The team did not let social distancing criteria ended the collaborative dialogue between the casting and crew; if anything, the rules helped them to listen and trust each other to hoist the storytelling.

In the words of Sahirr, “While so much is happening around us, our legends go on. With Home Floor, we wanted to push the boundaries for talent and making four such short-lived legends, acquired with love and care at home during this unimaginable time.”

A Chance Encounter

Srinivas Sunderrajan, an Indian musician and an independent filmmaker based in Mumbai, sent the short film Banana Bread remotely. He is known for The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project( 2010 ), Greater Elephant( 2012) and the metafiction web successions TXDRMY( 2016 ).

Sharing his experience, the administrator says that he underwent a process that drained him mentally and physically than the real world shooting. The 12 -minute film was co-written by Rasika Duggal and Mukul Chadda, who is not simply behaved, but likewise shot the entire movie. There was no cinematographer present during the shooting.

The team first got together through video conferencing to familiarise themselves with one another. In the coming stage, the actors went very well known the technical aspects of shooting. Then followed the sessions of probing into the script and rendition, where one-on-one video times facilitated understand the characters’ stories and graphs.

The idea was to invoke the feel and feel of the 70 s and 80 s films of Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee while imparting out the tale and chemistry between the two protagonists.

The director decided the enclose and accommodated the actors with a PDF document. So, technically speaking, Srinivas was also the director of photography, while the actors too controlled the camera. The movie was shot for two days from 10 a.m-4 p.m.

Since the film was shot with natural light, it was essential for the team to find the pockets in the location that had daylight filtering in and shunned places where it was dark, since phone cameras function poorly in such directs. So, a small video recce of the house, where the film would be shot, was done to figure which points would work best for the scenarios in the film.

After the shooting, the records were all uploaded on Google Drive, which Srinivas downloaded and edited on his home setup. The point recognition sequence and poster thoughts were discussed with the design team of Terribly Tiny Talkies, who executed it.

A dream-like hold of storage and reality

Anirban Dutta is a self-taught filmmaker. His debut feature film Jahnabi- Personification of the status of women as many Flows was premiered in various international film celebrations and received critical acclaim. Love In The Time of Corona is a visually poetic depiction of our current predicament.

Sudeep Sen, “the authors ” of the titular rhyme, approached Anirban and they discussed a movie adjustment. Anirban read the rhyme multiple times and “ve been trying to find” symbolic comments. He likewise depleted duration scripting the tone layout. His idea was that the images and the bang must represent a bold dialogue, somewhat unsaid and unspoken, but exhaustively incorporated within the surface of the film.

Besides taking some brand-new shoots, he used some old-time footage, shootings which he could not use in his previous cinemas, but felt relevant to the character of the film.

The young head is a one-man crew, who shot, edited and layered the hubbub design.

Alter showcase process

Under the present situation, procreating cinemas and secreting them online or on Over-The-Top( OTT) platforms seems to be a viable option. The freeing of Shoojit Sircar’s Gulabo Sitabo on Amazon Prime last-place month, is an example of this new phenomenon derive popularity in the industry. Unlike Amazon Prime, OTT programme Disney+ Hotstar is geared to premiere seven Bollywood movies, which were originally slated for theatrical releases-Dil Bechara, Laxmmi Bomb, Bhuj: The Pride of India, Sadak 2, The Big Bull, Khuda Haafiz and Lootcase.

So, can we consider such options as the future of film distribution?

“Until it is safe to enjoy a collective movie-going ordeal in theaters again, digital deployment will help make content accessible to viewers in the convenience of their dwellings, ” says Sahil.

Srinivas opines, “I feel the pandemic is a boon to smaller filmmakers because this opens up a entrance of OTT stages for dissemination, though I would wait to see how the OTT market mold up as the lockdown is being unwound. But the notion of OTT being the future of film distribution is stronger now than it was before.”

But Anirban guesses, “Given the worldwide health and economic crisis, responsible films should be distributed and promoted with due diligence and credibility. Distributors should find unique, inventive , non-partial programmes to showcase good cinema. This is needed more than anything else now. As merely pioneers of prowes, we can only hope for better periods ahead and approval each other in this journey.”

( Written by Dipankar Sarkar and Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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