Chittagong-Ordinary People and extra ordinary courage WORKING ON CHITTAGONG-THE FILM It was on a cold Dec morning that I got

a call for working on a feature film to be shot in Kolkata and North Bengal,My friend Resul Pookutty called up asking if I would be interested in doing a film based on a subject of Indian Independence We met over a discussion and Resul explained the subject and details of the film and told me that he wanted me to do the production sound/location sound of the film,he told me that it was a difficult film to shoot and hence doing sound woud be tough and getting usable production tracks would be important and necessary, we had a long winding discussion about the subject, locations,crew and other major and minor details, I had just completed working on PEEPLI LIVE sometime back and I was thrilled to be working on such an imporatnt and difficult film I am someone who always loves a challenge and is always on teh lookout for important and prestigious projects, tough locations, very little production support, new and inexpereinced cast,new director all added to an interesting challenge Project wise the most important thing I always insist on is to have best crew and equipment of my choice,they are my work horses,I am very particular ans choosy about them,I am a eam player and always insist on good coordination between team members and good knowledge of the equipment to use,I was very lucky to have as my boom operator Mushtaq Sheikh, I simply adore him, cold and composed and can read my mind,he knows what I need for each scene and shot and is always a step ahead of time and setup and hence pir understanding was awesome,this film wouldnt ahve been possible without him Mushtaq on discussing with him any situation would tell me, Sir is that what you wan, leave ot to me, your style of working is same as that of Resul sir and you use same equipment,so I know it, rest assured,rest of my crew 2nd boom/sound utility-Sameer,Cable man-Imran,sound asst-Mandar were outstanding in thier effort and contribution to the film,we worked like a well oiled machine throughout and the shoot was never held up for sound I went through the script thoroughly and made my personal notes,in a few days I was well versed with the script and could actually see the film unfolding in front of my eyes,i was one of the best scripts in a long time, very visual, lucid and ive, the characters seemed to come alive along with the narration, and each of them was well fleshed out along with the locations and accompaniying sound.The scripts went through many drafts before it reached me and I had the shooting script, as always I started living the script before te actual work began, i played the scenes back n forth in my mind and had the characters paly out the scene along with a camera movement of my thoughts,my sub-consious mind lapped up the subtle nuances of the screen play and knwong who was playing whom, I enacted the scene in my mind,which subsequently made it easier when I actually shot the film

As a part of teh pre-production, I started breaking down the script in my own way, equipment, cat, locations, prodution support,crew were slowly delved into and discussed, thrashed and sorted, I had along discussion with my Producer Shonali Bose regarding the above details and gave her my requirements and what needed to be done for sound in aprticular and shoot in general, I send it in writing as well, so as to have all on the same page,there wasnt much issues and rest the ones to be sorted had to be done on locations while on shoot I didnt have a location /tech recce which is paramount for this kind of film, so I was a little cautious/unsure of what I would enocunter and made sure my notes/queries well send much in advance and loooked into The shoot started off in Kolkata an later shifted to North Bengal and back again to Kolkata and finish there. Kolkata is not a very location sound friendly city city to shoot,though myraid films have been shot there and it is really a challenge to get good production sound tracks there in those real locations, being period film added to my challenge and woes,with questions being asked if we could eliminate extraneous modern day sound/noise which would make my tracks unusable and to do dubbing later on One of the major challenges on working on such a script is that authenticity was very important and makig it sound natural was very diffiuclt and important, in these days of loud and noisy sound tracks, a natural soft sounding dialog track would be difficult to get or rather impossible, well there was the challenge and everyone talked loud how it would be impossibel to get usuable sound in kolkata city, given the traffic and locations,I ate dubbed sound tracks and made my choice clear and loud to my team that we need to get almost 100% sync tracks and everyone has to chip in,I wanted to get the actors sound as natural as possible and hated if they needed to dub later unless it was for a creative reason,with so many parameters an conditions-period, sync,no dubbing ,I made up myself in proper mental gear to take Chittagong head on,working on PEEPLI LIVE had given me a great oppurtunity to create sumthing out of nothing,where you ahd to work in extreme constarints of locations, actors, time etc, so this was just a carry forward of that.