Thoughts on writing / editing / acting / directing

Things I tell myself.

Come into a scene late, leave early - screenwriting, equally so for editing.

Every page written is $$$ on set.

Less is more.

Silence, instead of words.

Reveal, don't explain.

Exposition is easy. Its a cop-out.

We 'get-it' pretty quick in real life - apply that to the writing. And when directing actors, how fast will 'they' get it?

Make each frame of the film struggle hard for a place in the final film. Kill your darlings.

Use costumes / production design to tell the story of that scene. A green wall should be green for a reason. Not because its 'nice'. That is a waste of potential.

Instinct and the right feeling is as good a reason (perhaps better) as any.

Camera / lights should be used proactively - the tools should never be passive in storytelling.

A good story, well acted with indifferent camera / production design is a waste of potential.

Tools can be used to enhance, to reveal, to counterpoint.

Understand not the tools but their effect for an audience.

A director needs to direct. Every thing on the screen is his/her responsibility.

Where to put the camera? Its a big decision and a small decision. If no flash of creative genius strikes, I put the camera in the most obvious position. Where would I like to see the scene from? And why? It helps to eliminate options if nothing else.

But if a flash of creative genius does strike then have it fulfilled no matter how hard, or how anyone argues to the contrary.

A director should be flexible, but very stubborn.

Fighting about creative choices is healthy. It shows struggle, more than that - people care.

A film made without strife is bland. Or an exercise at gaining popularity.

A film is judged by what's on screen. Not what is seen and heard off it. That is the fodder of gossip columnists. A different kind of entertainment.

What is style? It is a series of decisions. Style is not imposed it becomes apparent through a body of work.

Best not to worry about having ones own style. A 'style' shall emerge if it must. Meanwhile, lets make a movie.

For me, there is no such thing as good cinematography, bad story. Or good first half, boring second half. A movie works entirely or not at all.

Cohesion - not fragmentation.

Great movies are made up of great scenes. Get the scenes well written, dressed, lit and performed - edited. They should add up-to a good film.

What is a good scene - on a basic level, one that moves the story on, most economically.

Bad acting with some redeeming moments can be turned into a passable performance by good editing.

Brilliant acting will always shine through.

The job of the director? Giving an editor few choices.

The job of an actor? Giving an editor all the choices.

The job of an editor? Giving the director a new film.

The job of a writer? Accepting that there will be a different film on screen.

A film is made three times, at least (I think someone else also said something simmilar). On paper, on set, on the editing table.

Listening to suggestions, specially in the editing room is a sly art.

Read between the lines - feedback after a test screening is seldom a menu of changes on the editing table. A good editor can take 'feeling' and translate it into cuts / additions. Feeling (or Emotion - Walter Murch) should dominate all editing decisions.

The totality of the film must always be kept in mind. Scenes are there to be cut. If they are not they must really be doing a good job.

Always trying to separate the personal / emotional involvement from the movie, trying to watch the film objectively. Every-time I want to hold a shot longer than necessary or keep a scene that I think is good but not necessary - I walk across to my DVD library and look at the hundreds of films there. How much time did I give each of them? Did my attention wander? Will I ever watch them again? Soon my film will be among those. Among hundreds of thousands of other equally painstakingly, lovingly created cinematic works. Its a humbling statistic that could become overwhelming. But used in the editing room it is a powerful ally. It provides objective distance. Its the murder weapon used to kill my darlings. And kill them I must.

Eventually it will not matter in some senses what I left out. What will matter is what was left in. Not even that. All that will matter is if I am able to transmit the feelings I had when writing the film to the audience that is trooping out of the theatre.

Great shots and good scenes are only great and good if they make something of the entire film, contribute to the meta-goal. Anything outside that is superfluous. And should be struck.

That is where great writing comes in. A great screenwriter is clairvoyant. He/she can ensure that all his great scenes are used in the final picture. That is experience, to go through the process, analyze then write something sharper.

If a scene does not add anything on paper (but is a great scene with great promise of performances and camerawork) it should be struck from the script. It costs $$$ to film each page, every word that the screenwriter puts down. Money can be limiting, we hear a lot about the scarsity of funding for good cinema.

How about using that limitation to ones advantage. Lets use money (or the lack thereof) to produce a better, sharper, more economical screenplay. A better film? I think its a great idea.

Creativity flourishes within limitations. Look at Iran. Censorship defines their parameters very narrowly. But what genius!

We need limitations. Money is one.

Is that the problem with a lot of Hollywood tripe thats seen these days? Do they have too many rolls of film and too many cameras. Do they cover every scene from every possible angle. Does the director have to think hard about what part of which scene he/she is going to shoot. Or do they just film the whole damn thing. Then let studio execs decide in the cutting room which scenes should stay, how they should be cut together. The era of the interchangeable director. Where there is no limitation, there are few decisions.

