Cinema using DSLRs

Cinema has been an expensive adventure. Long back, people grumbled that the art of letter writing waned as the cost of writing decreased coupled with the expanse of telegraph. We have moved far from that reality and realise that the art of story-telling never got cheap – it moved from papyrus to iPad. The content emanating from the creator’s mind sustains enigma in similar fashion. Coming back to cinema, the first democratic attempt toward freedom of voice (or rather voice and picture) came with the popularity of the handycam. These video cameras fulfilled the middle-class dream of capturing the birthday celebrations or the occasional outings in wilderness. The devices are user-friendly and like all, you will want it to be shared with friends and families. Lenses or editing is not priority, its more important that your brother in Los Angeles relishes the mukhe-bhaat of your son in Kolkata on YouTube. It bridges the gap, it mends minds, and, more importantly, it connects.
But there are many, like me, who also want to shoot a film. The biggest hindrance for us is budget. You can always ask friends to act in your film at minimal cost but what you can’t reduce is the cost towards equipment. To address this, leading camera makers ~ Canon and Nikon ~ have come up with HD video recording features in their professional DSLRs. Yes, and more importantly, the results are promising. The recent released Stanley Ka Dabba and the subway scenes in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan are glorious exponents of feature films fully shot in HD professional DSLRs. Unless you are a practitioner, it’s difficult to make out that this film is not the conventional 35mm one. So who cares?
The advantage of these DSLRs is mostly the full-frame camera sensors and the ability to reproduce an unbelievably shallow Depth of Field – both which magnifies its fragrance. To acknowledge this new phenomenon, film festivals in the USA, Canada and in parts of Europe have started having cinema shot only on DSLR cameras! The cinema-quality images in low light conditions have bolstered the hopes of this low-cost alternative. So much so that the highly performing Red Camera is taking a slight back-seat for its price which is eight-10 times that of these DSLRs.
Balancing the manual focus while shooting (particularly when there is a lot of high moving subjects) and upscaling in the traditional editing softwares (Final Cut Pro for example) are having known issues. But these are never hindrance to this digital revolution. An interesting set of articles and blogs is being hosted by the magical Dear Cinema website (you can read here: dearcinema.com/category/dslr-filmmaking). But the take-away is all positive. Now, there have been waves in the history of cinema where smaller independent groups of individuals have tried to break away from the shackles imposed by the consumer world. Films made with a guerilla approach had been reasonably successful. But they have always remained on the edge. What makes this movement  so unique is the fact that these Canon 7Ds or Nikon D7000s are actually figuring in the equipment list of Hollywood / Bollywood / South Indian and Bengali film makers all alike. Even purely commercial ventures look upto them for reduced cost without sacrificing quality.
With time the hope is that these DSLRs will become more mature to obey the cinematographer’s wish. The traditional professional video cameras need to deal with customization to prove their cost and the fight will continue. This tussle is healthy. And as the manufacturers fight it out, let us sit down and work on our own scripts.
The time is ripe that we take up our film project armed with the latest ruler – the DSLRs. Till then, happy clicking

(Orig published in The Statesman on 17th June 2011 - http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=373458:cinema-using-dslr&catid=47:marquee&from_page=search)

The boat wrecks

 There are broadly two types of contemporary 'art-house' Bengali films - a) films set in the past, sort of period films, b) films set in the present but the characters and the setting smell primarily of nostalgia.

Most of the recent Bngali films that one gets to see fall in either of the two. The year being noble-laureate literatueur Rabindranath Tagore's 150th birth year there has been a flurry of films on Tagore's stories. Rituporno Ghosh is an avid Tagore admirer and had previously made a reasonably successful Chokher Bali (2003). That he will be interested to pay homage to Tagore on this special occasion is not a surprise. It’s quite commendable to get Subhas Ghai to produce the film as well. Rituporno roped in the Sen-sisters for the first time – Raima and Riya to play the two sides of the proverbial ‘same’ coin.

