Finally we saw the completed film, as a married print. Sound and Picture together, as imagined and what we have worked towards, for the last few months. On the big screen, at the Adlabs Preview Theatre.

So this was what it took finally – 40 days of pre-production (with more than a few of those going for hectic location-hunting).

We shot for 28 days, about 9 hours of footage, and stayed well within budget. For that, we had to ensure we did not cross 4 retakes per scene. Barring 3 or 4 instances, we did not – in retrospect very surprising, given that we’d had next to no rehearsals previously with the cast (as Sushant and Rajat were both too busy) or with crew (as no one had time think, let alone spend time at the location). There were lots of hyphenated responsibilities, and the general level of chaos was too high to allow for clear thought-processes to take charge.

This is why it was disappointing to see the level of urgency go down after the shoot. My own team, led by my editor’s choice to not carry his responsibility in a single-minded way (he decided to get married immediately after the shoot, just before the edit), started the delays. Then production took over and finally even the producer sat for weeks on matters of formal legal letters, when no activity happened. Later, the creative team was pressured upon to finish the work by staying up nights, but when the work was completed with the requisite exertion, there was no one to clear bills and release the work from the studio so that the next stage could begin. Sometimes, with weeks of no activity, I would wonder how we could have used that time to think and plan things better if it had been available to us before the shoot. It made a mockery of all the urgency we started the project with.

Anyway, all that is the nature of the beast as they say, and the film is finally over. The key members who saw the film at Adlabs sometime back, were all happy. It seems to have turned out well – the visual execution is neat and clean, the sound design imaginative, the music – though sparse, seems to be complementing rather than underlining (which was the initial intent). It is the film I set out to make, actually better than that – as I could not imagine the inputs of the cast and crew fully.

My only fear is that the second half might be too fast-paced, there are so many little moments and jokes that are likely to be missed, but then that also gives it good repeat value. I suspect the 2nd and 3rd viewings of this film will be the most enjoyable; don’t know if that’s a good thing.

The responses to the film from unlikely sources make me feel optimistic, but I daren’t give full rein to it. High standards, low expectations – as Indian Ocean’s Rahul Ram says. The Foley guys loved the film, the DI people made a special reference to how “enjoyable and fresh” it was, the Dolby guy said he was “pleasantly surprised” at how “intelligent” the film is, and the Censor board viewing had a member calling up a person from the cast he knew and raving about the film. These are people who see several films a week, and are not given to undue enthusiasms, so who knows what signs their reactions bear? But the film and its creators have been through too many disappointments in the last 4 years, so enough said.

At the end of it all though, it is a bittersweet feeling. Happy to finish the film my way, our way, with a team of mostly first timers, within budget by and large, within schedule as far as it was in our control. But disappointed about the fallout in the core team that worked on it. Disappointed with myself for allowing myself to be taken for granted for so long, for giving two people far too many chances than they deserved (at the cost of others).

Both, the Indian Ocean film (Leaving Home) and Hulla (name finalized, and stuck to, despite Hulla Bol, thank god) happened simultaneously, and both these people worked on both projects as part of the core team, so it’s a blur as to who screwed up exactly where. But the moments are clear – the mistakes, theirs and mine, are apparent.

When a newly hired guy with no experience in filmmaking does not show any initiative in learning on his own, does not want to read up on anything (like FCP manuals just as one example) or even pick up from watching others work, does not show any interest in seeing films as homework for references, you don’t let it pass hoping he’ll come around. When he constantly slips up, often repeating mistakes, just shouting at him is not enough, especially when he’s not taking steps to change anything. When he talks to his girlfriend on the mobile for 2 hours during a shoot, neglecting his work, and preventing anyone from interacting with him whilst setting up the shoot, you don’t just admonish him. When he rudely shouts back at you in front of other unit-members that he too has “a personal life”, you don’t just shout back. When he abuses you behind your back during a shoot in front of other unit members, you don’t overlook it. When you hear he’s going around saying that the film is being ghost directed by the Chief AD, you don’t merely treat it as a joke. When he asks for money to deliver something to Delhi where he is going anyway, “at least half of what you would pay the courier”, you don’t laugh it off. Neither do you give him “another chance” when other colleagues complain about highly inappropriate behaviour at the workplace. You don’t allow your professional connection with his brother to blinker you from treating him as a regular employee. You don’t wait for the umpteenth screw-up, after 15 months on the job, before finally sacking him.

The accumulation of misdemeanors is embarrassing to me, to see how much he got away with. And the worst thing was – he wasn’t the only one. His senior turned out to be even worse. Again, I have no one but myself to blame. The cues were always there. Four years ago, I may have given myself some credit for promoting a production assistant to becoming a key member of the direction team (and eventually leading it) and then rewarded his focus and commitment at the time by giving him the chance to edit the film as well, without really seeing any work in that capacity. I didn’t stop and think why a trained editor from FTII wanted to be in production. When I finally understood the real reason, it was too late. It was all about power – handling money and people, not about doing something imaginative within the medium. I overlooked the fact that he came to me in 2006 after being fired mid-production from his previous job, for alleged misappropriation of funds. Blinded by my own sense of “picking out talent”, I allowed him to take charge. His true colours began to slowly appear - juggling facts, manipulating people, lying at will when it suited him, rarely taking deadlines seriously (though pretending to), not taking accountability often, playing godfather to people and giving them assignments on both projects even when they were sometimes not suited, playing politics even amidst a core team of four, and worst of all – trying to create his own work culture – of habitual unpunctuality and false commitments. To make things worse, he got drunk on the sets once, while shooting was going on, and misbehaved with people even before we had packed up. A stern warning did ensure this did not get repeated but was that enough, I wonder? Also as the editor of the film, a week before his first feature film was to be edited, he chose to get married, a bizarre occurrence with someone who should have been focusing on the most important professional moment of his life thus far. Like a bloody idiot, I allowed his fundamental professional competence to blind me to his professional ethics, or at least to justify it to myself. Soon, he was playing power games with me, at the Hulla shoot, and also after it. All I ever did was shout and scream, but never one thing to end his shenanigans conclusively. Maybe I was worried about rocking the boat, when two high stress projects needed to be navigated through their closing stages, and he was supposedly my right hand man. I was weak perhaps, and I paid for it at the end, as Leaving Home was finished shabbily by him, without accountability. His closing response was – “In a project of this nature, there will always be some mistakes.”

It was important for me to list these montages of moments. In fact, I feel like framing the last two paragraphs and putting them up on my office wall, so I never repeat this mistake again.

Interestingly, when I finally asked him to leave, Hulla’s producer hired him without even checking the reasons of his departure with me, which of course is his prerogative. Perhaps my reputation of being difficult and rude at times immunizes whoever works with me, for people who don’t see the day-to-day workings.

At the end of the day, I wouldn’t want to romanticize this whole “first-timer” thing, because the only person it really helps in the long run is the producer who gets away with paying ridiculously low salaries to get his film made (of course, in projects like this, everyone gets absurdly low salaries). Sure, we delivered as a team despite our fair share of individual screw-ups, but all the learning was on-the-job. Sometimes I think it would have been nice to draw from superior experience and ways of working, at least a little bit. Oh well, next time.

However, the biggest learning for me is that any team with focus and drive, even despite differences amongst themselves of wavelength and attitude, can still make the project work out well, provided the work ethic and vision is clearly laid out. The challenge is to keep those two things consistent right through the project.