Formation of Units & Documentary Shooting

We were twelve students in the class and were divided into four unit groups of three persons. When one person does the job of lighting and operating the camera , one of us will do the follow focusing and the other push the trolley or help with lighting etc. Our Unit consisted of myself , Ram Agarwal and Kasturi R Murthy. Also Filming units were formed with one student each from Direction, Photography, Editing & sound departments for making the Documentary and Diploma films.

We were to start our work in our Documentary films and my Director was Baba Majgavkar. Akki Hame Chander as Sound Recordist and M.A.Singh as Editor completed the crew.

With Baba (Right) and Agarwal ( L)


Baba looking thro viewfinder, Murthy standing beside Camera

The title of the Documentary was BHAJIWALA and was supposed to be a parable on the misadventures of a vegetable seller in a multilingual community in a humorous manner about our linguistic problems. It was shot on the exteriors of a housing colony and was enacted mostly by the Direction students themselves, K.G.George as the vegetable seller.

K.G.George

The shooting location was in the foot path outside a housing colony of flats and a small crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the proceedings. It gave an opportunity to Assistant Director Raina to bring out the megaphone and wield it to make himself the centre of attraction.

Raina with the Megaphone

The shooting was a really a fun experience with all characters speaking in their own language and finally the commotion ends in a big fight amongst themselves. It was not a choreographed one, but a free for all fight! I had to do a lot of hand held shots to film that sequence.

Me with the camera and Baba guiding me from behind

I am standing on the wall with support from Agarwal, Baba
looking on & Singh noting down.
K.G.George is sitting in the centre