Tuesday, June 21, 2005

The Making of ABCD

Ance Sitco Presents.... (All three screens in black..text in white, a red underline is there of course)

A Girish-Harish Film

ABCD (America Bound Confused Desis)

Feels good to read these lines aint it....
Actually this was the motivation to make ABCD...to see that screen "A Girish-Harish Film"....

But these kinda crazy motivations are infact very important in life...its been an amazin experience making ABCD..donno how it will shape up as a watching experience..feedback from viewers so far have been thankfully good..
Ok..no more crappin...straight to the making of ABCD...

Makki has to be thanked eternally for providing the spark in bangalore to Girish when the last thing Giri was supp to do was thinkin of scripts for a film(He was there for an IIM intvw)....but strange situations have significant outcomes.....
Then, that spark was harnessed into something that vaguely resembled a script...Of course we preferred to call anything that had dialogues and scene descriptions running over 10 pages a script....
These, I must tell u happened in the last week of April...we have to thank GMail for providing us the mechanism to do reviews of scripts from our locations...me in hyd and Giri in Chn,...
Ofcourse half, infact most of the scenes were conceived over the phone...so god bless BSNL too....
Then....
As always we went idle for a fortnight....for no particular reason,,,thats why I said "as always"....
Giri's vacation, my release formalities, laziness, lack of equipment and other lame excuses.....
But ok...we somehow regained our senses and Giri with Prasanna,RR and Sriram (The average age of these three should be 17!!!).... we started shooting ABCD... (How valuable these 3 young fellas were, words cant describe....)
Oh yes the cast was decided sometime before that...

Till june 4 we dint have much to show as progress in the movie...but then suddenly after I finally reached chennai....Thanks to divine intervention,. we managed to muster enthu and to shrug off our laziness....Yes, June 5-Jun 18 were thirteen days of frenetic activity for the crew and cast of ABCD....
We shot at Fruit Shop on Greams Road with Swetha..
At Somasundaram Ground Road,T.Nagar (Barath,Anurag,Prasanna)
At Sapthagiri Roadside Restaurant,T.Nagar(Raama,Vasanth)
At K.V.Colony West Mambalam(Mrs Mohanaa )
At A temple in T.Nagar...(Vasanth)
And some more shots indoors....(suraj, His mom)
And shooting was wound up on 15th Jun...

the next three days were as much a learning experience as three days can manage to pack for u....
somehow these novices turned editors and sound engineers..God bless the viewers....

but all in all we were happy to learn by doing...and that in itself is for us..a victory...

6.18 am on June 18 ....ABCD.avi was ready.....

June 18 and June 19, ABCD was screened at friends' and relatives' houses....and we must say they liked what they saw....

June 19 evening ABCD Cds were burnt....to be circulated to our outside chennai well wishers...

June 20...Girish Boarded Nav Jeevan express...a contented co-director of ABCD......

To those who see ABCD after this..please pass on ur feedback to us.....we appreciate it lots....

God is great...as always....

12 comments:

ranga said...

An amazing experience..wud have loved to be a part of it.....anyway great to see u guys follow ur dreams...wherever they take u ....

Sumant said...

j,sumant here..woah u guys shot a movie or what.?Get the cd here when you come over to bangalore.I need a copy.

Jay said...

hey sumant,chetana...sure to pass a copy on to u once in bang...we need all of ur feedback....
and thanks for the wishes guys...

Girish said...

Vandhu Sendhaachu....
Wil write a long blog about the last 3-4 days in Chennai and first 2 days here in Vastrapur.
Happening is the word.

Vaazhve Thavam.

ps:: Mobile connections are hell expensive here.. naanum evvolovo scene potu paakkaren.. politics panni saavadikkaraanga.. wil mail across the number wen i do get one..

Cheers.

Girish said...

And for the ignorant readers, ABCD was initially christened DOllar Dreams, but there supposedly is another movie by that name, so it was changed then to Value(s) for money, which was also later changed thanks to private demand, with the third title being "DeSi", which was thought to be too unpsycho, which meant that DeSi morphed into "Dei..See". This too, was met with widespread opposition, and finally J was the one who hit on ABCD. One phone call, and he said 'dei.. padam peru kadachaachu.. ABCD.. america BOUND confused DeSis."
avvlodhaan..
apparently, there is another movie by the same name (ABCD) playin in chennai theatres now, but whats in a name....

:-)

maheshbalaji said...

real sad that i cudn't be 'there' when it all happnd! :( though Giri was givin me a daily report on the proceedings and i was doing a 2hr chk on the marathon nite of editing, was damn sad i wasn't there for even a bit of it all! various reasons cud be sighted but wudn't suffice....

but i know there is going to be more in the future, and i see myself beinh there in the thick of things! ;)

RamV said...

dei ,,, J. All the best at IIM da. heard ur gonna be there soon. have fun.

and this looks like a cool great venture. if u can rip the avi to an mpeg, can you put it on YouSendIt or putfile or someplace where us faraway ppl can view it.

Jay said...

Ram thanks da...
Yeah in a week or so me or giri will put up the movie in the net somewhere....post the feedback after u guys see it..
and makki did u see it...u have the cd dude...

Random Access said...

haha, nice guys...wud love to have a glimpse of it. Why dont u put it as a webcast? Cmon, J, u were into some sorta IT job rite?

Random Access
The search has just begun !!!

PreethZzZ The Original said...

WOW! awesome... heard of it but neva seen it.. Great to see ur able to follow ur dreams...

Vasanth said...

JJJJJ ..... never have visited your spot...dont know why....

well have no words for the experience that i got being the part of ABCD... you guys made me feel worth for my ground work done during school....

A proud extrovert...

Hope said...

hey guys, i am terribly to write this so late, but naan ippo dhaan blogs laam "read" read panna aarambichirkken. by the way, i loved watching the movie "ABCD". i am not sure i know hariesh, but congrats hariesh. you guys did a really amateur, yet non-amateur movie...fun to watch, and may i say i have the honour of being one of the first few to watch it....thanks to girish for that. kudos to you guys! tata, take care..