I want to be making good decisions based on the circumstances. Its never easy. But it can be very rewarding.

Entertainment and bad architecture

Film-makers should entertain. Its definition of entertainment that is somewhat strechable. Die Hard 3 or Almodvar? Both are enjoyable, depending on mood, time of day, in-flight or out, killing time or being meaningful...

Its the snobbery that goes with 'art' that flies in the face of a medium that has evolved into a mass entertainer. Today, an Amores Perros does more to check the boxes than the Die Hard of ten years ago. Tastes changing, markets fragmenting, niche audiences developing - or a combination of all?

Spending three / two years making a film is a long time. And one's resolve is tested ofen during that time. First waiting for funding, during the writing, then the shoot and finally in post production and selling the film. Each time, someone asks a question (and you're supposed to have all the answers) - you think to yourself, is this worth the time? the money? the resources? the mobilizing of a 100 - 200 people.

I better be darned sure that it really is. That's why (for me) it should have some kind of social or other relevance or aspiration.

Meanwhile, on a totally unrelated subject, I despair about the state of our monuments, our heritage and the general apathy we seem to have towards things historic. Be an ancestral home in Kerela which is being sold piece meal to foreign collectors. Or tearing down haveli's in Shekhavati and replacing them with concrete boxes and corrugated iron roofs. Its the age of the rolling shutter where my girlfriend's name is immortalised on the walls of the red-fort.

What will future generations find when they excavate - plastic, concrete, bad sewage.

Ironically, all this as we charge into the global economy makes India such an interesting place to be as a film maker.

A salient nod to the state of heritage, or neglect. Backdrop or 'agenda' for a new film, perhaps.

The Forest, my film and save our tigers

My next one is a feature film - its called The Forest.

A thriller with an environmental conscience. Instead of preaching to the converted (wildlife documentaries), I thought that I need to / could do something significant about the wildlife crisis that is staring us in the face, not only global warming and devastating effects of destruction on the planet, but focus on the most callous destruction of all - poaching, killing animals for skins and bones - to satisfy some ancient quirk of distant Chinese and Tibetan patrons.

That too in the most cruel manner devised. Modern day poachers are not hunters. They are assembly line killers. They prefer to bait / trap often letting the animal writhe and thrash around for hours rather than kill an animal with a bullet. Moreover, our national parks have become sanctuaries not for animals but private hunting grounds for the likes of Sansar Chand and his ilk. Look him up on Google. Its horrifying what he's single handedly been allowed to get away with.

If people can come to my movie to be entertained, thrilled and horrified and by tickling those senses I can saliently highlight the spendour of our jungles and their imminent destruction then I would have achieved what I set out to do.

The Forest is an original story set in a semi period setting. I imagined the Kumaon of Jim Corbett and much of the leopard behavior in the film is based on his man-eater tales, specially that of Rudraprayag. But more so, it is recreating his spirit and the spell his lucid storytelling cast on me. And an homage to the many many hours spent in uncomfortable hides, the courage that comes of stalking a man-eater at night in the Indian jungle. Only someone who has been to the jungle on a moon-less night (or even a full moon night for that matter) can actually appreciate the quality of silky darkness and place into proper context what those exploits meant.

The wildlife elements of the film have been shot by Naresh and his brother Rajesh Bedi, arguably the finest cinematographers of Indian wildlife. It is a pleasure to come to those images every morning on my editing table. And as the film takes final shape, I can only reiterate that they've made Corbett National Park and Bandavgarh National Park look spectacular.

It is that flavor that surrounds the characters, yuppies from New Delhi who go to the jungle to sort out their rocky marriage. Its that sort of respect for the environment that I decided to make my debut feature around. Highly recommend reading Corbett's deeply entertaining and pleasurable accounts of his hunting expeditions in Kumaon and Garwal. Pick up any of his books. Specially Man Eaters of Kumaon.

When the 'west' thinks wildlife or safari they think of the African bush. Hopefully after seeing The Forest they would want to come and see the tiger. See the destruction of our forests. See that this beast that has proliferated in our sub-continent for thousands of years has come close to extinction. See that if the tiger becomes extinct, then the entire ecosystem that is constructed around it will also fail and rapidly decline. And maybe that would be a small contribution to the valiant efforts of WPSI (Wildlife Protection Society of India), Vallmik Thapar, Fateh Singh Rathore, Ullas Karant, Ashok Kumar and the small band of conservationists, NGOs and dedicated forest officials around the country who have given their lives in the face of daunting odds to the project of saving the tiger, though even the most optimistic of them give the tiger not more than four or five years more in the wild.

