Pawan Kumar

Blind Date, a short film

Acting for the Lens

An Acting workshop by Theatre practitioner and Filmmaker Pawan kumar.  Since 2006 Pawan has been involved in various film projects as an Actor, Director and writer. His latest projects include writing story and screenplay for renowned feature film director Yogaraj Bhat. Pawan has not only penned the movies Manasaare and Pancharangi but has also acted in them. Having drawn his performing skills from the theatre, he has discovered acting techniques for the camera as well as stage. This workshop would be an open forum where these techniques would be experimented with the participants. A series of acting exercises and games makes this workshop a fun filled experience with enough to take back.

For details contact Sowmya on 9916542428 or write to sowmyjag@gmail.com

An Acting workshop by Theatre practitioner and Filmmaker Pawan kumar. Know more about him and his work on www.pawantheactor.com.

Since 2006 Pawan has been involved in various film projects as an Actor, Director and writer. His latest projects include writing story and screenplay for renowned feature film director Yogaraj Bhat. Pawan has not only penned the movies Manasaare and Pancharangi but has also acted in them. Having drawn his performing skills from the theatre, he has discovered acting techniques for the camera as well as stage. This workshop would be an open forum where these techniques would be experimented with the participants. A series of acting exercises and games makes this workshop a fun filled experience with enough to take back.

Visit www.pawantheactor.com to know more about his earlier workshops.

For details contact Sowmya on 9916542428 or write to sowmyjag@gmail.com

Workshop Reviews

After a very long time I got to conduct another workshop this weekend. Some of you must have been bombarded with emails and notifications about the workshop called ‘Theatre@24frames’… Thank you for spreading the word around.

We had 12 participants. On the first day we explored theatre, and films on the next day. I hope that the participants took back enough with them. Personally I seem to gain and grow every time I conduct these workshops. Interacting and answering questions opens up my mind in many ways and sometimes some questions help me clear my thoughts and beliefs too. I just hope that I didn’t brag too much about some of my works!!! It was a very enriching experience. I hope to do more of these workshops in the following months and make a team of short film makers.

theatre@24frames

ACTor Productions
Presents
A theatre and film workshop
theatre@24frames
Date: 6th and 7th Feb 2010   Time: 10am to 6pm    Venue: Bangalore

The workshop aims at introducing theatre and films to enthusiasts. The workshop is pretty basic in nature and is aimed at beginners. If you are someone who has always found the words theatre and/or films interesting and have been wondering how to start, what exactly happens at a professional level etc etc. This workshop could give you a whole lot of answers. A 2 day workshop conducted by Pawan Kumar. Pawan Kumar is a theatre practitioner and a film maker. His latest film credit includes Screenplay and Acting for the successful movie of 2009 – Manasaare directed by Yogaraj Bhat. He is currently writing the story and screenplay for Yogaraj Bhat’s new movie Pancharangi. He is someone who moved up in his career by doing a whole lot of projects in both theatre and films. And in this journey he has been able to develop unique methodologies in both the areas. His workshop ‘theatre@24frames’ aims at sharing these methodologies.

The workshop is open to participants above 18 and will be conducted in English. It would roughly touch upon the topics of Acting, Direction and Writing for theatre and films. The participants of this workshop will be considered for advanced workshops in the future and also to collaborate with Pawan on his short film projects. To register or for more details, please contact – 9916542428 or write to sowmyjag@gmail.com. Very limited intake. Please forward the mail to your friends. Thank you

Paranormally scared

Apparently, Spielberg got a copy of the movie and he sat down to watch it on his home theatre system, which was more expensive than the budget of the film. He saw it for sometime and then got so scared that he stopped it and saw it next day in the morning with all the windows open. Thats a story making rounds about the movie Paranormal Activity. I am saying this here because I did the same thing. I always knew that he and I were a lot like each other

The hype about the movie made me see it. And I was scared. Am glad there are my parents in the house, I wouldn’t survive the darkness and theunexplained sounds of the night for few more days otherwise. Many might not actually share the same opinion but it was really scary for me. It took me a second viewing to look at it as a film. During the first viewing it looked like everything shown was real. And its after the second viewing that I was able to appreciate the film as a maker. I think the director has great sense of story telling. That is all that a filmmaker needs to know – To simply tell a story well.

