Collaboration. A fancy sounding word; but is it as fancy as it sounds? Yes, indeed; for me.
A zap back into time and I picture myself sitting in a morning session of an intensive for a course called Collaborative Media Project. Excited at the thought that we’ll be working with each other on a variety of projects, I looked forward to the experience. However, the one thing that troubled me was to think of a concept that I’d like to be the main driver of. While others approached me with their concepts, to receive suggestions and feedback, I couldn’t think of a concept that was strong enough; strong enough to convince people to get them on board with me.
After a great thinking process and consumption of nearly 4 coffees, I felt I had finally hit jackpot with an idea! As an international student in Melbourne, I have always wanted to bring forth student experiences and stories through a video blog format. I found this to be the best opportunity to set the ball rolling. Titled ‘Happyness’, I aspired to produce a video blog styled documentary which followed the lives of international students residing in Melbourne and their idea of happiness; in search of answers to the main issue being – How does one measure happiness – Is it by fulfilling your aspirations? Or is it by being content with what you have? I bounced this idea with Meg and Florence initially, and they found it be an interesting topic. However, I still wasn’t too convinced about the idea since this was just a thought and executing it was a far fetched desire.
I put forth this idea in my Learning Contract. Little did I know, that this would exist just in text!
A month into the course, everyone around me seemed to have taken off with their individual projects while I just sat and pondered instead of acting upon the execution of my idea.
One fine autumn morning, one coffee down, I was hit by yet another idea! I was about a week away from going back home to India to attend my cousin’s wedding. While the excitement of being part of the grand celebrations was seeping in, I had this desire to capture the myriad colours of an Indian wedding. After bouncing off the idea with Patrick and Michael, I felt determined and excited to pull it off. While the initial idea was to cover the story of the bride and groom about their pre wedding jitters and the distinct cultures that they belong to; once I landed in the wedding house, I knew this was never going to happen thanks to the chaos and madness involved in the wedding preparations.
Armed with my Canon 550D, I was present at every ritual, every ceremony ready to capture every single moment. While B roll shots weren’t the problem, the real challenge was to find interesting people who would say interesting things about an Indian wedding. I began to take bytes from family and friends about the couple but eventually started covering opinions on the marriage of distinct cultures and the predominance of rituals and traditions in the Indian society. While I got a mixture of outlooks on the same, I looked forward to compiling this into one amazing video. One of the major setbacks however while filming on location, was the poor audio quality. I prayed that it would be rectified in post production.
Back in Melbourne with some 4 hours of footage, the next step was to pull out rushes that could actually be used. After segregating my rushes into B rolls and bytes, I roped in our class’ Batman – Alex; to help me out with the postproduction. What happened next was the best cultural collaboration ever! As I acquainted Alex with the various Indian rituals and Bollywood songs, we came up with a structure for the movie and titled it ‘A Knotty Affair’ which was most wonderfully designed by Angela Cho Hee Kim. While we had our post production in full swing, Maria popped into the edit suite and made an amazing suggestion of plugging in ‘A Knotty Affair’ on the Humblebeings Facebook page. She wanted to promote the story of the married couple belonging from distinct cultures, who stood by each other and convinced their families; thus uniting one and all by the power of love. The suggestion was brilliant and the result was a cross collaboration. By the end of the production, we had Alex humming Bollywood songs and speaking in an Indian accent!
Moving on from A Knotty Affair, one of the earliest projects on which I was taken on board was Women Go Surfing. I was excited to be a part of this project right from the time Meg had proposed the idea of sharing stories of women surfers in countries where surfing is still a not so popular sport. ‘The Goa Hippy Tribe’ was a point of reference, on the grounds of which we aimed to build an online community of women surfers from across the globe. While I was primarily assigned to be the camera operator for interviews, I did try to involve myself with the social media activity too. While I found it really difficult to touch base with women surfers in India; I did manage to rope in my friend Bhagyashree, an international student from India who was a newbie on the waves. She was delighted at the thought of sharing her surfing experience with me, which I’ve recorded and shared on the Facebook page. While the initial idea was to prepare a doco of all the interviews we’d get on board, we realised that by the end of the semester, the page was a doco in itself. Through this page,we have built an ever growing online community of novice women surfers who promote not just surfing as a sport but also women’s liberation. Working on this all girl team, has been by far the cleanest all girl collaboration ever! No catty fights, no dramas, only girl power!
