wish u were here....

its a lovely song...by incubus

The big cheel(goa)

Madhavi is a very good friend of mine and its funny that she actually started of as a client and in the process of finishing her work...we became pretty good friends...we hang out a lot whenever she works at Pixion....so it was among these great moments of doing time pass at pixion together that she told me about the big chill goa. I wrote it off at that point thinking its some money making gig with some faltu international artists as usual....Around this time an incident which devastated me happened...somebody deleted all my music from the pc next to my Flame!!i had not backed it up and couldn't believe that i had lost 2 years of music...downloaded...borrowed..begged and it had all gone in the blink of an eye....i was disturbed, depressed and disappointed and kicking myself for not backing up my music....so my line producer also was in the room and since he likes to hang with me while we work together, decided to connect his mac to a plug point in my room and generally stay there cause his work was going on in my room...i was depressed...i didn't have any of my music...and one does need music while working.....it just doesn't feel right....so i tell jhamb to try internet radio...i don't remember how we came to that..but we just went to shoutcast.com and started clicking on the playlists which seemed to be our kinda music....we clicked on “chronic aggression” first ....wah...wah..maja aagaya....pure aggression flowing through the Internet, served right in your room....this seemed to be a good idea to us....so we went on clicking and out of the blue i clicked on an ambient chill playlist...and we used to just keep it playing in the background when we weren't in the aggressive mode....one fine day jhamb downloaded a stream ripper and started ripping of the channels...so now we had some very good music in continuous DJ sets to listen to when ever we wanted.....the quality is strictly preview quality mp3s but what the hell.....

jhamb used to leave the application on so that it would rip in the background and it used to make organized folders of individual channels and sometimes with proper split files with artist names and album names....one such artist who caught my ear was jon hopkins......now u can Google him and find all sorts of info about him but what I'd like to say is that his music is soothing....touching...emotional...inspirational....positive....loving....nostalgic......and if u still don't get it...its very very nice music....

i went over to his website to learn more about him and there i read in the news section that he's coming to india to play at Big Chill!!i freak out at this and cant believe my eyes....i get startled...back off the computer screen....half in fear and bewilderment and half wit excitement...my mind cannot cope with this coincidence...what are these situations which lead me to know about Jon Hopkins and now i learn of him playing in India? What was happening?i go to jhamb and tell him about this..but at this point he hadn't invested enough time into Jon's music to feel my emotion...he said “then come along no....!!”....i wanted so much to go but because of the Coke presentation which was happening on the same day and actually later on, i would find out that as my presentation was getting over in Bombay....while Mr. Hopkins was winding up his set in Goa.....

i left Bombay on Saturday night right after the presentation and got on to a bus and after a lavdu fuckin around in the night....twisting turning...i couldn't sleep too well and reached Goa in the morning...and for some reason even though i hadn't slept too well...i was in great spirits and all credit goes to the positive energy of Goa....its magic and i cant explain it....

i take directions on the phone from jhamb and reach the hotel Alcove in Vagatore, where the gang is staying...Amit Jhamb,Schulen Fernandes, Madhavi Khote, Shaanu Sharma, Sandhya Nair, Joe Joseph, Sapna Bhavnani, and some more people who's names i cant quite remember too well were also there......i reach there in my jeans and a black shirt...it didn't feel right to roam around in Goa like that...it seemed inappropriate....i go to a shop outside the hotel and buy a green pair of pyjamas and a t-shirt which i called “starry eyed surprise”....i can confidently say i looked funny in the t-shirt....but what the hell...?its Goa!

I plug in my handycam which jhamb had carried to capture Mr.Jon in all his glory....we watch the shit i'd missed and head to the venue after a while......

now let me take the opportunity to freak out once again.....I'm writing this blog about the big chill which happened quite a few days back...I've been wanting to write for quite a few days now but never got down to actually writing and today as i was writing my mom and dad called me out and asked me what i was doing in my room all alone....i explained to them that i was archiving my life in words and that's when the door bell rang....and lo and behold...what do i see....a courier guy with a package with my name on it...its the Jon Hopkins album i had ordered from justmusic.com....now please excuse me for a sec....AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.......
WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now i don't think i can write anymore....I'll continue about the big chill later......I'm freaking out right now........

great cinema

last saturday i saw "Bheja Fry"....pl go watch it....it is a full conversation movie and has great situational humour and great perfomances......i loved the humour....if only the abuses were not censored.....

my Coke experience.....

