'Do not disturb' the 'Not so good' short-film became 'landmark' in the Ashwamedh Kalamanch's journey as it was completely made by all 'freshers' to the 'filmmaking' team and thus was considered as 'success' by us.Generally 'learning drivers' are always quite cautious and alert and so they 'drive' very carefully.But when drivers become confident about their driving skills they get relaxed and sometimes becomes prone to accidents due to losing 'focus'. Same thing happened post-DND.Those who were lead the DND project took completely back-sit after 17th Jan and were completely 'out-of-touch' for next two months.I said to myself,'Gosh !!! When will these people stop behaving as 'over-excited' children?'. Once the 'excitement is over,their 'efforts' stops. We call it as 'चार दिन की चांदनी'.I knew this human behavior very well as I have myself behaved in similar manner when it came to my 'fitness' (jogging,gym,meditation etc - irregular 'चार दिन की चांदनी')
In January month for the first time I got a chance to work on 'external project'.S.N.D.T engineering student approached me via their counsel head for Resonance 11 event to be held in March. Sapna knew my 'Event management skills' as she had seen me managing 'annual functions' of Brilliant Tutorials, AKDC-10 event etc.So I decided to help those girls out. It was my first project as 'Marketing Advisor'.I prepared entire strategies for their events and even gave them contacts of some possible sponsors. Student grasped it quickly and the presentations,marketing materials, pamphlets, designs which they made really fantastic.After the SNDT project, some more colleges and societies approached us for 'Event Marketing and Management' but we wanted to focus on 'Ashwamedh Kalamanch' so we rejected all...But the 'LIONS CLUB OF KALINAs' in Feb was quite surprising one.
FEBRUARY 2011:
February came with 'Felicitation' of Ashwamedh Kalamanch team by Samarth Vidyalaya.That day was really a memorable one for all of us. It was kind of power-booster for us.Entire 'Santacruz' knew 'Ashwamedh Kalamanch' organization by then.I was more happy because i had made my teachers and school proud again after 1996 (when I achieved an 'Acharya Bhise' award for my merit in SSc.)
What a great day for us !!!
On 6th February I got a great surprise by 'Pillars'.They made 'WRONG TURN' short movie which was quick hit in the Times of India's 'A day in life of India' competition.Many people liked it and recommended our video.The 'Editing' work of Video was really mind-blowing.I thought it's the right time for editors to take more difficult projects in hand.We started working on horror film special effects but somehow couldn't find appropriate scripts.
19th Feb (My birthday) 2011 became the worst day of my life, as my personal life started to derail. And I learned second important lesson of the year "Being your Well-wisher and being Committed to you" are altogether different things. Well-wishers only play 'supporting role' and they may leave you when you bank on them the most.So you shouldn't make mistake of considering your well-wishers as committed people to you.", and same holds true for your organization.
New team members were taking charge of projects and senior members were completely unavailable (busy in job & family life.)
I decided to restructure the organization.The format of Ashwamedh Kalamanch is quite flexible as it is not a 'continuous business'. We decide projects,we arrange resources, we decide teams and then we complete the project in decided time.So simple.The only theme is the project should be inline with philosophy and vision of our organization.
MARCH 2011:
First 15 days of March 2011 were really bad for Ashwamedh, as we didn't do any activities in those days. Ashwamedh Knowledge Centre concept development was at peak in those days,but Kalamanch members were completely 'Out-of-touch' again.
I was watching 'Nick TV' with Aaditya...He was so much involved in watching those 'Cartoons' that he started crying when I changed channel and started World-Cup match. I thought in mind how badly children get addicted to 'watching cartoons' and the concept of short-film cartoon clicked.
I decided to shoot this short-film on Aditya himself as the plot was ready and the actor too.
Surprisingly Aditya was equally interested to act for the 'Cartoon'. I gave him instructions and he followed it properly.The small kid faced camera very confidently.His acting was quite natural. I told this not to look at camera when I took side-angled shots and he seriously followed me. Initially I thought shooting of Cartoon will take lot of time,but due to co-operation of Aditya I managed to shoot and Edit on the same day. The message was very clear. 'Watching TV for longer can harm eyes of your children'. So simple !!!
Then came HOLI. I started watching some post related to HOLI on facebook and idea struck in Mind again. I remembered the DIWALI video made by me in Diwali 2010 and the response which that got during Diwali and decided HOLI is again a good chance to do branding of Ashwamedh Kalamanch. So I made 'PLAY SAFE' video message. I used the expired 'tube-light' for this purpose. Interestingly I needed complete dark night to show the effects of TUBE BLINKING properly so I shot this video at around 1 a.m. in the night. I had fallen in love with camera, so I didn't mind to shoot 'PLAY SAFE' at such timings.
As expected 'HOLI message' was the most liked video of the month.
Then came the 'HASYA-JATRA'...I wanted to start a web-serial and didn't had courage to do so as the production cost is really very high for this purpose and Ashwamedh Kalamanch doesn't have any external funding. Luckily in the month our Ashwamedh Kalamanch Blog got monetized by Google AdSense program which boosted our confidence level.Even corporate web-sites doesn't get sponsored links for several years and we had managed to achieve that within six months, which was indeed a great achievement. Again all credit to 'Pillars of Ashwamedh Kalamanch' who kept sharing the blog on Facebook. Our viewer have increased and our blog started getting 130-150 clicks per day. This was the right time to give a regular product to viewer and that's why I decided to take risk.
I discussed this with Ravi, Rakesh and Abhijeet and they liked my idea. But they warned me that the production cost would be very high, and we decided to shoot only 10 episodes first,and if people started liking it we would continue it by hook or crook. If you have strong desire 'money' can be raised, we had experienced this during AKDC'10 event. We decided to do Muhurat Pooja on 26th March. Ashwamedh Kalamanch family has grown now.Around 17 members attended Muhurat Pooja. Some could not attend as it was working day,Saturday. But we wanted to celebrate the Birth-day of Rakesh Dudwadkar, director of Ashwamedh Kalamanch.
Rakesh got promoted from 'Son' to 'Father' in the same month, so the celebration was double. As the positive energy was filled throughout the group, we decided to shoot PROMO of Hasya-Jatra on same day. I wanted to use all the members who attended the Muhurat in this promo,so I came up with a theme. Anant (Ravi) and Ashish developed the theme and we started shooting.It was completely fun as we didn't mind what was going on set.All were directors, all were actors, and all were camera-experts. It was total 'Khichdi'...Quality Wise 'promo' was not as good as our other Videos but the memories behind those promo will be cherished by all the members who attended the Muhurat.
Comments
Post a Comment