Hello All,
Here's letter 3.
Still sincerely hoping that you like readin em...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Film School is like a film set. It’s constantly buzzing with activity, people screaming, shouting at each other, creativity oozing out of each pore of the walls, out of each cell in your brain. It’s a feeling I can’t really put in words, when people are just yelling your name, when you direct, everyone from the gaffer to the grip, from the 1st AD to the DoP, from the spot boy to the focus puller; when everyone wants a piece of you, of your brain, of the thing in you which made you director. You need to know very well, in fact more than just bloody very well, what you want from who, how you want to frame a particular shot, how much time you have to shoot it, how much stock you have to shoot it, what exactly you want the DoP to do, how exactly you want your actors to emote. You should be prepared and you shoot be prepared like what you are shooting would perhaps be the last thing you are shooting.
This is what The International Film School of Sydney taught me by the end of the second week. We hadn’t shot on film yet, but our professors made sure that we knew all that we needed to know. The kind of scripts we were made to write, all of us were made to attend an acting workshop, framing, mise-en-scene and what not, the first two weeks packed in so much that people were almost getting floored by the indefinable stress levels.
Picture this: My screenwriting professor, a true genius in any sense of the word, asked us very casually to write down the most intriguing, the most impacting, the most loved, the most weird and etc. characters from our own life. I personally wrote down the characters of Ramgopal Verma, The Pretty Girl in Pink, Pavan, My dad, Shahrukh Khan along with a few others.
Cut to two days later, when all of us had forgotten about the characters we had sketched, the same professor asked us to write down ‘one illegal, irrational and crazy thing we would have wanted to do’. I personally wrote down, for reasons still unknown to me, to perform a major international drug heist. I was in the shock of my life when he then asked us to write a movie script about this crazy, irrational and illegal thing I wanted to do by taking 5 characters from the ones I had written before, making them do the heist for me.
Agape and astonished, I looked at the note-book in front of me to check the toughest creative challenge I had faced in my life: To make my dad, The Pretty Girl in Pink, Pavan, Ramgopal Verma and SRK to perform an international drug heist, albeit without getting caught.
I was quite worried about how I would get all these people together in the first place. Making them do an international drug heist without getting caught was an altogether different issue. But my professor told me just one thing, which I think is going to be my mantra for life;
He said, “Nikhil, 5 people, no matter how different they are, can always come together and do any damn thing you want them to do… you know why?”
I threw an I-am-so-frustrated-I-can’t-think glance at him.
Understanding my glance to the T, he smiled and took a swig of his coffee, he said, “Because you are a writer… and you are fuckin good one.”
Raising my mug of coffee in anticipation to the words of praise, I took just the bit of it that I had to take, “I was a writer… and I could make my characters do whatever I wanted them to.”
When people say something, a bit of it is the truth, the other bit is what ‘can be’ the truth. The same thing applied to my professor’s sentence. Some of it was true; some of it could be true.
Coffee break was over, Thinking about the 5 characters exercise, playing with Hasse’s cap, much to her annoyance, we walked in the lobby, Nicolas gleefully flashing his card at the door to let us in, the Sin City poster greeted us and we walked up the staircase towards the 100 capacity theatre, 15 days after we had first had entered it.
Splashing water with my Nike shoes, I remember running towards the school, the raindrops bouncing off my red windcheater. “I am 22 and am going back to school”, I laughed at the contradiction, running as fast as I could, ensuring that I didn’t get late for the 9 a.m. reporting time. I reached the school, breathing heavily, I bent down to look at the school building through the old-tree-arch, could see a couple of Japanese students sipping coffee standing outside, another student, perhaps an Australian smoking. Wiping a bit of water of my hair with the back of my hand, pulling my wet hair back, taking the jacket off, I walked through the pathway, smiling at the three, who obligingly smiled back. They asked me if I was a first tier student, to which I said yes, introducing them to me and vice versa, one of them flashed his card at the door, unlocking it and letting me in.
