#42: How did I shoot 100 videos in one day?
A look at what went behind on the shoot day of A-MAD Season 02
September 7, 2022.
I walked out of shower with great enthusiasm as I geared to leave my place for the shoot. We were supposed to be at Bhavya’s house. To our bad (or good?) luck, our venue sponsors cancelled on us a day ago. We were supposed to shoot with the Studio Pepperfry at a fine store in Delhi.
I am posting one video every day for 100 days sharing 1 Article of Indian Constitution daily. Watch them here!
While I dress for the occasion, follow my words to visit 2020 and what started as a random experiment on a career break. I was exhausted (or burnt out) in the winter of 2019. After a long hiatus at taking entire India high on the drug of stories with Stories Worth Sharing (a national media headline claimed that drug thing :P) I wanted to explore more.
It was in this scene I sat down in a corner of my room taking a note of the things I can do! I visited childhood, took a look at the things I liked doing as a teenager and what I could not do due to work
(SWS was a full time job since I was 20!!)
One of the things that came on the list was from 2014. Before going for engineering, I got myself enrolled in a 5 year law program at Government Law College in Mumbai. My parents did not know of this and when they learnt about it, came an expected veto.
“Law, yeah!” I told myself. One after other, I prepared a list of the things that I wanted to read in this break time. Among other things, I started reading Indian Constitution (6 years after I left GLC, Mumbai)
I can speak more on this but to cut the long story short, I loved it!
I started imagining myself on the chair of Constituent Assembly.
To my left stood the stalwarts like Ambedkar and Nehru who brought their aura to the game while on the right, I could hear the grassroot leaders from different part of the country.
Comes 2021 and I contracted the virus in the fatal second wave. Barely survived the virus and in the process of recovery, I wanted to distract myself. End result? 100 Book Reviews. Oh! The joy of creating the videos talking about the books that I read in last decade and a half felt like a fresh breeze in the peak summer. An experience that requires leaves you feeling lively! (Let us just say I was too vulnerable after how virus hit it me hard)
It was here in 2021 when I decided that I will create a 100 video series every year.
Back to 2022, I am done dressing up for the event. *chuckles*
Hear me live, now :P
After 100 book reviews, I had spoken in public about doing 100 Articles of Indian Constitution. Even if I wanted to forget about it, the people chose to not let me forget it.
“Aur bhai! Kahan hai fir 100 articles?”
Well, had to make them now that I had committed them in public. (See how I played my mind, yeah?)
I turned 26 in June and started scouting for a manager to get things done. This was when Bhavya came on board. We started fixing things together! Ajay came on board in a one time lunch meeting. We connected almost immediately and turned out we have some professional mutual friends as well. A smooth onboarding, I will say!
Script Time
As I write about this episode, I am reminded of all that I went through during the course of writing the script for 100 videos in one day. In middle of August, I started writing.
It might sound easy in words but I soon realized it is not as easy I thought it to be! (Despite that fact that I have spent 2 years reading about the constitution)
After writing first 7 scripts, I did not visit the page for more than 10 minutes a day. By the end of August, I barely had 20 scripts and the date of shoot was fast approaching.
3 days till September 2, I worked on it for some 7-9 hours a day. Every day I sat to write, I sat with a promise of leaving my chair only after I am done! (Safe to say, I failed twice)
AND THEN CAME THE NUMBER 100!
Writing process is fun, no doubt. However, I have lost the count of times I wanted to shut down my laptop and throw it in a wall. I was this exhausted mentally that the day after I was done, I did nothing but sleep or loathe around. I might have sent a series of texts to Bhavya telling her about how my mind is unable to process the things at my regular pace.
Think of it: It took a whole day to recover from the exhausting process of writing 100 scripts. Why this pain? I did not want to go leave the shoot before we are done!
A day before I had to leave, I packed 10 shirts and a lot of other things in my travel bag.
September 7, Ajay and I meet at Bhavya’s nearest metro and start unpacking at around 1100 hours. One after other, we kept conquering the forts to win the castle.
Around 1930, we were done. In those eight and a half hours, I am not sure how many glasses of lukewarm water did I gulp! I will be doing a disservice if I do not thank both Ajay and Bhavya to sit behind the camera and hear me say things over and over.
After getting in and out of 10 shirts in those few hours, I had Nishtha pick me up for a nice dinner before I left for home.
I have a lot more to speak about this day but for some other time. If you are reading this, I appreciate that you stuck this far to read my story. I’ll be grateful if you could write back with a comment/feedback.
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Watch my 100 #1MinuteBookReviews here