Though, as I write this, a glimmer of hope shines through this morning's paper carries headlines about how the PM has got the Army involved (for the first time) in wildlife protection.

Will that change things? I certainly hope so.

All the world's a stage - but our cinema's not on it...?

Cinema from Iran, China, Mexico even Korea, Thailand are producing artistically integral and exciting, socially motivated cinema that have created sustainable creative industries within their countries. These films earn export dollars globally, defy cultural and language barriers at a time when the global appetite for all things South Asian is at an all time high, gross earnings of these so-called 'art' films are 20 times that of the most 'commercial' Bollywood product.

Further, we Indians excel internationally in literature, the Indian modern art movement is one of the most exciting in the world today, we export world-class software but in cinema, a historic industry (as old as Hollywood) which has genuine ability to pose a viable alternative to the hegemony of that most vociferous cultural / economic powerhouses, is not even 1% of the total revenue of the world film industry, our films are un-watchable by any audience outside India and its diaspora.

Why?

The simple answer is a lack of scripts, 'realistic' stories and exciting ways of telling them, plus lack of vision to bring those stories to the money that will make them into films (implied in that is the producer-distributor network that will take it to markets).

The complicated answer is a combination of the feudal, inward looking Bollywood industry and government apathy not inclined to tap into what is a cinematic revolution around the world. New talent is absorbed in the uninspiring mediocrity of Bollywood, develop a narrow frame of reference rendering them useless for anything but Bollywood. Worse, as was obvious by the unimaginative and somewhat crass presentation (ironically at a bill of Rs. 30 crores, a healthy budget of a motion picture, if you please) at the Commonwealth Games by New Delhi, Bollywood has come to represent not only Indian cinema but (god forbid) Indian culture, if not in the perception of the world, then certainly in our own imaginations.

Further, there are no spaces in which to expand people's minds and give exposure, cinema theaters, libraries, film festivals, training, learning. The absence of role models for young film makers like myself who prefer to look to Abbas Kirostami or Zhang Ximou or Coen Brothers or Mike Leigh or Alexandro Innaritu for inspiration.

This has killed the striving for excellence, encouraged mediocrity and aided by our particularly inane media, we have convinced ourselves that the world is awed by our cinematic genius.

What that meant for me, is that for my feature film The Forest, an international film that could afford the best that Indian film industry had to offer, besides myself (writer / producer / director) all heads of departments were foreign and the Indian crew that we did take were second rung and most barely competant. How disappointing is that?

Frankly many film schools of international standards is what is really needed. That and a vibrant, irreverant short film making community pushing the envelope and gestating all that India has to offer in their own unique voices. These would automatically provide a base without cinematic heritage and a springboard for new talent... but those are out of my scope and practically speaking a huge undertaking.

However, the foundations for that can be laid quite simply and cost-effectively. Begin with the basics and play to our strengths: the screen-play or rather the Story - the fundamental reason why anyone anywhere would want to watch a film from India.

There is a HUGE backlog of untold stories, not only from our rich and bloody history but also from our myths and not the least, modern contemporary stories arising out of the conflicts of an India making its transition from a feudal / socialist society to a capitalistic meritocracy, where a gurgaon of the 21st century is separated by a few miles from a Haryana of the Eighteenth century. The contradictions and conflicts intensified by the confidence of an upwardly mobile critical mass. Expressed in shifting attitudes, a generation post-colonial and irreverent, creating and negotiating popular cultures like never before.

The way forward, it would appear then, is to incubate scripts / talent, leverage an awareness of what's going on internationally with passion / love for the home country and blend the two in a manner that is palatable internationally. The problem with Indian screen writing at the moment is that even if we have a story that would travel, we don't know how to tell it on screen and certainly not internationally.

Hence a movie development enterprise that will not only add value to the Indian screenwriters will act as agency, clearing house, incubation program and ultimately expand its activities to cinema appreciation, short film workshops and ultimately into a film school.

Breeding young and dynamic storytellers who will be the cultural messengers of decades to come, create engaging, fascinating, yet commercial cinematic works for an international audience, something that has been seen in individual filmmakers, the triumvirate - Nair, Kapur, Mehta and our (mis-appropriated) cousins - Shyamalan, Chadda - and arguably the most successful of them all, Amritraj, but not sustainable, not an industry and certainly not in India.

It is useful to note that the India of their time is very different to our India now. The time is ripe and four - five years of development along the lines proposed will yield rich dividends. Most importantly to create a sustainable enterprise that would not need to rely on anything but its own ingenuity and foresight.

Ashvin.