How he made the film, the films budget, other trivia etc etc can be found on the net. I wont repeat that here. I want to talk about the usage of digital medium. All of us new filmmakers often think that we must make a film using digital medium, but then somewhere while working on it, we give up. It is because the story we are trying to tell cant be told in a digital format, and by digital format I mean our handycams etc. Highend digital format will give output similar to film these days. The director of Paranormal activity wrote the script in a way that it would need a handy cam. Even if he had all the money he would have done it with a handy cam. And that is why when we are seeing the movie, we dont complain about the flat lighting, the lack of DOF, colors, focus etc etc. I have seen many normal stories narrated using digital formats, but while seeing them you always feel that these films needed to be shot on film and was done this way because of lack of budgets. The storytelling didn’t ask for low end digital output. But that is reality, After saying all this I might still end up doing the same mistake soon.

The script. Very well thought over. He makes us build stories in our head. When we are seeing the movie we are not really thinking of the characters as much as we think about our own sleep time. Its freaky. Imagine your wife/husband standing next to you and looking at you for hours while you are asleep. Doors opening and closing. He just made a movie to use it a s a platform to make us write stories in our own heads. So the movie is unique to each viewer. We all imagine our own rooms, the people in our house, the doors and windows etc.

After the second viewing I have a doubt if the claims are true. That it was all made by a few people using just one camera etc. There is a scene of one of the nights where we can see a shadow on the door. From whatever I know of filming, that effect is very tough to achieve, isn’t it? Its a wide shot and there is very low light and still a full size shadow!!!! How!? I guess a lot more has been done. But I hope I am wrong and the filmmaker is actually brilliant enough to have got it all by himself.

Excellent low budget film. New filmmakers with big blocks in the head about writing should see it. And do something and make 150 million USD by spending only 15k USD.

Its late now. I am wondering how I will make it to the room and sleep. I have to switch the light off here and then walk in the dark for about 5 mts and then jump into the bed. What if I bump into someone invisible!!!

Eclipsed views

Empty roads, locked up in houses, not eating etc etc. I guess these kind of things can only happen in India. What we call our culture and beliefs and values basically stop us from most of the good things in life. I am so glad I am such a rebel.

I had fun trying to play around the eclipse time. I looked in every corner of my house to find some kind of a filter to view the sun but just couldn’t get hold of anything. I have a feeling my mom had hidden them for reasons we all know. Its very paapa paapa to see the eclipse apparently. So I saw most of it on TV and later me an my work mates got out to the streets and tried various shadow based viewings. It was nice, tried clicking some pics too.

Eclipse reminds me of 2 things, one is a poem that I wrote when I was in my 9th grade. A poem about the solar eclipse, and it is because of that I know so much about the eclipse stuff. The second being the shoot of my first fiction short film, we started shooting on the day of the eclipse and in fact got a stopblock capture of the eclipse too. And the movie never got completed, a believer would blame it on the eclipse but I proudly say that it was because of my lack of knowledge of film making. But thanks to this project I learnt so much that I’d never make those mistakes again ever in my life. You can see the infamous eclipse shot here in this video Beginnings and Endings

I am an emotion called Love

I am the memory that you’d never want to forget,

I am the wink that makes your frown a smile,

I am the tide that makes your life alive,

I am the halo your soul is searching for,

I am the voice your ears seek,

I am the poem you can never write,

I am me.

Who are you?

I am the present you will not remember,

I am the one you will feel like winking at,

I am the drowning boat being one with the tide,

I am the sin that keeps your soul away from searching,

I am the silence that surrounds your voice,

I am the poet who was never born,

You are someone I love,

Who am I?

The 4th Idiot

I finally saw the movie. And I can proudly call myself the fourth idiot. It was all about me. Many scenes I could relate to, I am forcing my parents to go see it asap, would love to see their guilt ridden faces when they get out.