As I entered, I could see a flock of equally nervous students sitting around the lounge area, some making coffee, some reading newspapers, some looking here n there and some just looking at me, perhaps because I was the latest entry in the lot. Smiling at whoever I liked on instinct, I found myself a place on a couch, right under the Sin City poster. I turned back and was looking at it when I could feel a cold hand on my shoulder. I turned back to see the cutest girl I had ever seen, correction: the second cutest girl I had ever seen, a mop of curly blonde hair on her small, squarish round face, a smile that illuminated the entire room, in a blue-black striped T-Shirt and a pair of denims quite same to the shade I was wearing. I looked at her, almost breaking into a 400 watt smile, inspired because of her equally powerful smile, before I could speak, she spoke.
“Heeeylo!!! I am Hasse, from Holland”. She smiled again, the moment the sentence was over.
“Hi”, I said, still pondering over how she could smile so genuinely, “I am Nikhil, from India”
“Oh!” she smiled, wider this time, “It’s colder in India, aint it?”
“Not at this time of the year”, I said matter of factly, “It’s quite warmer and nicer”.
“Is it?” she enquired, charged full on with curiosity, “Even Holland has better weather…” she sounded terribly homesick for those two split seconds.
Before I could say anything, we were asked to come up to the theatre space for our induction. Hasse and I started walking upstairs, the others following us. I knew at that moment that Dutch people are extremely warm and friendly. What I didn’t know then was that one of them was going to be one of my best friends and that too, for a lifetime.
TO BE CONTINUED
Friday, April 13, 2007
Friday, April 6, 2007
Letters from Sydney: Episode 2
Hi all,
Thanks so much for the amazing response to the first letter!
You guys have me all pepped up...
Anyways as promised here's letter number 2.
Its a bit heavy and philosophical.
Bear With Me.
Enjoy!
For those of you who came late, please read part 1 before going on to part 2. It would help. :-)
And yes... keep kommenting!
It was my first Sunday in Sydney. I felt a slight bit of jet lag as I slept almost throughout the day, waking up only once to go shopping with David. We had gone to Woolworths, one of the chain of supermarkets in Australia. Woolworths is to Australia what Spencers is to India. A chain of huge, huge stores spread all over the land down under it is second only to Coles, another successful mall chain here.
Very frankly, Australia is not a visually spectacular nation. It’s very beautiful and clean and hygienic, but it is nothing that India is not. If Spencers had had green colored cloth bags to pack the bought goods in, it would have been exactly like Woolworths is. The cost of things varies, definitely, soft-drinks, meat and dairy products being way cheaper than they are in India, that’s a result of the sound financial state of this country more than anything else.
I had my first taste of the infamous Sydney sun whilst David and I walked back to 66-A, three very heavy green bags in our four hands. The mercury was at a mere 30 degrees, but our skins were burning, literally. We both cursed David for not remembering to apply sunscreen before stepping out. The ten minute walk seemed like ages, both of us praying that we reach home, soon.
As I lay in my bed an hour later, I was looking up at the ceiling fan as it slowly rotated above me, reminding me of my room in the Pune home, something that I attribute half of my life’s achievements, whatever bit of them I have had, to. What I am today, what I am doing today, what I would do tomorrow and what I will be tomorrow would always be credited to that room, where I wrote everything like it was the last thing I could ever write. People thought that I was schizophrenic, leading a dual life, one inside that room and the other outside it. I think they were right; I am in Sydney today, because I was in that room few months back for a few seemingly, very, very inconsequential but highly effective in actuality years. I am in The International Film School of Sydney today because I was in Pune for the last 4 years. Otherwise, I pretty much can assure you that I would have been working at someplace like Infosys, typing nonetheless; Software Codes for people I know exist but I know I would never meet.
All I know now is that I was destined to type my life away. What I type now makes me one of the people who believe that destiny is what we do to life.
What I could’ve ended up typing would’ve given me a chance to be one of the many people who believe that destiny is what life does to us.
