Sunday, November 14, 2010

BANGALORE LOVE STORY


Lets imagine the vast possibilities of ‘Bangalore Love Story’ as a 90 minute feature film. Love stories are compounded of all the tensions between the individual and society, between tradition and modernity, Money and detachment, body and soul and mind, good and evil, rich and poor, the new and the old, youth and age - and innocence and experience.
Bangalore has all this in the extreme. Because of the urgent Indian context it will be dramatically interesting – not only to people in Karnataka. Your place is packed with vivid, comic and tragic characters who are rich with entertainment skills and there are brilliant locations and situations. We must celebrate this in a movie. Basically, we look for a range of characters who personify the place. I’d love to see some pictures of Infinite Souls.

As a starter to our discussion, here’s a very basic plan to develop and make the movie.
(1) Audition and select actors through videoing their love stories.
(2) Organise an actors’ workshop including improvisations of scenes from the stories and then: script edit the scenes. 1 month ( 18 scenes of 5 minutes each)
(3) We video the selected scenes. ( 2 teams shooting – 9 days each)
(4) We edit (will takes several months) and exhibit the movie.

Orange Love Story took well over a year from (1) to (4). We can do it in less time - and make a better movie. But I think it will take at least six months to complete. For my involvement, I could come for up to three months. This probably means you do the auditions and select the actors and their stories. I would be there for the actors workshop where we script edit an overall structure from the improvised scenes. I reckon this needs at least a month. And I can be there during the shoot. Then we would do the edit both in Bangalore and Sydney using internet to improve the cut. We would need to be practical in planning. There may be ways you can think of to speed the process up.

In any case, the most important contribution I can make is to encourage an irreverent devil-may-care approach in the acting and (I mean) a non-arty, non-lugubrious treatment with jokes, tricks and low-life humour as in Shakespeare – as well as heart wrenching longing. Possibly it could verge on the surreal. With songs, dance, funny business and hopefully animation.
After we talk, we can look at a more detailed plan and I can add ideas based on my experience.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting idea, Tom. I wonder how it will cross over culturally since you are the last person who would be wanting to use Bangalore as fodder. Do they tell love stories there, publicly, what is the etiquette?

    Are arranged marriages still the rule? Are there arranged loves as well?

    You are inevitably the anthropologist as well as the story teller. Margaret Mead projected her fantasies onto the Manus Islanders probably without knowing she was doing so and fell from grace many years later as a result.

    Love that you are doing this blog by the way and starting such interesting discussions. Mike Rubbo

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    1. Hard questions. Will it cross-over culturally? How much of any movie crosses over to another country culturally? Can an Australian movie cross-over to Indian audiences culturally? How much of Indian movie (even ones set in Australia) crosses-over to Australian audiences? So far not much at all. Will Bangalore Love Story cross-over? I don't know. My guess is that it will be seen as an interesting cross-cultural art movie. Oddly, it may be better received in India if English is the Language and better received outside India if the language is 'Indian'. OK, that is a don't know answer to your first issue. Second issue: Actually I don't think I'm the last person to use Bangalore as fodder given I first worked on a film there in 1969. But 'fodder may be pegorative. Fodder might be any picture I take. The method of Local Emotion Pictures means that the people making the film with their own stories are co-conspirators in creating the movie.
      The other anthropological issues are better debated by others. I probably would add my fantasies along with the fantasies of the actors and others making the movie. At least I hope imagination is prominent in the story.

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