Sunday, December 11, 2016

True Story

6th December 1992. I'm thinking it was around 11.30 in the morning. 

A day and time  that I doubt I will ever forget. Changed everything I knew about the world. Changed the way I saw my friends and the way I saw complete strangers, and almost certain it changed the way how people saw me. Even today, 24 years later, the happenings of that day are imprinted in my mind and believe it or not, I even recall where I was, at the time. 

At the ophthalmologist, getting glasses fitted for the first time. 

What did you think? 

Thursday, December 01, 2016

Story of my life

Filmmakers are the experts in storytelling. Conveying story arcs and displaying emotions on screen, are easy, or relatively easier, than getting the message across in a visually fulfilling and stimulating manner for the audience. Which is why we have some movies which are just so-so, and some which are really the work of genius. Very often, these two movies may not even have much difference in terms of plotlines and story flow, but the treatment and the presentation which can make or break a movie.

A critical element of the presentation of the movie, is the background music. A good background music score, can help convey the emotion of the moment in the movie better than any line of dialogue. The key to good background music though, is that remains often in the background, and keeps the story flow front and centre. Composers of great background music, are practically curators of art, where they blend into the cinematic furniture, but bring a glow to the movie, which can never be replicated. They can uniquely convey the mood of the movie, often from the perspective of the protagonist(s) that helps the audience better understand which way the story is going to develop. An incompetent composer, on the other hand, can literally turn your cinematic gold, into a piece of unadulterated garbage.

Unfortunately, real life provides no such background music. The song in your head, plays according to the mood you're in. The sad part though, is that the song playing in your head is very often much, much different in mood and tempo, to what is playing out in real time in front of your eyes. Blessed are those, who can recall and play the most appropriate song / piece of music in their heads, for that instant, that moment,  as it unfolds. 

Maybe that's is what true success is. After all, I am told, success is just a state of the mind.

As it turns out, my own Christopher Nolan movie feels at times like it has a music track by Sajid-Wajid. It IS a Nolan masterpiece, that most "directors" would give their right arms, and an kidney to call their own. But the entire experience somehow, somewhere tends to wear me down. The problem I think, is the background track.

There are days, where I think I could do with a different curator of my background track and that the current one has gone beyond its shelf life. You could say that the "band I'm in, starts playing different tunes". Or to convey to a younger audience, it's almost as if my livestream is on a constant buffering mode, playing at BSNL speeds.  To be fair to them, Sajid-Wajid are trying their absolute best, but it's not really looking like the right fit to the story.


How will this story unfold? 

Watch this space, I guess

All I can say is, it's not even time for the Interval yet :)