Sublimity…

Today started like any other Friday I’ve had so far here. My alarm clock (mobil phone) went off at 7:35am, but I lounged in bed until Teeka came and told me breakfast was ready (around 7:45). I quickly scarfed down the wonderful hot, fresh parathas (I’m really getting used to them for breakfast, and quite liking them – I’m considering trying to make them back in Canada when I return) and then ran off to school for my 8:20 class. I arrived around 8:25, but my teacher didn’t show up until 8:30 so I was fine (class times are flexible here, the 8:20 class – the first of the day – always starts around 8:30, and even the others start only after the teachers get their 5-10 minute (unscheduled) break between classes). Sitting on the front steps of the school (and old stone church) in the wonderfully warm morning sunshine was great, and I worked on chapter 21, learning about the Hindi practice of combining two sentences together into one (it seems really strange to me becuase we have absoutely nothing like it in English). The end of the class however not only marked the end of the first period, but the end of the routine nature of my day.

Instead of the normal lounging around the front of the church during break time, all the teachers had gathered in the far back corner, and were peering over the railing down the slope to the street below while chatting somewhat excitedly to eachother in Hindi. Curious, I went over to see what the fuss was. On the road below, a huge silver reflective sheet had been stretched across a metal frame and stood blocking the road. In front of it and off to the side, a large group of people stood clustered around a TV camera which was pointed up the road, focused on a lone (pretty) woman dressed in fancy clothes who was standing impatiently on an X that had been taped onto the ground. One of the teachers explained to me that this group was shooting for a TV series, adding that while it wasn’t a regular event here in Landour (hence the interest/excitement), neither was it an extremely rare event as film crews drop by the area a couple of times a year to shoot in the picturesque, quite Landour. For me though, it seemed pretty cool, especially since I had spent a fair bit of time recently thinking/writing about Bollywood, and now all of a sudden a piece of it was right here in front of me.

We spent our ten minute break watching the action, apparently they were filming a scene in which the girl is mad at her lover, and despite his calls out to her, she walks away from him up the road. The scene/shot was only about 30 seconds long, but it took them the full ten minutes to do it as there were several takes, and in between each was a substantial lag while the moved things around (camera and/or lights/reflectors), reviewed the previous take and discussed how to change/improve it. I know the amount of work that goes into filming things (I’ve heard stories, and now with my brother studying film at Simon Fraser, I get to hear about it first hand) but it was still pretty amazing to realize just how much time goes into shooting every scene – especially if it’s for TV and thus have to produce a lot more content in a short while. After the ten minutes were up, people started to wander back towards class, so I too left to go find my teacher, though I was still somewhat curious and part of me wanted to stay and watch the filming. However, when I came out to the front of the church to get my books for class, I came across and Indian guy talking with one of the other foreign students. As I listened, I quickly figured out that the Indian guy was from the film set, and had come up to the school to recruit a foreigner to be an extra (busking musician and I heard guitar) in the filming that day. The student he was talking with seemed somewhat hesitant, and when he saw me, said “I’m sure you could do it Shane, want to go be an extra in their film?” The Indian guy turned to look at me, and quickly said something along the lines of “sure, you’ll be fine, it’ll only be an hour or so”, but I was too busy thinking/being excited to really process what he said. It took only a split second to decide what to do, so I quickly told the guy that I’d love to help him out and be in the show. He smiled and told me to follow him down to the set where we’d figure things out. It was that simple – suddenly I was going to be in a TV show!

The guy led me down to the set, told someone else (personnel manager or something) that I was going to be their extra, and then led me to a chair off to the side. I sat there for awhile just watching the action as they tried to film the next shot. Standing next to me with an air of importance was a glamourous looking guy dressed up in fancy designer clothes. If figured he must be one of the big actors in the show, so I asked him “So you’re the big star here?”, to which he smiled slyly, and grunted agreement in a manner that implied “and don’t you know it”, but refused to say anything else to me. Apparently he (thought he) was too good for me, and even my white skin and role as a fellow actor (although an extra) didn’t give me enough status for him to warrant any attention to me. So the attitudes of hot-shot actors are pretty universal, I wasn’t really surprised, but was disappointed. He never gave me his name, so I took to thinking of him simply as “Hotshot”, and wandered off to investigate the filming operation. I quickly picked out the other actors (one more male and the female on the road) as well as the director. There was only one camera, so every different angle was a seperate shot, and meant the reflectors (of with there was the main ig silver sheet, but alsom many other silver panels) had to be adjusted and the camera moved – quite a long process. I just wandered around trying to keep out of the way, just taking it all in. I ran into a ‘big’ guy dressed in an orange, Hawaiian-like shirt, who looked important and turned out to be the cameraman for the jimmy-jig rig (camera attached to the end of a long boom), and was much friendlier than the actor. He told me they were filming for a TV drama-series called “Carbon Copy” which is to be shown on Star 1 (one of the biggest Indian satellite channels) sometime in January.