I was also one of the idiots who auditioned for a small little tiny role in the film, however I am glad I dint get through. (I never get through auditions). After watching the movie I figured what part I had auditioned for, they were such small parts that it would not have added to my experience in any greater way then what manasaare did. Interacting with Raju is something I would want to do, but I guess i’d rather do it as a screenplay writer than as a struggling actor.

I am not all gaga about the movie. Its a very smart script. The makers knew what would make the audience have a good time, and what would make them send more people to the theatre to watch. They just did that. And there is nothing wrong, as long as the content makes sense and entertains. I have been very impressed with Raju since Munnabhai. I like the way huge boring cliche scenes are packaged into small funny scenes. Its an art and I have tried to do that in Manasaare and also in the current script. Many a times I think of his movies and correct my own. However I am sure he is a die hard fan of Patch Adams and Amelie, both the movies inspire me a lot.

Another beautiful part of the film was the way they packaged the cliche beaten to death kind of scenes. They were required in the movie, specially when you are making an Indian Film, there are a few scenes that you HAVE to have. Raju managed to put them in a very interesting way, Eg. The entire black and white treatment for Sharman’s family. And many a times when he spoke, the background score was deliberately of the old style. Raju managed to laugh at himself, and that would make us laugh more, thereby seeing the scene without hate but still taking in the content. There were many like that in the entire film.

The idea of non linear narration also added to the pace of the film, and adding a narrators voice makes it easier. When one writes a film in a non linear format with a narrator, he is making the story telling job a lot easier. A lot of content can be packed in tight and nice in a smaller period of time. The movie is so enjoyable for that reason. Imagine the movie in the linear format and you will see it wont be so much fun.

I dont want to brag about my own work, but I want to proudly say that Manasaare could be a nice Hindi film. I hope it gets done in Hindi sometime and a larger audience gets to see it.

Whats with my life? ALL IS WELL

The mind and within

Human brain has a universe within. It can make us do the weirdest thing, it can take control over our body and personality and we wont have a say in it. I am experiencing the games that the mind can play with us. And its bloody scary.

Last night I experienced a the new age ‘IN’ thing called Insomnia. I woke up at 2am and was unable to sleep till about 5am. There were many external factors that led to this. I didnt know what to do, TV would wake others up and I was bored of the laptop. I remembered the lines from Fight Club – ‘With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.’ That was one of the favorite lines from that movie. In fact it also was a major inspiration for my play Evam Indrajit. So I just sat on the bed looking at the ceiling and imagining where else I could have been at that moment. In the middle of the night, in the silence that is so loud, one could hear the faintest sounds. I have no clue where they were coming from, but I did hear so many of them, and I was quite scared to go check them up. On my side was a shelf which I guess I have not opened for about 3 years now. My mother had stored some age old books and magazines and I was never interested in them. I opened it and was scanning through the titles. I was looking for something in English as most of it was in Kannada. I pulled out an old copy of Readers Digest. I see the cover page and I start laughing. The main article of that issue was ‘The secrets of sleeping sound‘. I of course jumped to those pages and started reading, lot of things they said made sense but it didn’t being me any sleep. The next story was about forgiveness, for the kind of mood I was in, I thought I must read that too. It was a good read. Though I was always aware of most of the things it was preaching, but at that point it seemed new. I slept. I love to sleep well. When I was young and I was working out, I used to sleep like a baby. Best of the sleep comes when your body is tired like hell. (Is that why sex happens before sleeping…!!! hahahah)

This post shall be concluded by another Fight Club philosophy – Losing all hope is freedom.

Blocs

Today was more of banging the head against the table, throwing papers all over the room. I was breaking my head trying to finish the screenplay, but its quite a stubborn thing. It only let me finish up about another 25% of the script. No problem… its not aware that I work on Sundays too!!!!

Spent the evening eating some amazing biryani, its near JNC college Kormangala. Its yum, though I am not much of a biryani guy, I still love this place. And of course, it will add to the belly.Every night I hope that I would start working out again, but the me in the morning just doesn’t want to. I miss my maniac gyming days. Please come back!