In Alex’s directorial venture – Inscription, I carried out the role of Production Designer. Propping up the gaming zone of a uni cafetaria and transforming it into a hipster restaurant is no easy task especially when you have to make do with available resources and a zero budget. Alex, the sorted man that he is, briefed me about the look and feel that he desired with the help a graphical diagram, making life easy. I brought in colourful tumblers and cutlery from home, stole my roommate’s fake diamond ring (with her permission ofcourse) and added a plant here and a light there to get the desired set layout. While my work was done pre shoot, I stuck around to lend a helping hand to Alex, keeping a tab on continuity and the actors lines.
When it came it lending a hand in filming Maria’s and Sakshi’s conversation for Humblebeings, I was more than happy to do so. I had now begun to love the camera, exploring it’s capabilities. While I took to the camera with utmost ease, I had to calm the ladies down each time they moved out of the frame while engaged in candid conversation. I took off from the conventional style of keeping a set frame for interviews and focused on capturing the facial expressions and gestures by zooming in and out on the two chicas. Maria gave me the freedom to experiment with this shoot style, helping me build my confidence in recording informal interviews.
Just In Case has been one of my favourite projects that I’ve worked on during my entire Master’s course. As the camera operator, I learnt a lot from Yuri who tripled up as the Actor, Director and Directory of Photography on set. Since it was my first shot at filming a fiction film, Yuri explained his desired shots with utmost patience. The greatest challenge for me while filming, was to control my laughter. We had to retake a shot nearly ten times because each time Yuri burst into his comical actions, I would burst into laughter. The scene in which Yuri is dressed as the old flower lady was the most memorable part of the movie for me, as I just couldn’t stand still or stop myself from laughing.
I was roped in initially as the actress for The Coin. However due to date issues,(yes, now I’m talking like a star);-p I couldn’t make it to the screen. Jokes apart, since I wasn’t going to be in Melbourne during the scheduled shoot dates, CiCi took on the actor’s role. YoYo was kind enough to offer me the role of procuring sound effects and background scores for the film. Sound plays an integral part in every horror film and hitting the right note was of utmost importance. I jumped at the opportunity and most willingly agreed to help out in the sound design of The Coin. Shakun and myself, skimmed through almost every free sound website on the world wide web and shared our discoveries with Yoyo and her team of editors. The most eminent trait of a good director is to be sure and firm about what he wants and that reflected in Yoyo’s choices. She knew what she wanted and hence wouldn’t settle for just any random sound. I loved this dedication that she had towards her creative baby.
One of the earliest projects that I worked on was the Urban Eco Symposium 2015. Though I joined the duo of Alex and Lucille pretty late as they were done with pre production and a had already shot the B rolls, they were very kind enough to take me on their team and most willingly took my help for sound recording for the interview shoot. While I had never operated a boom mic before, I realised that sound recording is no easy task, especially since you have to be still making sure that no ruffling of wires or movement is recorded in the audio. It looks easy, but it’s no child’s play.
In a nutshell, collaboration has been a great experience for me. Through this process, I’ve learnt to accept others suggestions and incorporate it in order to achieve the best results. A major reason for me to choose to study in Melbourne, is the cultural diversity it offers. I’ve always wanted to work in a multi cultural environment and my classroom has provided me the best learning ground to do so. Diverse ideas, working styles, attitudes and opinions have definitely contributed towards making me industry ready once I’m out of uni, out in the open. Thanks to the numerous opportunities offered to me by classmates to operate the camera for their projects, I’ve begun to love videography and shall continue experimenting with the medium. This course has helped me come out of my comfort zone, out of my shell and has helped me develop the necessary technical skills and people skills for the media world. I’ve loved every role undertaken in the projects I’ve worked on and feel blessed to have great, understanding colleagues. This course has made this semester a fruitful and enjoyable one that has created lifelong memories!
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