In volunteering to be an extra, I had made the decision that it was OK to miss some of my Hindi lessons (I still had 3 more in sucession that day as I was doing my normal three plus one make-up lesson), but it had become apparent that I wasn’t actually going to be on the set (in my role) for at least a little while longer, so I went to find the personnel guy to try to figure out what the deal was. If I wasn’t going to be needed right away, I figured I could go back and do at least some of my lessons, and I also wanted to run back to my house to grab my camera so I could document some of this. When I finally caught up with him, he said I wasn’t going to be on for awhile (my impression is that in the film business, no one knows when things are going to happen, especially not in Indian film) and he said I could go as long as I was back in 15 minutes. My first priority was the experience (and documenting it) so I went to get my camera first, which ended up taking all my 15 minutes (it’s normally a 10 minute walk to school, so even running both ways, it takes time) so by the time I got back there was no time for Hindi. I was a little disappointed as I was enjoying my lessons and wanted to try to finish the chapter I was working on, but I wasn’t going to pass up a (fairly) unique opportunity like this just for the sake of learning a bit of Hindi that I could just as easily do on Monday. Here in India, sometimes exciting opportunities (like this one) just open up for you, and I’ve learned not to pass them by, they’re chances you won’t get again, and I’m here to learn/experience as much as I can.

Within minutes of me returning to the set, they finished the scene and so began the process of dismantling everything, packing it up and moving it all down the road to the little square in front of Char Dukan (just as it sounds – a little cluster of four stores) just 300m down the road. The personnel manager found me and told me that this was my scene coming up at Char Dukan, and so he grabbed the nearest boy and told him to take me down there immeadiately. It took me only a few minutes to get there, and upon arrival I was shown to one of the benches in the square and told to wait there. Everyone (and everything) else slowly trickled down, and it was a good half an hour before everything was moved down. It took another further hour to get all the equipment assembled and in place, and while there was a short break for breakfast of parathas (of which I was given a few), most of the crew was working (or at least appeared to be) for most of the time, there was just a lot of stuff to do. However, I hadn’t been given any instructions, and with the exception of the guy who brought be the parathas, I was ignored by everyone and left to sit on my bench and just watch all the activity around me – which I was happy to do. The three actors showed up not long after me and set up camp in another part of the square – near where I was but also clearly seperate – but other than them and the string of waiters/make-up artists they called to attend them, the square was empty – with one interesting exception. That was an old local woman dressed in a plain old sari who was seated on the raised garden edge (right in front of the actors) methodically plucking the leaves off some herbs, likely in preparation for her next meal. Seeing the contrast between her and the actors right behind her was really neat, and another perfect example of how everything in India is all mushed together, often making two extremes end up right next to eachother.

The major project that the crew was working on was setting up the jimmy-jig, and so I wandered over there to see what it was all about. It was quite the operation, they had set up some tracks rasied up off the sloping ground so they were level, and on that rode a cart that supported the huge camera arm (which was around 7m long). The cart rolled on the tracks, and the arm moved and swiveled on the cart, allowing the camera to move in all three directions, and smoothly glide around. Once they had it all set up, they stuck it out into the square and began doing some practice runs to determine how the camera should move in the scene. With some many possibly movement options, it took a long time for them to decide what to do. Due to the way the scene was to be shoot, they camera was positioned just overhead of the place where the actors were sitting, so during the practice runs it was constantly swooping around their heads, but like everything else, they paid it no attention. I thought about going over to try to talk to them (I was curious as to what they would say, and what their stories were), but they seemed completely engaged in their own conversation and didn’t even pause long enough for me to have a good opportunity to wander over and introduce myself. I guess I was a little shy of introducing myself to TV stars (though I didn’t think they were really big names) – I kept waiting for my chance, but it never came. I wasn’t too disappointed though, and told myself that if they were going to be that stuck up and unfriendly, I wouldn’t really have wanted to talk to them anyway.

