And it was finally over! After a sleepless week and hours of non-stop working, finally we found an answer to the question mark! And the project was finished, well, force finished since the deadline had to be met!
Early Stages
I wrote the ‘Question Mark’ story about a guy who had a big question mark to answer years ago. The single question mark represent all his unanswered questions throughout his life and he finally reaches the stage where there are so many unanswered questions that he’s no longer sure what are the questions and he just wants to find an answer; or the answer. When it came back to me a few months ago I made a lot of changes to story and replaced the character’s head with a question mark to show his state of confusion. This idea was presented in my group project presentation at NCCA.
Initially my attempt to convince a group of people to join me in telling this story was unsuccessful and I started working on a different idea. Two weeks later the team was not happy with the development of the new idea and came back to me to do my story. I was obviously happy yet my happiness did not last long after seating in a lot of meetings with the group members discussing the storyline and seeing them tearing the story apart into pieces without being concerned about the bigger image; the concept. Anyway, after another two weeks I was able to form the story very close to my original idea and filmed it.
Filming on a very cold day!
Production
The filming overall went well. We did it two continuous days and although the planning and the storyboard was not ideal, we didn’t get confuse that much. Sadly we failed to find a good location for the final scene of the movie and my suggestion for shooting the whole thing in front of a Chroma screen was turned down.
Post Production
The post-production was hard and frustrating. Everybody was working hard but I didn’t have full creative control which at first bothered me a little but i learned to live with it. Everyone wanted to have a say in everything and for some shots that they failed to add the required effect they kept me out the loop and i only realized hours before the deadline when i had to wrap the whole thing up and do the final edit. But it wasn’t all bitterness! Without this people, my group mates; Ashwin, Ashwini, Adip, Neville, Altug and soham my vision would have remained just a script and it was with their help that it came to life. With an experienced group leader (Ashwin), I really felt there’s nothing we can’t achieve and the only limit was the time. In last three days everyone put a lot of efforts and dedications and my only wish now is that they are happy with the final outcome.
