Sunday, April 29, 2007

"North and South" Indians

Karnataka,Kerala,Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, but who will take the pain to spell such difficult names,so they call it simply "MADRAS" .Cochin ,Hydrabad,Kovilpatti or Mysore everything is called MADRAS, and you get a common name MADRASI.Some people don't even know, that there are four different states with different languages exist .They think ,that the whole of South India is called MADRAS.
Some of the myths :
South Indias are dark black
MADRSIs drink only filter coffee all the time
Madrasis read only Hindu
Madrasis hate speaking Hindi
Madrasis eat only dosa ,idly and sambar
Madrasis speak a Alien language
Jayalalitha Amma , VeerAppa and Rajinikanth are the three Gods of worship.

When i say "they " " they " "they" , who are these people, these are North Indians from north India,which comprises the rest of India (East ,West,North and Banglore) and do we know that its not a sigle state ? ,there are other languages otherthan Hindi that they speak ?
If you are from Bombay ,Calcutta ,Ambala ,Bhuvaneswar or Baroda ,you are still called a North Indian in MADRAS(comprising Karnataka,Tamil Nadu ,Andhra Pradesh and Kerala ,minus Banglore).

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Serious Film Making.

For the past few months I have been meeting some Serious Film makers. Serious as in very serious people. Full time busy with discussing the screenplay, full time tension and full time thinking. They don't have time to do any thing ,even to make films, they just discuss, discuss and discuss. To be a Serious Film maker you need to watch a lot Iranian, French and East Antartican films ,because these are the films normal people don't watch ,so its easy to get stories and ideas from these films and get inspired .Apart from this you get a chance to spell some difficult name as your favorite director. Some people are so busy that, they ask their assistants to watch the film and get inspired (because they know ,that only assistants are going to write the screenplay anyway).Once the story is conceived by getting inspiration from Europe and Antarctica and a bit of Asia, for camera angles the inspiration comes from some independent films from west. Now the assistant camera men search for their inspiration on a international level.What to do for rest ? dialogues, scenes and other things " lets search, go to Google ummmmmmm" tamil film + good dialogues + claps + super + 100 days + tamil font + i want .......... that’s the research on net. Some assistants are smart enough to pick up inspiration from already run 100 days films from tamil, malayalam, kannada, hindi and some times Hollywood serials like friends. Now once all this is done the consolidation takes place, this is the most important period in film making called story discussion .You need a peaceful place to consolidate all this, some of the favorite place are Chola Sheraton, room no: 9, The Park ,room no: 300 and every director has his own favorites, some of the out station sites are Ooty, Kodai and if the producer is new to the industry, then you even have a choice to go abroad, so its always good look for a new producer, preferably one from south tamilnadu.So now the screenplay is ready with a cost of 3,4 lakhs ,out of which 2 lakh is spent on inspirational accessories like booze and other stuff. Once the screenplay is ready the producer has no choice but to produce the film, since he has invested a good amount of money already on buying DVDs and other inspirational material. If he drops the film he will have , they start investing more money to improve screen play .The next level of research starts.When everything is done by assistants ,what do directors do ? they spend time preparing lists like the "the best booze brands in the world" , "the best places to visit" and some times "the best films"......