SearchingSirocco

I first met Kamlesh in 2010 and it is very important for me to write about him because he has been a tremendous influence in my life during my prolonged stay in Mumbai. I was struggling at the time when we met as I was new in the film industry and I was working in one film where officially I was production assistant but later I was thankfully burdened with responsibilities of an assistant director and art director too. Not that I was given those responsibilities but I took those responsibilities because I just wanted to work as much as I can on sets and understand filmmaking in a better manner. I had the best time of my life working on that film and I met some of the good people there who became my good friends later. One of them, and most important of them was Kamlesh. Kamlesh’s full name is Kamlesh Puri Goswami and he is a Marwari. He can speak four languages fluently- Marwari, Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi, and now he speaks English as well. He is good at accounting by birth ...

A day ago I met an IPS officer. He is a good friend of mine. He is posted in Kerala and his name is Prateesh Kumar. He was here on a short visit to Mumbai so we decided to take a stroll around seaside just to remember the old times and talk about other stuffs of life. We decided to have lunch and dinner together and he was paying the money at every shop we went as I had not a single rupee in my pocket. I told him about my financial conditions which are not very bright and I told him that when you are in film line, nothing is certain and there are always good and bad phases that awaits you. You don’t get monthly cheques and there is no certainty from where your next cheque is coming from. He asked me whether he should loan me some money and I told him that I never borrow money from anyone. He understands my ego and self-esteem as we are childhood friends and our families are close together so he stopped insisting much. But he did ask me what were the problems I was facing and I to...

I needed to have a review of a Rajnikanth's film on my blog, it was a necessity. I chose Baasha because it going to released again soon, a digitally remastered version of it. Baasha was the film which gave Rajni's stardom new heights. He became sort of a Demi god after this film. It was a phenomenal blockbuster and no one had seen such euphoria before. Frankly, since i am not a south Indian person so i don't find any special in Rajni's acting. I don't even find his film good or excellent. They are entertaining but then that's that. But what impact's one thinking is the craze of people towards Rajni. Baasha was developed in Rajni's mind when he was working with Amitabh Bachchan's film 'Hum'. He took a part of the film's undeveloped storyline and developed it according to his own culture and thinking. I watched Baasha two years back on Youtube. I wanted to watch it earlier but I couldn't find any copy of it with subtitles....

I am sharing this video with you so that you can rehearse the lines if you want to be an actor. I love this whole scene when i first watched it ages back and it still haunts me. The way James Spader has performed this whole scene astounds me still. The perfect intonation, gaps, punctuation, speeds, pauses and whole performance is just scintillating. the big revelation came to me when i started auditioning for acting and I decided to create my showreel. So I downloaded this episode and wrote down the entire speech. It is way too long firstly, and secondly English is not my first language so there was difficulty in speaking this language. But destiny had some better plans for me and taught me something which I could not have learned otherwise. I started reciting the lines along with Alan Shore and when i did that i was awestruck more by the acting skills of James Spader because speaking along with him I tried to follow his pitch and pauses and it was very difficult. It seems a...

Writing. It is one of the most beautiful things invented by human beings. The invention of writing has opened so many ways to store the human experiences life for infinite time. It is a process of recording your thinking and giving a life to it and putting your brains on paper. But most the writers I meet here in film industry have no idea how to write a film script or screenplay or what is the difference between the two. There are lots of words that you are going to hear from the mouth of producers who will ask you to present them with Loglines, Synopsis, Screenplay, Story, Script or may be some new fancy words and you  might get afraid as well as confused what they actually mean because the meaning of these words might take away your job from you. So let me just help you by describing a little bit what these words really mean. These are the definitions that I have made up due time and these are definitely not standards, but they will help you understand these things better....

Here are 12 important rules no low or no-budget Film Making that I have learned while making my own films AMPHIGORI and LASAFOT.  They are based on my personal experiences and have worked for me. Pick anyone who wants to act for free, observe him and then write a character in your film according to how he actually behaves in real life.  Shoot in your hometown. There you won't have pay for anything and its more comfortable. You will save yourself from Police, BMC( municipality), Film Unions and Locations charges. If you have lights, shoot color; if you don't have lights shoot black and white. Black and white looks more classy with contrast and gives you an edge in Film festivals. Also in B/W cost of art direction and location can be easily saved. Pick any camera to shoot your film, even mobile camera. Technology has really advanced, check out the new Samsung Galaxy which offers 4k resolution, so don't wait. I had made my first film promo on sony cybers...

"Two Men looked out of prison Bar, one saw mud and other saw Star" One of my Actor Friends once told me a story about Mohammad Gauri (I hope I am remembering the name correctly) that when he came to India, he came with boats through sea and when all his soldiers landed in India, he ordered to burn all the boats. He was asked the reason by one of his ministers and he told him that if the boats will be there, the soldiers will  have a dubious state of mind as they will be having an option of safe return in mind because of which they won't give their complete efforts in war. But now since the boats are burned, they are left with only one direction to proceed with one single aim, win the war or die. There is no option of retreat for them.  On that note; Here are Fifteen things that may help you in your struggle. 1.      First and foremost rule, start calling yourself an Actor. If you are embarrassed about your profession or your passion, you can never be an a...