Journey towards my movie "ChArAcTeRs"

Guys I successfully completed the movie I started 20 Months ago!!!
It was actually a great experience I had in my life!!
This project was given to us on DEC 23 of 2010! I still remember the date because that was my last day to school in the year 2010!
 In the beginning when Sheela mam *(Our the then Class teacher)told about this project  we didn't take it so seriously!
Let me tell you how it started actually! We all guys played football in the 5th period! And during the game Shashank(my classmate) came with an idea about the film! His thought is to show the audience some important thing which is running in most of the today's students mind!! I meant about the race where students are taking part in the field of education Attending predawn coaching's to make themselves fully prepared to crack one of the worlds's toughest examinations.

Yup!! I'm speaking about the IIT Advanced examination (formerly IIT JEE)
This Indian Institute of Technology Had become a dream for most of the High school Students.....

Students wake Up early in the morning, Attend the classes right from 5am, just at the age of twelve or thirteen. Looking at this enthusiasm of few students, few other parents also started dreaming about the IIT's.
Though they cant take the test anymore so they wanted their children to do this for them.

This dragged the attention of Shashank. I don't whether his parents are also a part of that community But shashank wanted to create awareness among the parents who wanted this to happen,through this film.

This led to the rise of "ChArAcTeRs".
I don't know why this name had come but I liked it.
On that day we all had a plan.. We had holidays for 10 days on the occasion of Christmas....... So he said each and every one would come up with a story after the break based on the given theme. Best of them will be taken as the script for the movie

After The Winter Break

We all met again on the new year day and came up with our own story regarding the film..

we surprisingly found  that many of our stories almost had a similar story line. So we adopted one among them.

 And now came a new trouble...

Casting

Who is Going to play the leading role for the film? Who wishes to loose the opportunity!
 So everybody came up. Now it was really a big puzzle. Many names came up shashank, dutt, santosh, abhishek, venkatesh, srikar, Shanmukha and finally a name clicked.
It Was KAUSHIK....

Shashank initially directed the film so he wanted a person who could be peaceful, and sensitive to the script and he found his person..
It was declared that kaushik would play the leading role in the film.

WORK Started

We started with planning the other characters but it really became a very big mess as we were supposed to take whole amount of 33 students (34 later) into the film
It wasn't really an easy job at this level to manage so many people in the film...
We initially thought of making the movie for around 10 to 13 minutes (Duration) but as we cannot accommodate all the 34 in that short time we gradually started increasing the story, which increased duration of the film.
Now we had another problem. "CAMERA" No one were ready to ask their parents about the camera because they were afraid a bit because there parents may feel that as it is not a part of their education they may not allow their kids to take part in the film.
finally santosh and shashank dared and stepped forward to request Satvik's parents regarding the camera.
Satvik had a Sony HDR Xr 100 Handy cam with Carl Zeiss 10 x x Zoom lens.Which we felt sufficient for our film and we've got the permission

we were enjoying because everything is happening very soon.
 Everyone were thrilled, But satvik's dad gave the camera on one condition!
"Only Satvik Alone have to operate the camera and no one else are supposed to do so!"

 We initially didn't feel it as a problem at all, but later it created troubles among the team.
We found shooting spots and planned the script and shots were taken.
Work was going on peacefully,but due to the film few of our team members couldn't concentrate their Exams and education and that created a problem....
I Don't know how much satvik scored but he was not permitted to work in the film anymore,
He had  quit and we felt short of Camera.
We almost felt that shooting is going to stop, most of them lost interest!!!!!

And then as per schedule we got to shoot few scenes in the school during the holidays, which we shot with the help of one of my cousins'(Bharadwaj) Camera!That was really helpful!
But we managed to take up Few scenes using our Regular Cameras and however we managed to complete the scheduled work!

Then our next approach was towards Karthik BP who promised to bring the camera for the remaining film! But due to some So called "Unavoidable circumstances he couldn't"

It was during the Summer Break we had an adventure camp to the Himalayas ( Manali In particular) for which my dad said he would give me a camera! That helped for the shoot after the return!

Apart from the 'camera' we had lots to plan!
The script was not too perfect! And the casting was not presented properly!
and as soon as we entered class 10 we were busy in our studies and the editing task was going simultaneously..
And  a few months later we again planned for a few scenes which I felt necessary while I was editing the Clips and then this time the main drawback was the song which we planned to insert in the film.
It wasn't so good!
Neither we had good singers nor good background music and the videos were so poor in the clarity!
so we planned to re-shoot those scenes and on the other hand the music too!!
and the Re-shoot was scheduled in the month of February (Which was very close to our Class 10 public exams).
We got that work done, but we had no enough time for planning the song...
So we stopped the work.....
However after my Board Examinations I requested my music Teacher to guide us in making the song
And coming to the music Crew we opted Balaji (X-C) and Ashwin(X-D) as singers! And we needed some background music too!
So we had some Music with the musical keyboard by G.Vijayalakshmi (Music teacher) and for drums we got Sohail (Class VIII). However the music didn't Sync in the beginning but after few adjustments it was done....

I thought the movie is DONE.So just made a copy and gave it to Sheela mam!(That was like movie undergoing Censoring :P )..
When she saw the movie she gave us few suggestions and said that the audio wasn't so clear!!
(Of course it won't be, because we had no dubbing rooms)

And by this time I (and of course our whole batch) entered Junior Inter(Class 11)
However, along with my studies I managed to make the subtitles as an alternative for the voice

And I was DONE.

The Main people whom I wanted to thank are our parents..... who encouraged us to do this project!
And even many other people who supported in making the film!!!!