All in the name of making a movie

They say a movie is supposed to have a good story line,A plot which would have drama,suspense,a few song and dance sequence (I'm Indian,Thats how we do it here) and may be a good message for the audience,But what we discovered is-There is more drama making a movie than the actual Movie.
I happen to have been so lucky to have worked in an amazing company in Bangalore.The company decided to open a competition to all its employees to make a corporate movie.The prize money 1 Lakh( I know,Do I sense a little J out there) and better still the company would have movie making workshops in Manipal County Resort.
So well,It all got organised,Employees who were participating in this competition had movie making workshops organised in batches at this place.Now our chance finally came.Let me intoduce you to the main characters of the story-Arjun,Vinod,Sujim, a lady coleague (Who Im not sure would like to be named),My twin sister Mischelle( who was the coordinator of this whole exercise) and me.We had other participants from other teams and the workshop facilitator and her friend-But this blog isnt about them.

Now the fun begins-We had long interactive workshops about directing,writing a script and all the things required for making the short 3 minute movie.One of the activities was doing a mime and hoping the other participants could guess what we were depicting, I think our team, Took dumb charades to the next level and did an enactment so unique I’m surprised everyone present didn’t throw our team out for making them laugh so much. Well our crazy team which was 5 members decided to do a still mime of the Phrase” Rising star, Eradicating darkness ”Now let me give you a small description on what we all look like.Vinod and Sujim are the tall guys,Arjun tall and thin,myself Petite is the best description, The other lady, thin and tall.

Well this is what we did, All the readers of this blog, Please make your imagination run wild and only then you will be able to visualize this.We had a chart paper which we used as a prop.The chart paper was rolled like a cone,That was supposed to be a torch. When the time came to do the mime, this is what we looked like. Imagine the lady sprawled on the floor, getting up in slow motion with the chart paper in her hand and passing the chart paper to Vinod who is crouched on his legs and then gets up like he is the statue of liberty (I know you are all wondering how come the statue of liberty is male-please feel free to post all your comments on this).I was adjacent to Vinod and Im holding my hand entangled together which I dramatically open up,Sujim is adjacent to me standing tall and Arjun is lying flat on the floor.His legs are touching Sujim’s feet(He was supposed to be Sujim’s shadow).Im sure all of you are confused so let me give you a step by step account of what was happening.The lady sprawled reaching out for the chart paper and passing to Vinod and Vinod rising slowly when he got the chart paper-supposedly the torch was denoting “Rising Star”.Me being adjacent to Vinod opening up my arms was supposed to be showing the effect of light setting U free,Sujim near me with Arjun at his feet were the most hilarious site,Cz as soon as I set my arms free,It was Arjun cue to roll away(He was the shadow which disappeared when the light came)-Their part denoted Eliminating darkness.

If you were able to visualize this,I am sure you are bursting out laughing,When we presented our mime,We had to do it 3 times and it got worse as we kept doing it,Cz by then the laughter had set in and even we as the presenters were cracking up.

At the end of that Saturday we were told to go back to our rooms and come up with the script for our movie.Now our group as crazy as we are decided well we have to come up with a whole script for the movie,But let us chill for some time before we start preparing.The guys decide to go for a swim and the rest of us were relaxing in our rooms.The lady who was in our team,My real sympathies for her bcz she was not as insane as the rest of us and she just happened to get assigned to our group.Any way after dinner all of us assemble in the guys room and decide its time we got serious and come up with a script.Its already 9 in the night by then and we still are joking around.Mischelle too tired with all the madness is lying on one of the beds looking at us make a fool our selves.The lady in one corner of the room wondering how come she got stuck with such people,Myself and the other 3 guys just relaxing and staring at the blank chart paper in front of us where we are supposed to pen our thoughts and come up with a script.Vinod and Arjun passing time sipping a drink(Vodka-Fuel to be precise) trying to come up with a name for our production house and a script. For some reason Arjun was lying on the ground wth his legs on the bed and it is exactly at that point inspiration set in for all of us.We came up with a beautiful script about our company and what it represented for every employee.I know you are wondering why I mentioned the position Arjun was lying in,But honestly there has to be some co-relation b/w him lying like that and the script of the movie, If he shifted position or lay straight or even got up, The whole group just stopped thinking. Poor Arjun I don’t think we let him go for a loo break also.By 1 the next day morning we had our script and we also had some wicked ideas on presenting our concept for the next day.

Sunday morning while the other teams were nervous and doing last minute preparation, Our team had now formed a name for the production house “FUEL” in recognition to the drink the guys were having and we came up with a tag line”IGNITING THE FIRE IN YOU”(Yeah ,all of you out there who had some naughty thoughts, good for you, My blog is meant exactly for that).Any way back to my blog on the movie making experience-Our team presented our movie story and we did it in total style.All major production houses have a mascot ,I think Tristar has the horse, Columbia has the lady holding a star.Well Fuel needed a mascot and for some reason I got nominated to be the mascot, Imagine when we introduce the Production house, I was supposedly the gal on a half moon in the clouds and then we introduce the name- FUEL-IGNITING THE FIRE IN YOU.Trust me after that moment,we were on a roll.That evening when we left the resort we had earned more than a movie making experience,We had earned much more than the hope of earning the prize of 1 Lakh.We had earned the ability to laugh at our selves and still feel happy about it.
Today 2 years later when I think of that experience- I have a naughty smile, a twinkle in my eye and priceless memories about a movie making experience