The reason why some film enthusiast turn's into a " STORY TELLER " is the desire to tell his own story. I have gone a lot of metamorphosis in the past year by doing freelance works which I didn't even Imagined in my life I would do. It was a great mixture of Knowledge, Experience and humility. All these experiences can be reflected in the work of " Zinnia ". Here I am to share the first day experience and how we started from script to shoot off " Zinnia ". Before that better watch the Teaser to get Interest.
I woke up at 5 P.M, I promised my grand father that I would drop him to the station and I over slept. I felt a strange emotion of Guilt and love towards that incident with my Grand father because we rarely meet for years .within a few hours I got a thought of how would It be If I caused the same emotion to my audience with fiction and drama. I was against dramatization of the story, but something pushed me to do it. Thus it started, I wrote the screenplay in a week by doing proper homework on all basics of story structure, 3 act 's blah blah......., I have made a previous short film which is a science fiction . The response was mixed. It was criticized for confusing story and creepy Visual effects .at the same time praised for it . In fact it gave me a lot of opportunity's like directing a commercial .well that's another topic ( I even have a thought of writing a book how not to make a short film ) . I wanna get away with Epic quality and Super naturalness of my previous films . That's the reason why I choose this simple script and I decided not to invest any money and to just use perfectly the tools I have , It was just like an exercise of film making
I acquired enough knowledge on to make a neat film from story to Render . And stayed away from telling this idea to anybody by posts on fb and stuff because I wanna make it before publicizing it. Coming to the matter of what I have it's nothing but a computer with 2GB ram and a 512MB graphic card and skills to all Film making Departments ( except sound mixing ) . I gotta get all the equipment by favors . It started with Camera to Lens , Gear, Lights and even skill . I take this opportunity to thank all those who funded for the films
Canon 550d :- Rahul Raj
Canon 600d :- Sri Harsha Nagula
Canon 500d and Lens :- Sahith Chowdary
Steady Cam Rig :- Suresh Krishna
Lights , diffusers and Reflectors :- James Wilfred
The complete 80 % of picture has low light environment so we choose prime lens to shoot we took to return in a single day and used it for almost 5 days ( for which I faced pretty problems ) . It was about 4 A.M and we dint get the 550d so we thought we should cancel but It was Harsha's 600d which saved the day . The most common thing in short films is every one wanna act but they are never prepared for the hard consequences this film includes shooting from night 12 am to 3 am ( or even 5) and shooting in public places like bus, main roads and railways stations . It was all overcame by Kiran Varma and Rakesh . he was a last minute decision without any audition and stuff .I took him because I know him .well coming to my Cinematographer it's his first venture as short film , as he is an experienced still photographer in tollywood doing for films like Yevadu , SVSC etc...., so the team was done and with good pre- production . I opted a shot division list and followed exactly it was a great method I guess .
The shot list was a bit confusing the first day . I was confused to the order of shots, In a nutshell I Didn't follow much of the shot list ( But I learned to use it effectively from the 3'rd day ) . we were trying to get a night effect by lights and gels . that took almost 50 % of the time . and I realized what's the most hardest job of cinematography . we shot for 7 hours to get 1 and a half min of the film . and crew slept at 6 am while I was watching dailies . I did a bit fun by shooting them in awkward sleeping modes .and after watching my dailies I slept at 11 A.M. That's the Joy of Indie film making .
( DURING LOCATION SCOUT)