Eventually the personnel guy came over to me and told me it was time to get into place. He told me to go sit on a bench across the square, and once I was there, he brought out my instrument. To my surprise (and initial horror) it was not a guitar as I had heard mentioned, but a violin! It took me a second to process, they wanted me – someone who had never picked up, let alone played a violin – to appear on TV playing one?!? I’m not very good at guitar, but I’ve played it before and figured I could do it well enough for the background of a TV show, but violin was a differnt story. However, I was already committed, and they had never asked me about my musical ability, so I figured that they were confident I would do it well enough. The personnel guy then explained to me that I just had to make the actions of playing the violin – basically the sterotypical violin under the chin while moving the bow back and forth across the strings – and not actually play it. That made me feel a little better, and when I took the violin and tried it once for the guy, he seemed happy enough and just told me to do it a few times for practice. I quickly realized the thing was broken, as no matter what I did, I couldn’t make any sound – which was likely a good thing in the end. It did help as I didn’t have to worry about making squeeks or anything, I just had to keep moving the bow and trying to move my fingers occasionally which was enough of a challenge. They will add violin music afterwards in the editing process, and I’m sure that anyone who knows anything about violin will cringe when they see the way I was playing compared to what it will sound like, but that’s good old low-budget TV drama – as long as you can fake it even half convincingly, it’s good enough!

After a few practices and some more looking around, the director wandered over to where I was sitting and introduced himself. His name was Pavan, and seemed like a really nice guy who didn’t take himself too seriously. He told me he had done a few other small TV projects and worked on a few movies (nothing huge), and though he was based in Bollywood and was a part of the scene there, he was a minor fish in that pond. He asked about what I was doing in India, and from there we just chatted for a few minutes about my life and his experience in the film business. It was the first real decent conversation I had with anyone from the set, and I really appreciated it. However, he had other things to do so it wasn’t long before he had to run off, but not before giving me my instructions (very simple). It was nice to find out that at least some people in Bollywood are somewhat honest and humble…

Soon after, Pavan gave the call for everyone to get into position. The scene was taking place in the square, so everyone cleared out of it (even the actors moved their little camp – though they had their bearers do it, goes to show who really is king on the set). The basic idea of the scene was that while I was sitting on a bench in the background playing music, the girl was sitting on another bench listening to me. The third actor (not Bigshot) walks in and greets her, and then they sit cuddling for awhile listening to me. Eventually the guy gets up and comes over to me and asks if he can try playing for awhile, to which I agree. There’s a final short shot of him playing (with me watching/listening), and then the scene is over. All in all, about one minute running time – but it took a lot longer than that to film.

To liven the scene up, they called in a few locals from the crowd of onlookers (which was quite large) and sat them on benches around me and told them to talk amongst themselves or listen to me. Then (what really got me) was they handed every one of these conscripted extras either a cold drink or a bag of chips and told them to help themselves. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be a kind of mini payment for their services, or if it was instead supposed to create a cultural message for the viewers (or both), but the locals loved it, free ‘cool’snacks and the chance to be on TV at the same time! It almost backfired on the film crew because the locals spent most of the time oogling (covertly) at the actors, giggling in groups about being on TV and overly enjoying the free snacks – basically stuff that would never ordinarily happen. It made me realize how hard it is to make things seem natural on a set, something that everyone strives for, but is so impossible to do convincingly in a constructed, posed environment. Just being natural is about the hardest thing you can do, especially when you have to do it take after take…

Eventually they started shooting, and everything seemed to go well (to me), but they guy’s entrance shot took about 10 takes to get one they were happy with, and so took about half an hour as they had to reset everything (especially the camera rig, which was doing some fancy flying around for the opening). I was in the background playing away during the takes, and just sitting around during the breaks. It was neat watching it all from on the set, but since I was holding the violin up with my chin, I couldn’t look around at all during the takes so I never really got to see what was happening, or really see that I was on camera.

