I am currently in possession of a video that I desperately want to release but can’t until February 4th. It’s a video for UCSD’s Indian dance team, ZOR that will premiere at their first dance competition.
My involvement in this video began the week before finals in fall quarter. Out of the blue, a girl named Sita contacted me knowing I had experience making videos. She wanted to see if I was interested in making this video for them that would be shown before every one of their competitions. It would tell a story leading to their well choreograph dance performance. Part of me wanted to just reject her so I could focus on finals and enjoy winter break. But as a TTV producer I knew it would be morally wrong to not help someone with their video related needs. And honestly this project really caught my attention. I love making videos with interesting plots where I get to work with actors. So I agreed to meet her at our studio the next day. Funny tangent- I didn’t know that ‘Sita’ was a girl’s name when she first messaged me and she came to studio with the lead male actor of the video. I shook his hand and said ‘you must be Sita’. Embarrassing mistake.- During the meeting she explained the plot of the video for me. She wanted to showcase a man’s life in San Diego, his relationships with others, and his involvement in his dance team. Right of the back, I imagined what the video would look like and we started planning each scene. It was fun because what I love to do most is create content which I was given the ability to do in this video along with directing it.
Over Winter break, me and Sita finalized the script and started planning out the shoot. I insisted on doing all in one day because it would be hard to get people together after classes started. The shoot was planned for the Sunday before Winter quarter started. My next task was to assemble a team. Victor has been my DP for my previous personal projects and I’ve always felt really comfortable working with him so he was an obvious choice. I also needed another person to be my assistant director which I offered to Raman. I literally ran into to Raman after my first meeting with Sita and told him about the project and he expressed interest (and him being Indian was the selling point, since we were working with ZOR).
We started the shoot at 10AM. I planned out every location of the shoot and projected we would be finished by 6PM. I was very wrong. Throughout the day, Victor worked the camera, Raman did sound and lights, and I spent most of my time yelling at a large group of Indian actors. We shot in front of Geisel, at Scripps, in downtown SD, took a lunch break, shot in residential neighborhood as quickly as we could before sunset, inside someone’s apartment, and finally at the price center ballroom. Oh and then we recorded audio back at the studio while skipping dinner because food was not my priority that day. But at around 10PM, we finished and I hugged everyone around me because of the relief I felt at that moment. I truly appreciate my crew for sticking with me throughout that exhausting day.
I began editing the piece the next day because I was really excited to look at the project. By the end of the day I had all the video cut but unfortunately it was about 3 and half minutes. I told Sita about this and she said the video needs to be less than 2 minutes. Later that week, she came over to my apartment so we could decide what to cut. Honestly I felt like I dismantling my newborn child, but it needed to be done. Throughout the next week, Sita gave me the music to put in the video. (I never heard so much Bollywood in my life). And after many draft of slightly altering clips, changing musical transitions, and adding subtitles, the video is finally finished. And to ease my anxiety to prematurely release it I wrote this blog instead.
-Joseph
