Making news

My husband (Navin Kabra) was in the news lately... Trust me, there's a reason why this is on wogma. Watch this -

Scroll down just a bit...













Well, this is on wogma because I co-wrote the dialogues and was hovering around, poking my nose while this film was being made - from concept to post-production. Yep, for those who haven't guessed it yet, this video was an elaborate April fool's day prank played on the readers of Navin's site, punetech.com and the truth was disclosed on April 2nd.

Let's back up a bit. So, PuneTech is a site where all information about interesting software technology in Pune is brought together. Navin came up with this concept of creating an April Fool viral with a news item in which PuneTech is featured.

Actually I wasn't too keen on being involved because of the highly slapsticky nature of the product. But then, when else would I get too see the film-making process from start to finish? Of course, I was aware that this film that was to be made for the web medium would be fairly simple and an actual film, even a short, would be at least 100% more complicated.

Even so, I gave in to the temptation of being involved with the making of a film. Surprise! Surprise!! As I started writing the dialogues, I began enjoying the fact that it was slapsticky because it was going to be heavily sarcastic about media and its tendency to exaggerate any news item. The most fun bit was to border believability and be such that a keen observer would catch.

I could write almost anything, translate it into flowery Hindi and tada! my job was done. Any mistake and I could say, that's how some news items are presented! Oops! Did I leave the cat out of the bag?

Needless to say, I absolutely enjoyed every bit of the process. From auditioning to a little bit of production management that it needed to watching the editor at work. Everything as fascinating as I had imagined it to be.

Ultimately it was a friends and family film. A-part-of-my-heart friends Nitin and Shreyas took care of the core departments. Amongst many other ad films, Nitin has been assistant director in the Pune unit of A Mighty Heart and more recently some of theAirtel ads. Shreyas enthusiastically signed up as co-writer, director of photography, editor and anyone else the film needed. My favorite ad film from the work he's done so far is the Pathan brothers' Tata Indicom ad.

Neighbors, relatives and friends pitched in as actors. Parents provided location, everything needed to make everyone from light-dada to star-actor comfortable and a regular supply of caffeine and tannin products. I'm convinced all film-making is a lot of fun - not only intellectually but literally too. But, here's how we shared what fun we had.