The next scene was the fun one though, as the guy got up and came right over to me so it was just me and him in the frame. I was up close on TV, but again didn’t really get to see it and was too preoccupied with trying to move both the bow and my fingers (both properly which seemed more important now that it was a realtive close-up). Again we had to do a whole bunch of takes, but the end of the shot had the guy sitting on the bench next to me, so I finally got the chance to talk to at least one of the actors. He didn’t come over before the shot, so the first time I really saw him was during the take, and we did out little interaction without any previous contact. However, after the first take, he introduced himself as Karul, and from then on during all the breaks between takes, we would sit and chat. Although he had stayed aloof with the other actors all morning, once we had a reason/need to interact he seemed quite friendly. The conversation was again typical (what our respective backgorunds were – his acting carrer had started only a year or so back when he had won a minor prize in a big fashion show, and since then he had done some minor roles, mostly in TV) but interesting. He gave me a bit more information about the show (his character apparently runs around murdering people part time, and the rest of the time tries to sweetly win the heart of the lady, but Bigshot’s character is also involved with her, killing and a love triangle – typical bad Bollywood) and also answered my questions about the movie business. Karul told me that while there were parts of being an actor that he enjoyed, it wasn’t something that he saw himself doing long term, and in the end wanted to go do business or law. He did seem a little annoyed with actual shooting, and complained a lot about how many takes they were doing. He said that using the jimmy-jig camera rig was a big part of the problem, and that whenever they used it they had to do many more takes, and often times in the end decided not to use it and so had to shoot the whole scene again with a stationary camera from several angles (which happened in our case eventually). The other major thing I picked up from him was proper violin playing position, as the first time he took it from me and started “playing”, I instantly knew I had been doing it slightly wrong. Turned out he couldn’t play violin either, but his character did in the show occasionally, and so he had quickly learned how to properly fake it. I followed his style in all the remaining scenes and it felt better, but it did seem a little like cheating to switch styles in the middle of a scene… I’ve got to let my standards slide a bit, no one corrected me before so it must not have been too bad, and I certainily wasn’t going to ask them to do the first shot again just so I could fake violin playing a little better…

During one of the breaks between shots about halfway through the scene, I noticed that Jesse had finally arrived. I had told him to go to the school to meet me and had also given directions to the house, but I hadn’t planned on being in the show so I was a little concerned he would have a hard time finding me, but there wasn’t anything I could do, and since Landour is such a small place, I figured he’d find me eventually one way or another. We chatted for a bit (turns out he’d just seen me in the square on the way by) but he was pretty winded from the climb up to Landour (with all his stuff for the weekend) and I had to go back to filming so we couldn’t say too much. The personnel guy quickly figured out he was my friend and so came over and offered him a chair on the side from which he could comfortably watch the event, and recover from the hike. However, after a few more takes, the director decided that he wanted more foreigners in the scene, so Jesse and a couple of other students from the school (who were watching from the side) got drafted to sit around wwith me and watch Karul play. Again, the fact that they suddenly appeared half-way through the scene bothered me, but apparently not anyone else. After a few takes, the director decided that he wanted a shot looking past Karul playing right at Jesse watching him, so Jesse also got a “cameo” apparence.

After only two takes of Jesse’s mini-cameo, the director announced that the scene was done, which meant that we were also done. The director came over and gave a quick, firm handshake and thanked me for being in his show, but then quickly hurried off to attend to something else. Karul gave me a smile and wished me luck before he headed back to join the other two actors in their mini-pavilion, and everyone else just dissappeared. So just like that it was all over, and Jesse and I picked up our bags and started off on our way to my house. Just outside the square we ran into a bunch of the teachers and students from the school, and I got a few comments about becoming a Bollywood superstar etc. The a bunch of the teachers asked if we had been paid and said that we should be, suggesting that I should go back and ask for about Rs. 500. However, money had never come up in my discussions with anyone on the set, and to me, the opportunity to be on film and intamately see how a film operation worked seemed a fair trade for only two and a half hours of my time.

So that was my one minute of fame, I’m hoping to be able to catch the show when it comes in January to see myself on TV, but also to see just what it was that I was a part of (I never really got a good sense of what the show was like). As for becoming a Bollywood star, the chances of that are super slim, and even if by some miracle it did work out, I don’t think it’s something I’d want to do on a long-term basis, though I wouldn’t rule out another short stint, and who knows what could happen from there. And I do have a chance at the miracle, the director and I exchanged email addresses when we talked before my scene, so if I ever want to take another crack at acting, I’ve got an ‘in’ in Bollywood (if he actually responds)! And in a country where connections are everything, it’s not entirely insignificant…

In writing up the end of this entry, I thought about writing to the director to thank him for the chance to be a part of his show, and also to see if he actually would respond to me (I’m kinda curious now). However, I can’t seem to find the paper he gave me, and I’ve looked around pretty hard. The more I think about it, the more I get the suspicion that it was still in my shirt pocket when I gave it to Teeka to wash yesterday afternoon. I’ve got the laundry back and it’s not there now, so I think my one connection in Bollywood just got literally dumped out in the wash. But the director still has my address, so who knows what might happen – espically in this crazy country of India where amazing opportunities have a habit of somehow falling into your lap. I’ll have to wait and see…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 8:35 pm and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.