Category: Film

The Competition

This trailer is almost too hard to watch, The Competition:

Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Dominique Perrault, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster are selected to participate in the design of the future National Museum of Art of Andorra, a first in the Pyrenees small country. Norman Foster drops out of the competition after a change in the rules that allow the documentary to happen. Three months of design work go into the making of the different proposals, while, behind doors, a power struggle between the different architects and the client has a profound impact on the level of transparency granted by each office to the resident documentary crew, and which has a definite influence in the material shown in the film.

Quiet Kerala

Here is a short from my weekend in Kerala shot with my Fuji X100. The Kerala Backwaters are so different from Bombay it is shocking – not only is it green, but the lack of auto rickshaws and other vehicles honking give the country a relaxing and soothing tone.

The Craft of Everyday

Here is a short video I created along with my coworkers celebrating the craft of the everyday located around our office in Mumbai.

We had a limited amount of time to plan (2 days), shoot (1 day) and edit (4 days), but those constraints ended up making the process a lot of fun. At one point there was going to be a series of hand-carved frames in each shot highlighting the craft, but that became just impossible to execute and (as expected) drew a huge crowed.

Five of us got into a Toyota van and ran around the city for a day filming carpenters, frame wallahs, a paan wallah, a juice wallah, garland wallahs, and a sugarcane wallah. We used my 5d mark II camera and a host of lenses (18mm fisheye, 35mm f2.0, 50mm f1.4, 70-200mm f2.8 non-IS) in a pretty stripped down rig. I didn’t even have my Zacuto Z-Finder with me – so there was a lot of zooming in to focus and stopping down so the depth of field wasn’t too shallow.

It would have been nice to have a shoulder rig, which would have stabilized any moving shot, but we had to content ourselves with locking the camera down on a very lightweight tripod. This ended up being a blessing since we could set up and strike the set quickly, but also meant that we had to really strip down and constrain the shooting style.

Patrick Stewart: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5)

Patrick Stewart’s version of Macbeth is amazing: when plotting Banquo’s murder with two assassins, Macbeth casually begins to make a sandwich, giving two halves to the murderers. That is stone cold.

You can watch the whole play PBS Great Performances Macbeth for free, just don’t say the name of The Scottish Play in a theatre.