I woke up with a start, my eyes opened to a crimson red stream of light coming in through the slightly open curtains of my room. I unfurled the curtains and what was in front of me is easily the best sights I have ever seen. The sun was setting, through a couple of clouds, right at the end of the road right in front of my window. Though the sun was hidden behind the clouds, a bit of it managed to raise itself out from a li’l gap between the clouds, making everything in the immediate vicinity glow, like the ring from Peter Jackson’s famous movie. In one word, it was magnificent.
With my mouth wide open in awe of nature’s unbelievable spectacle, I scampered about the room trying to look for my camera, fiddling with my bags, falling over shoes which I never keep in the right place, struggling with almost every non-living entity in my small room. I finally found my camera in the most obvious place, which I had obviously failed to check, rushed to the window and switched the camera on, looked intently at the LCD only to realize that it was out of battery. Cursing myself for not being able to capture the moment, I turned back and looked at my watch which was showing 6:00 P.M. Mentally calculating the time in India, messing it up a couple of times I finally deduced that it would be 12:30 there.
“She would be in the bus” I thought. “Waiting at the bus stop, rather” I corrected the thought I had first thought of.
Getting into my white shirt and pair of blue jeans, haphazardly setting my hair (!!!) I ran down the staircase to see Natalie brushing Sac.
“That’s quite a smile… you seem to be very happy. Had your girlfriend called?” she asked me, brushing flies off Sac’s back, much to his discomfort.
“I don’t have a girlfriend, Natalie”, I told her, and still trying to figure out the reason why I was smiling, then trying to figure out why I was unable to understand that I was actually, smiling.
I then walked past a couple of shops along the road that links Dalmeny Avenue to Rosebery Avenue, enjoying the cool wind that swept across wildly, taking alongwith it, helpless leaves fallen off trees, by both the sides of the jet black-colored, clean and spotless road, a Chinese couple walking hand-in-hand on the other side of it, an old lady mowing the lawn in her tiny, but beautiful duplex, another man riding his silver-black bicycle, humming Justin Timberlake’s ‘What goes round, comes around’ and smiling every time he went out of tune.
This is one of the things which make Australia addictive. People love to live. Their lives are not always plagued with worries about small things, they aren’t always screaming, shouting at each other, everyone likes everyone unless someone gives you a reason to dislike them. Everything is warm. People go out of their way to make you comfortable, they smile, they sing, they laugh, they giggle, they dance. There are so many people, coming from different countries, different cultures and different religions. Everyone tries to blend in the melting pot of combined ethnicities, smiling at others, trying to say goodbye to a Spanish friend by saying adios, saying hi to me by saying a broken, but effectively sweet Namaste.
As I reached Rosebery Avenue after a brief 2 minutes walk from my place, it was almost dark, with very little sunlight left. After crossing number 23, my heartbeat started to rise, with 24, I could feel a slight thump in my chest, at 25 I closed my eyes, at 26 I stopped and took a deep breath, making sure I wasn’t looking ahead, my head purposefully down and then I took the 10 most scared steps in my life, a overabundance of thoughts taking over my brain in the next 60 seconds.
“What if it’s really small?”
“What if it isn’t good?”
“Why the f*** did I not see it before coming?”
“I should’ve seen it before leaving India”
“Oh shit, Oh shit, Oh shit”
“It’s too much of money at stake, it better be good”
At the 10th step I opened my eyes. Took another breath. Sighed, slightly and turned my neck to its left, at 27, Rosebery Avenue. The place that’s called ‘The International Film School of Sydney’ I couldn’t see much but the color and the rough shape of the building. It seemed purple, a few Japanese wooden boxes spaced around the patio of the not –so-huge building. A few obscure looking wooden bars, almost 9 ft. tall were erected all along the 20 feet cemented walkway to the entrance of the school. A huge, bended and old tree formed the natural archway to the building. I walked towards it, some bits of the insides of the school visible through the small glass entrance door. It was brightly lit, like a studio. A poster of Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City gracing the front wall of the lobby, whatever bit of it was visible from the outside.