I've recently finished work on a Coke commercial. I don't generally get to work with the whole team at Pixion but on this one i got the chance to work with a bunch of 3d artists...another great flame guy and a couple of Shake compositors..The director of the commercial,Mr Ram Madhvani, is an award winning kind who knows what he wants...is so savvy that it turned out to be a pleasure working with him. He has delivered award winning films like the Happy dent one and the Xbox one and many many more.....he is extremely respected in the industry and it was a bit scary in the beginning. Scary because i didn't know if we could pull this off in the limited time we had and also keep the quality up. I was involved in the pre-prod meetings as well as on shoot. I thought ok...its a regular film with a few challenge here and there and all I'll be doing more or less is delivering some composites and it'll all be fine....but the experience was far from regular. It all started with the vfx supervisor having a rough time with the pixion gang. The drama we experienced everyday between the pixion people and The VFX supervisor...was let me say entertaining. The lady was finding it hard to achieve compatibility with the gang. And the gang would go out of their way to irritate her and give her a hard time. We didn't have the luxury of time on this one to go around irritating the person who is to make calls on time and approve stuff on behalf of the director! I intervened and since i didn't mind talking to her at all and kinda found a way to be the middle man for her. She was pleased to find at least one person to confide in, when it comes down to Pixion's various eccentric behavior....She was hard to handle, i agree, but it didn't mean that one forgets one's place in the scheme of things. she was there for work..not to make friends...but that too didn't give her the right to treat people like “her” employees...anyway....what i'm trying to say is that i am a flame guy who was supposed to deliver the film and instead of just concentrating on the work i was supposed to do...i was playing line producer on this one....it all turned out fine but i guess some people are good at certain things and some are not and i guess some people just dont want to be good at certain things and i am among the kind who doesn't enjoy line producing....trust me its great for people who love the feeling of being in control and having the heart to ask questions like “so when am i getting my shots?”...i personally enjoy my flame time....much more relaxing....more happiness wit my flame...she gives me joy...she gives me what i want when i am nice to her!!

anyway...the director had to go to Paris and before he left we had to finish the full 90 sec edit with a few bells and whistles left over, for after he left. Now what is special about this ad is that it was an all chroma shoot with a few igloo kind off houses and no otherwise exterior stuff....all backgrounds were to be put in post....very few camera moves....lots of snow, shot and the chroma wasn't the best....i can say that with conviction. The deal was that i had to show the look of the opening shot, which involved a landscape with icy mountains and a moon and a cliff...I'll upload a few static frames later....i used to work on the shot....and either email it to the VFX supervisor and she used to show it to Ram and i used to execute the changes and send it back. In approximately 2 rounds,the look got approved and i was only given fine tuning instructions. I was happy. I took a dvd of my quicktimes and went to Yash Raj Studios in andheri(w) and stood outside the gate cause the entry pass was with the VFX Supervisor. I stood there for a while and since it was a closed set...she couldn't take my calls. I told the gate man to inform her of my arrival and he was kind enough to make the phone call. After approximately 20 min..a guy came up to the gate with a blue colored pass wit a red string attached to it.....he gave it to me and i was relieved to enter the studio....all that while i felt like a struggling actor waiting for a chance to meet a director/producer at yash raj!!

I went in and saw the most quiet set I've been to in my life. Ram was the kinda guy who had such control over the set, that i couldn't help but feel amazed at that ability.....it was a good experience sitting next to him and see him work. We all need such people to enter our lives and shake it up and tell us to push ourselves just that little bit more...we shoot our sequences and i still had a little fear whether we could pull all the required shots off with quality as priority......Now another special thing about the process of delivering this ad was that by the time the director was ready with the offline, i was inserting the effects shots into the edit. Which means, before the offline presentation, we had managed to insert quite a few shots into the edit so as to give Mr.Prasoon Joshi a much better idea on how the film was going to look like. Now the critical sections were inserted in because it does get difficult for the agency person to understand the overall flow and feel of the film. Especially this kind of a film. you'll know what i mean when u see it. It was great to see Prasoon liking the edit and actually zero changes on the fx shots....we got approval on the offline stages itself....that meant a lot to us....then by the time Ram came on to online, both Flames had gotten shots ready for him to take a look at for final grading. They had planned it out in a way that Flame gets a one-light telecine and the grading would happen on flame itself....so as Ram graded the shots....i kept providing ready comps from flame and the shake gang. The whole workflow seems to workout great....the Shake guys at Pixion really helped out this project with so much enthusiasm....it was great to work with all this talent.....minor tweaks were required but overall experience was lovely. so on the day Ram was leaving for Paris...our 90 sec edit was ready..and also we had inserted our ready shots into the 60 sec cut down version too.....Mr Hritik Roshan walks in 6pm sharp. Checks out the edits...loves it...suggests some changes from his side...walks away...and we all get congratulated for a good job.....we bask in the glory....very satisfied and happy....i leave for Goa the same night for attending “the big chill”...a two day music festival....but that's a another story....stay tuned....