Earlier this decade I made Dososaitees Kilometer, a short fiction film that helped manifest my fondness for narrative and cinema as a medium.

About

Dososaitees Kilometer (237 Kilometers) is a 31-minute hindi language fiction film I wrote, produced, directed and edited. It was created as the deliverable due as my final/thesis project.

The film is available for watching at the end of the page.

Over 10 months, the crime-drama was developed based on a preset list of constraints to avoid common disadvantages that student film productions have to commonly deal with. The aim was to arrive at a finished product that is a satisfactory balance of cinematic vision and that which was practically possible within the set budget and available resources.

Production

Development

Dososaitees Kilometer wasn't the first story I was working on for this project. I had first started on a more ambitious script for another film with 15+ actors, multiple storylines, and with a playtime of 60+ minutes. Months of deliberation after problems during pre-production, I choose to restart with a more practical scope, and a simpler story.

Set in the nineties, the film is about two small-time gangsters taking a road-trip across Western India, and the conversations they have about their past on the way. The name of the film takes from the distance between Ahmedabad and Udaipur, the journey undertaken by the characters. The story takes a lot of inspiration from personal events, and is a coming-of-age that happens over a single day. There was an attempt to explore themes of the likes of loyalty, trust, incomplete information, dichotomy and contrast. The two characters are very different in their morality, belief systems, experiences and goals, but they arrive at a common ground and a sense of catharsis for different reasons towards the end of the film.

Pre-Production & Filming

Once the script was converted into a shot breakdown, I conducted some acting workshops to identity the two lead actors we were going ahead with. We also did multiple recces across the outskirts of Ahmedabad, with some locations being 60-70 kilometeres away. We conducted a props and costumes test, and shot some test footage to develop a treatment sample that the cinematographer and I agreed upon.

There was an attempt to art direct the film to be authentic to the era and to create a shooting schedule that best used the time of the day as required for a shot. We shot for 5 whole days, and were a contingent of 16 people including the charming mechanic that took care of the motorcycles.

Edit & Post-Production

As expected, I didn't have all of the footage I would have liked due to budget reasons. The edit phase was therefore largely divided into some scenes being put together exactly as planned in the shot breakdown, and some scenes requiring a whole rethink as to how they might fit in the film. Once I got enough opinions on the first cut, I began on the dubbing and the sound design, which are critical aspects of dialogue-driven film. Eventually I wrote the score alongside the music-director, and the final film began to take shape.

A Scene From The Film

Here's a quick 3-minute scene from the film. Shot on Day 3 of the shoot, it expands on the differences in opinions and beliefs between the two characters, and reveals the underlying lack of trust. It also shows how inexperienced and unprepared the protagonist is for death, even though he intends to kill.

Pages from the script as used for the scene above.

Behind the scenes on the set for the scene above.

Additional Material

Portrait and landscape posters for the film. They try to recreate the themes of distance-versus-proximity and duality from the narrative of the film.

A detailed 114 page publication called Somewhere Down The Road was also developed as a deliverable due alongside the project. It documents the conception, process and the decisions made during the project in detail.

The Film

If you have made it here and have half an hour to spare, it would be my pleasure to have you kick back and watch the entire film.

Footprint

Dososaitees Kilometer was a landmark project for me in the sense that it let me understand new creative strengths and weaknesses going forward. It let me work on multiple disciplines within film-making, including dialogue writing, art direction and building a background score. I also credit it to first introducing me to some of the more executive aspects of creative projects of scale: man-management, project-planning, compartmentalisation and delegation.