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.