Got this advice from my mentor Gaurav Sareen when I was the lowest low in my life

Start with a problem, rather than a solution. What this means is that identify something you feel is either missing in the world, or something that is wrong or something that is not optimal. Latch on to the problem that you are trying to solve, and then drive solutions around that. The reason is that attaching to a problem can focus you efficiently, too many people make the mistake of starting with what they want to do vs what needs to be done.

Find something you can be exceptional at, perhaps in the top 0.1 percent, if not .01 percent. You don't have to be there today, but you should have a clear line of sight as to how you get there. This would require both capability and passion for the work.

Try to be financially break even or better, beyond the initial phase. You don't want to just have an expensive hobby.

Do not optimize for money but for impact. All of us are fortunate enough that we don't have to work for just sustenance and can think beyond, but it is tempting to keep running the rat race. When I say impact, I mean it is how you touch the rest of the world with your work.

Strike a balance between enjoying day to day and having a long term goal. If you only have the former, then sooner or later the meaninglessness will affect you, and if its only the latter then the daily grind may get too much to bear.

Anyway, you have always shown the drive, the capability, the energy and the will to seek your own path, and with you I am confident that you will take all input and make the best decision, and go for it. Just remember that all constraints are self imposed.

Some poems

Your nani celebrating her birthday in Nasik

Date with Mummy

Before your any film first or last or middle one remember

Take 2 months off - alone
Work on the last draft of the script
Work on the shots
Watch hell lot of films especially touch the masters and top films in color, shot deisgn, emotion and honesty

And only then enter preprod

This is your preprod and value it like you value 100 crores
It will change your life

Way you speak changes the way you think

"These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. What's cool about Kuuk Thaayorre is, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't use words like "left" and "right," and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. And when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would say something like, "Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg." Or, "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit." In fact, the way that you say "hello" in Kuuk Thaayorre is you say, "Which way are you going?" And the answer should be, "North-northeast in the far distance. How about you?"

03:02
So imagine as you're walking around your day, every person you greet, you have to report your heading direction.

03:08
But that would actually get you oriented pretty fast, right? Because you literally couldn't get past "hello," if you didn't know which way you were going. In fact, people who speak languages like this stay oriented really well. They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could. We used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because of some biological excuse: "Oh, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales." No; if your language and your culture trains you to do it, actually, you can do it.

There are humans around the world who stay oriented really well."

choosing colors in film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tILIeNjbH1E

https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/best-uses-of-color-in-movies/

The work room

That I worked from

Papa babysitting u on Father’s Day

Papa's Birthday (2of 2)

Next day Papa took off from work and so did I so we went to Carter’s for a long long walk and u downed 2 coconuts of water (one before and one after) and enjoyed the sea and the waves ...


Later we were at home mostly but in the night when we had almost decided to sleep in, thankfully you insisted on ice cream so we went looking for Hagen daz but stopped midway at la folie again for food and you went crazy there - so happy to eat rose macaroons and spaghetti.. your Papa was happy to drink cold brew and then we ordered more food .. and then you sat on another table (the small place was empty) and started dancing on ed shareen..

It was the best birthday ever..

We later again went for walk (by this time my phone battery had conked off) so I couldn’t take pics..


The waves were hitting the shore and u were running around with so much joy. Later Papa picked you up and put you on his shoulders and you were touching leaves of the trees on the shore. 

Oh I will miss bandstand. And thanks for bringing pure joy for simple things in our lives. 

Ps - you are still obsessed with spiders
Ps2- there is a rat in our house and we have named him Aristotle..
PS3- it was nanajis birthday too

Dear yookster pookster

I love u I love u I love u I love u so so much

Did I tell u - u are in this huge mini mouse hairband phase and that u look like a pea with mouse ears.. choti poti I love u so so so so so much my choti duaghter kisssi



I lived in a barrio
of Madrid, with bells,
with clocks, with trees.

From there you could see
the parched face of Castile
like an ocean of leather.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because from everywhere
geraniums burst: it was
a beautiful house,
with dogs and children.
Raul, do you remember?
Do you remember, Rafael?
Federico, do you remember
under the ground,
do you remember my house with balconies
where the June light drowned the flowers in your mouth?
Brother, brother!
Everything
was loud voices, salt of goods,
crowds of pulsating bread,
marketplaces in my barrio of Arguelles with its statue
like a pale inkwell set down among the hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep throbbing
of feet and hands filled the streets,
meters, liters, the hard
edges of life,
heaps of fish,
geometry of roofs under a cold sun in which
the weathervane grew tired,
delirious fine ivory of potatoes,
tomatoes, more tomatoes, all the way to the sea.

Papas birthday 🍰 (1 of 2)

“The road must eventually lead to the whole world”

Fights with Zain

More learning from cargo / Bhavesh Joshi

Cargo

Every shot has to be good or gold
Between close and long shot (pref take cinematic long shot)
But cool planned close ups add lots of storytelling bits in the film.
Do 3 level of shot breakdown/ first go through script in detail - just jot down layers
/second do the actual breakdown with overheads with a software / third do the final

Keep thinking on the set- the shots you improvised even when your chief ad scorned are adding lots of value so go with your conviction
Look for interesting triangular composition - you can hold longer
Study Kurosawa every month
Work with good actors over non actors


Work very hard on color palette and set design

Take a cinematographer with good lighting sense but also good shot taking sense

A good editor with neat perspective is required but not sufficient- u only have to wrestle though problems and identify beats. So I cannot relax.

One should not relax.

—

Bhavesh Joshi

Don't multitask - focus on your film and nothing else
Don't take marketing lightly
Get clarity on script and if self editing is going bad get a good neat purist editor.

Don't relax in any department. Be anal. Be a gunda

—

If your film is good, you are likeable. So dont have to be too agreaable. be anal. but not arrogant> GO FiguRE.