COLT: Finally Releases on YouTube

"The initial script was written only in 2 hours."
"The only professional on the set was the director of photography."

To get a dolly shot, we made the DP sit in a walker and made MG push him on a rough, unstable ground multiple times until we finally got a steady shot with the actor's right expression."


These and many more snippets of memorable moments in the making of COLT, I have heard since I have known the crew members of COLT.

COLT is the first short film of Aisle Seat Productions(ASP) and is a conversational thriller.
Although, I have never discussed this movie with the other 2 members of ASP, I am sure that each of them has more unique and still lucid anecdotes to share. COLT is an attempt of 4 engineers, Onkar, Sal, Nazzu and Tushar, at an art, films, which like cricket and religion in India, comprises of fans and fanatics. While each of them chose to make a film for different reasons, spending all their spare time from a full time IT job, one sentiment is common - passion for the art.
 While i was never on the set with the 8 member crew, the people involved have told me a variety of stories. It was shot in 2 weekends, nights included!
It was then I realized: the movies that have gotten me through long boring study holidays, those that I watched by bunking classes and those that I stood in ticket lines for hours to see first week, were indeed a complex art. It has many artistic facets, acting, direction, cinematography and music to name a few. To get all these right and create those few special moments, the emotional attachment and entertain the audience sitting on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, is a challenge! But the process of film making , pre-production, shooting and post production (which I experienced closely), goes on for months and sometime years. To keep the energy going, to not let one's mundane and hectic life sap the energy out of the art, is a personal struggle. How Onkar, lived and breathed this movie, to be able to revive it from the dead after the initial shooting was done is what I have been privy to in the making of COLT.

The frustration, accompanied with the enthusiasm of the the stakeholders as they tried to get the raw footage from the camera onto a film on the big screen, was a tumultuous, tedious and seemingly never ending process for the team. Once the post production was done, the next challenge was how to get people to watch it and if they watch it, will they like it? The stakes were not too high yet they were. ASP didn't have to live up to any prior audience expectations (except for their brilliant 1 minute short-films which had won accolades) so they didn't have much to lose but for all the time and emotions invested in COLT, they had a lot to lose if their audience reacted negatively. For some of them, each reaction would decide if film making should even be considered as a future career.
They held 2 screenings for friends, family and people in the industry, in the 2 centers of cinemas, Los Angeles and Mumbai. They received mixed reactions. ASP heard their critics, trying to absorb what their film didn't do right, while they humbly accepted the praises with happiness and sense of achievement. Like Onkar says, 'When you are an artist, you have set yourself up for ridicule". With that positive attitude, ASP finally made COLT public on YouTube on Dec 30th, 2011...almost 3 years after the idea was conceived.

As a close observer, with no vested interest in COLT, all i can say that it was a long, bumpy ride and they survived it well with grace and confidence.

The voice over in the movie has been recorded at the least a 100 times, at all different times of the day, with different instruments over months until Onkar thought it was fine. The final voice over is what he did in a closed, walk-in closet of his bedroom. This will always be my memory of COLT.

Now that my rant is over, here are the links that I sincerely hope you enjoy as much as I did.
Movie: http://youtu.be/E5wwpUparM4
Blog posts written during the shoots by Onkar: http://amstillalive.blogspot.com/

Go watch it guys, not because my friends made it but because it is good.

All the best to ASP in their future film making endeavors and Happy 2012 to all the blog readers!