I stood there, almost magnetized. I knew that I had taken the right decision. It wasn’t fancy, It wasn’t palatial. It just seemed so right. It just seemed so cinematic.
The thing about Cinema which makes it so appealing to me is that it’s not like people. When you love a film, the film loves you too. When you love people, they don’t always say they love you too. The best thing about life is not when you love someone with all your heart and they love you too. It’s when you just tell each other that you do. That’s the best thing. That’s life.
“What do we achieve by telling people that we love them?” you would ask.
Maybe nothing, but if you don’t tell them, you are bound to lose out on something.
I had fallen in love with The International Film School of Sydney at the first sight, in slight sunlight and a bit of moonlight. What I didn’t know then was, just in a matter of few days, It was going to love me too.
TO BE CONTINUED
Thanks so much for the amazing response to the first letter!
You guys have me all pepped up...
Anyways as promised here's letter number 2.
Its a bit heavy and philosophical.
Bear With Me.
Enjoy!
For those of you who came late, please read part 1 before going on to part 2. It would help. :-)
And yes... keep kommenting!
It was my first Sunday in Sydney. I felt a slight bit of jet lag as I slept almost throughout the day, waking up only once to go shopping with David. We had gone to Woolworths, one of the chain of supermarkets in Australia. Woolworths is to Australia what Spencers is to India. A chain of huge, huge stores spread all over the land down under it is second only to Coles, another successful mall chain here.
Very frankly, Australia is not a visually spectacular nation. It’s very beautiful and clean and hygienic, but it is nothing that India is not. If Spencers had had green colored cloth bags to pack the bought goods in, it would have been exactly like Woolworths is. The cost of things varies, definitely, soft-drinks, meat and dairy products being way cheaper than they are in India, that’s a result of the sound financial state of this country more than anything else.
I had my first taste of the infamous Sydney sun whilst David and I walked back to 66-A, three very heavy green bags in our four hands. The mercury was at a mere 30 degrees, but our skins were burning, literally. We both cursed David for not remembering to apply sunscreen before stepping out. The ten minute walk seemed like ages, both of us praying that we reach home, soon.
As I lay in my bed an hour later, I was looking up at the ceiling fan as it slowly rotated above me, reminding me of my room in the Pune home, something that I attribute half of my life’s achievements, whatever bit of them I have had, to. What I am today, what I am doing today, what I would do tomorrow and what I will be tomorrow would always be credited to that room, where I wrote everything like it was the last thing I could ever write. People thought that I was schizophrenic, leading a dual life, one inside that room and the other outside it. I think they were right; I am in Sydney today, because I was in that room few months back for a few seemingly, very, very inconsequential but highly effective in actuality years. I am in The International Film School of Sydney today because I was in Pune for the last 4 years. Otherwise, I pretty much can assure you that I would have been working at someplace like Infosys, typing nonetheless; Software Codes for people I know exist but I know I would never meet.
All I know now is that I was destined to type my life away. What I type now makes me one of the people who believe that destiny is what we do to life.
What I could’ve ended up typing would’ve given me a chance to be one of the many people who believe that destiny is what life does to us.
I woke up with a start, my eyes opened to a crimson red stream of light coming in through the slightly open curtains of my room. I unfurled the curtains and what was in front of me is easily the best sights I have ever seen. The sun was setting, through a couple of clouds, right at the end of the road right in front of my window. Though the sun was hidden behind the clouds, a bit of it managed to raise itself out from a li’l gap between the clouds, making everything in the immediate vicinity glow, like the ring from Peter Jackson’s famous movie. In one word, it was magnificent.
With my mouth wide open in awe of nature’s unbelievable spectacle, I scampered about the room trying to look for my camera, fiddling with my bags, falling over shoes which I never keep in the right place, struggling with almost every non-living entity in my small room. I finally found my camera in the most obvious place, which I had obviously failed to check, rushed to the window and switched the camera on, looked intently at the LCD only to realize that it was out of battery. Cursing myself for not being able to capture the moment, I turned back and looked at my watch which was showing 6:00 P.M. Mentally calculating the time in India, messing it up a couple of times I finally deduced that it would be 12:30 there.