But inspite of all these, Nouka Dubi (Boat wreck, 2011) is a decently unimpressive film.  Rituporno tried to play a bit with self-reflexivity by announcing his film as an “inspiration” from the Tagore novel. He then started his film with a Tagore song directly and showing Hem, the heroines of the film ogle at a Tagore portrait. This interplay with the form could have been important had not been used just for the sake of using Tagore’s song liberally in the film. Seldom has Bengali directors restrained from using Tagore’s songs in films. Now if something is good then why not use it? But the problem lies in the over-use of it. By the laws of nature hence, the outcome becomes quite ordinary in the end.  In the prefaces of Nouka Dubi and Chokher Bali (the other film that Ghosh adapted to cinema) Tagore was categorical for his penchant for trying something different in the form of literary composition –

The demand of the times has changed. These days the curiosity about stories has become psychoanalytical. The weaving of incidents has become redundant. … The ultimate psychological question associated with it is, does the root of the faith of our women in the everlastingness of her relationship with her husband lie deep enough for her to disdainfully tear apart the net of her first love based on unconsciousness? But such questions do not have a universal answer.

(1985, Tagore R (1985). Novels : Rabindra-Rachanabali, Vol. 7. Calcutta: Pas chim Banga Sarkar, p. 347).

However if one reads Rituporno’s reasons for adapting this Tagore story ist is –

I felt that Noukadubi, would give to Bengali cinema a film with a strong narrative. In recent times, it has become a fad to think that breaking the narrative is the only way of making good cinema in Bengal.

(http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-11-17/news-interviews/28220684_1_noukadubi-rituparno-ghosh-international-film-festival accessed on 06 June 2011)

The problem with the Ghosh film is primarily in this narrative membrane (he shifted the time of his drama two –three decades forward as well, marked by the occasional references of the (in)famous law-suit of the ‘missing’ Bhowal-king). The story is melodramatic and the basis of the wife-swapping saga was primarily a psycho-analytical quest of the writer. As mentioned in the Tagore’s quote, there was a quest which Tagore weaved with dialogues and situations that reflect the self, the story unfolding slowly and the complex tapestry of hetero-gendered tension adding some fervor to it. Now, to narrate this in entirety in 2011 and to make the film completely asexual (to mark it with Tagore’s times, unsuccessfully), the director treaded difficult paths. He probably got away with the actual sequence of the boat wreck with background reference of the devastation. However the wrecks within were insipid in depiction. Even if we understand Ramesh’s binding in front of Sushila’s (his wife) widowed mother, we don’t fathom Ramesh’s reactions towards Hem at a later point in time when he planned to marry her keeping the truth about his marriage a secret. Similarly, Hem’s swaying to Nalinaksha in Benares and then moving back to Ramesh seem too staged.

            There were few moments where the camera wanted to light up the hearts of the audience – the frames of Ramesh and Kamala after the boat wreck, the one in Benares where Hem and Nalinaksha held hand in hand to pass through a “dark” lane (these obvious connotations cease to work now, unfortunately) or Ramesh’s confrontation with his father on the subject of his marriage. Unfortunately for Bengali cinema all these seem so borrowed from Ray’s films – Devi, Apur Sansar and may be few others. But with these nostalgic implicit referrals as well it cannot be saved from its own wreck. 

            Interestingly the film was released as Kashmakash in Hindi with a supposedly 30-minute cut down from the Bengali original to make it more compact. (http://www.thefilmstreetjournal.com/2010/12/rituparno-ghosh-nouka-dubi-love-longing-loss/  accessed on 06 June 2011). Though I haven’t seen the Hindi version, the obvious pitfall is the Tagore songs in Hindi. Transporting a deep and closely bound cultural artifact in an alien sound-scape is not only dangerous but equally outrageous.  As for the Bengali film, in line with the type b) mentioned in the first sentence of this article, there are too many instances of Tagore’s songs making the film palpably slow. Added to it is the typical style of acting whenever it becomes a Tagore story – slow movements, grim and deep dialogue throwing punctuated with long pauses. Film-makers taking up Tagore should understand that this decorum itself is self-defeating. They can always look up to Ray’s adaptations which were always so natural, so real-life like instead of trying to copy Ray’s images.

            In my book hence, Ghosh’s Noukadubi could have flashed with a storm but in effect, died with a whimper. He chose a relatively weak Tagore fiction but failed to turn it to his advantage.