The 48 Hours Experience @ Ahmedabad Film Project - Part 1

Team VGA captures Ahmedabad…

Sep 28

So, it was only a few days back, before the exams, when I told Harshil, “Let’s participate in AFP!”

And there I was, in the campus of Prakash School, Bodakdev, filling the Participation Form, had to choose the genre ‘Melodrama’. Now, this was a bit different than the usual conceptual drama films that VGA had made. Ocassionally, I looked around at the crowd that was present, most of them, unlike me, were regular film-makers, those from Surat, etc. had come with all their equipments.

Crowd at AFP Registration on 28th Sep 2012

 The Opening Ceremony in the Auditorium started, with some of the insights into the AFP 2011, the winning entry of the last year ‘The Mystery Painter’ by Pravin Mishra, followed by AFP 2012 Trailer, which I found mind-blowing. Shoojit Sircar, the Director of Vicky Donor, came upon the stage to announce the theme…It was like the Formula One race was going to start, he waved the chequered flag and the theme was: ‘Ingredients of good living’

Shoojit Sircar, Director, Vicky Donor, opening the AFP

We rushed out from the Audi, met a good friend Hir Kumar (Hiren Patel), an alumnus of City Pulse Institute of Film and Television (CPIFT), Gandhinagar. We wished each other good luck and I sped off to my home @ Motera with Nikhil Tanna and Vedant Bhatti. All the way long, on the 132’ Ring Road, they came up with suggestions like a college guy doing this, but not satisfied, etc etc etc. After having a quick breakfast at home, we went to Harshil’s home, finally to brainstorm for the script.

We all discussed the script and the locations to shoot for the next day till late night 3:30 AM (I usually sleep at 10 and wake up at 6). I was very exhausted as I had forgotten my asthma inhaler, back at my home.

Sep 29

It was 6:30 AM in the morning. Everyone was sleeping like a log, and here I was sipping my morning tea, writing the script and screenplay. At 11 AM, I completed it, printed it, and along with Harpal, reached Sabarmati Riverfront. We had to wait almost 45 min for Viral, the lead actor to come.

Sabarmati Riverfront

'Mahurat' of Jivi Jano (Live your life)

Analysing...!!!

 We completed the shooting, and went to the Handi Restaurant at Subhash Bridge Circle.

After having recharged our bellies and our handycam, we came out and climbed the stairs to the terrace of the building and recorded a time-lapse shot of the Subhash Bridge Circle.

Time-lapse shot on top of Handi Restaurant @ Subhash Bridge Circle

Then we split up our teams, one to Kankaria, another to Himmatlal Park.

At Kankaria, a lot of beautiful shots were taken, the crane bird, the train, the lake, etc. At the time of shooting, we didn’t know how exactly the shots would be used in the film.

The return from Kankaria to Ashram Road via Jamalpur was an exhausting journey, thanks to Ganpati Visarjan Yatras, all over the way. We lost our way several times, fell apart from Viral/Sagar, finally reached Motera, finished some scenes there, and the editors then went to Harshil’s home to edit the footage shot till then.

The Part 2 of the AFP experience will be soon posted by Nikhil Tanna, it would describe the thrill of editing to submission, just on time!!!

- Chintan Varma