“She would be in the bus” I thought. “Waiting at the bus stop, rather” I corrected the thought I had first thought of.
Getting into my white shirt and pair of blue jeans, haphazardly setting my hair (!!!) I ran down the staircase to see Natalie brushing Sac.
“That’s quite a smile… you seem to be very happy. Had your girlfriend called?” she asked me, brushing flies off Sac’s back, much to his discomfort.
“I don’t have a girlfriend, Natalie”, I told her, and still trying to figure out the reason why I was smiling, then trying to figure out why I was unable to understand that I was actually, smiling.
I then walked past a couple of shops along the road that links Dalmeny Avenue to Rosebery Avenue, enjoying the cool wind that swept across wildly, taking alongwith it, helpless leaves fallen off trees, by both the sides of the jet black-colored, clean and spotless road, a Chinese couple walking hand-in-hand on the other side of it, an old lady mowing the lawn in her tiny, but beautiful duplex, another man riding his silver-black bicycle, humming Justin Timberlake’s ‘What goes round, comes around’ and smiling every time he went out of tune.
This is one of the things which make Australia addictive. People love to live. Their lives are not always plagued with worries about small things, they aren’t always screaming, shouting at each other, everyone likes everyone unless someone gives you a reason to dislike them. Everything is warm. People go out of their way to make you comfortable, they smile, they sing, they laugh, they giggle, they dance. There are so many people, coming from different countries, different cultures and different religions. Everyone tries to blend in the melting pot of combined ethnicities, smiling at others, trying to say goodbye to a Spanish friend by saying adios, saying hi to me by saying a broken, but effectively sweet Namaste.
As I reached Rosebery Avenue after a brief 2 minutes walk from my place, it was almost dark, with very little sunlight left. After crossing number 23, my heartbeat started to rise, with 24, I could feel a slight thump in my chest, at 25 I closed my eyes, at 26 I stopped and took a deep breath, making sure I wasn’t looking ahead, my head purposefully down and then I took the 10 most scared steps in my life, a overabundance of thoughts taking over my brain in the next 60 seconds.
“What if it’s really small?”
“What if it isn’t good?”
“Why the f*** did I not see it before coming?”
“I should’ve seen it before leaving India”
“Oh shit, Oh shit, Oh shit”
“It’s too much of money at stake, it better be good”
At the 10th step I opened my eyes. Took another breath. Sighed, slightly and turned my neck to its left, at 27, Rosebery Avenue. The place that’s called ‘The International Film School of Sydney’ I couldn’t see much but the color and the rough shape of the building. It seemed purple, a few Japanese wooden boxes spaced around the patio of the not –so-huge building. A few obscure looking wooden bars, almost 9 ft. tall were erected all along the 20 feet cemented walkway to the entrance of the school. A huge, bended and old tree formed the natural archway to the building. I walked towards it, some bits of the insides of the school visible through the small glass entrance door. It was brightly lit, like a studio. A poster of Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City gracing the front wall of the lobby, whatever bit of it was visible from the outside.
I stood there, almost magnetized. I knew that I had taken the right decision. It wasn’t fancy, It wasn’t palatial. It just seemed so right. It just seemed so cinematic.
The thing about Cinema which makes it so appealing to me is that it’s not like people. When you love a film, the film loves you too. When you love people, they don’t always say they love you too. The best thing about life is not when you love someone with all your heart and they love you too. It’s when you just tell each other that you do. That’s the best thing. That’s life.
“What do we achieve by telling people that we love them?” you would ask.
Maybe nothing, but if you don’t tell them, you are bound to lose out on something.
I had fallen in love with The International Film School of Sydney at the first sight, in slight sunlight and a bit of moonlight. What I didn’t know then was, just in a matter of few days, It was going to love me too.
TO BE CONTINUED
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