For film-makers on a shoestring budget, the DSLR camera is a great innovation, as equipment needs can be cut down without compromising on quality.
There have been rapid developments in the camera industry in the recent past. In 2008, the arrival of Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera marked the entry of digital SLR cameras with high-definition video capability. Photographers who used D-SLR cameras for still images until then faced a dilemma: To embrace video or not?
It took me another two years before I bought a 5D Mark2. At least in the West, DSLR movies has a cult following and a new genre, Cinematic Journalism, has emerged. Lost Lakes of Bangalore, a short-film contest organised by India Water Portal, was the perfect opportunity to experiment with this new genre of film-making. With fellow media practitioner and friend, Badekkila Pradeep, I set off to make a film that was ‘journalistic’ in nature.
The first question we faced was: How to tell a story about serious issues that can keep the current generation occupied? I have been in mainstream media for the past four years and in this duration, I have been told to create content that will interest the audience. What if the audience loves entertainment more than hard news? Do we stop providing hard news over a period of time? We decided to experiment with this concept and apply it in a different manner.
Content will always be king and at the heart of our content was a serious issue: The story of Dharmambudhi Lake, one of Bangalore’s lost lakes. We decided the “presentation” of the content must grab the youth’s attention. Hence, the initial part of the film was a docudrama. The film’s protagonist, a young Bangalore lad is tasked with finding Dharmambudhi Lake after a game of Truth or Dare at a party.
The rest of the drama has him doing rounds of popular city hangouts asking people if they know where the lake is located. Some of these scenes were shot in a guerrilla format, asking people on the street if they know where this lake is. The answer was always ‘No’.
The protagonist discovers the lakebed has given way to a major structure. In the non-fictional part of the film, he then looks for answers as to why the lake disappeared. The production took up seven working days. For independent film-makers on a shoestring budget, the DSLR camera is a great innovation, as equipment needs can be cut down without compromising on quality. This style paid off and we won the contest. More importantly, the audience was glued to their computer screens for 10 minutes to watch the film, which was eventually titled Err-Bane Truth.
On Saturday, after the film’s screening at TERI auditorium during the award ceremony, I got positive feedback from youngsters. From this experiment, I have noticed that the technology has given us new ways to tell stories that matter. There is a paradigm shift in the way people approach storytelling. Cinematic style of journalism has slowly emerged as a powerful medium to tell stories. The D-SLR cameras fit into the palm of your hand and allow you to make movies that were earlier made by big production houses.
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