Category: Kharcha paani

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Talking weddings with The Wedding Filmer

Vishal Punjabi started working in the wedding industry purely by chance – and today, most weddings are incomplete without him.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

He has converted ‘Look-here, look-there’ static wedding videos to marvellous, organic and personal wedding movies that every bride dreams of. Vishal Punjabi, with his boyish charm, is the go-to guy if you are looking to have a treasure trove of shaadi memories. His company, ‘The Wedding Filmer’ is on the wish list of every to-be married couple.

An NRI, Punjabi was born and brought up in Ghana before he moved to England for further studies. Having visited India a couple of times, he definitely didn’t know that his destiny was being planned here.

Their video ‘Heartbeats’ was the first Indian marriage video to enter a film festival. The original background song ‘Din Shagna Da’ in the video, is oft heard today when a bride and groom enter the reception hall.

The Wedding FilmerHis soaring popularity has kept him away from the annual family Christmas dinner, which is a ‘big deal at my place’ he confesses – for the past 5 years! But despite the bane of working in the chaotic and evergreen wedding industry, Punjabi is all smiles. Today he teaches youngsters from various cities how to make wedding videos while capturing the essence of a family. He believes that a wedding is a perfect time to invest in family portraits. And if you call Coldplay to perform, he will be there for sure.

In an interview at TWF’s Andheri office, he reveals his roots, the reason for having workshop sessions and why an original soundtrack is the next big thing in the wedding industry.

How did ‘The Wedding Filmer’ happen?

I was trying to make a film based on an Indian wedding but didn’t have a proper script or well-etched characters. My only connection with weddings till then was my sister’s wedding, and Bollywood, which is not real and so glossy.

So I thought, if I shot a wedding, I would get to meet these people first-hand and know them. So it was a kind of script research while shooting. And while doing that, I fell in love with the whole process. When I did my own wedding video, I realised I loved the feeling of watching other people watch their own film.

It has been four years, ‘The Wedding Filmer’ has taken off but my script is still in process. Despite the time, I am sure the material will be very rich in content and based on human understanding.

15 years in the industry…tell us how you started?

In London, I was designing websites for an Indian company. One such website won a couple of awards. At that time, Shah Rukh Khan wanted to make a Bollywood portal and asked me to come down and design it. But that company soon shut down. So I moved to his production house, Arclight Films and Dreams Unlimited.

Over there, I worked on the website and VFX work for the film Ashoka. Doing Ashoka was fun as it was my first time on a Bollywood set. I had never seen anything like that before. I started doing a lot of VFX and found a niche in advertising. I also did quite a few product designs for SRK – who sells anything and everything from pants to pens. We did commercials for every known product to mankind – including Mankind.

One day my director didn’t turn up for the shoot and that’s how I started directing the commercial. I went on to do some 20 to 30 commercials.

How did the transition from commercials to weddings happen?

When you work for SRK, you get spoilt as a director. You get the biggest budgets, the best DOP, the sets and costumes are always amazing. But when mail.google.comyou need to shoot on your own, you realise you know little about the nuances of film-making.

So I went to visit my father in Ghana and over there I tried making documentaries. That’s when I realised I didn’t know much about film-making. So I started learning about smaller camera formats, editing, bringing down the cost of the project and doing most things on my own. You buying the costumes yourself, go for the recce yourself. This got me more involved with projects.

That is why when I started doing weddings. The purpose was to make really good cinema in a very low budget. At TWF, we try to make a nice film, which if we could release in the theatres, we would. We try and find a story that is so powerful, it can move you to say, “Agar yeh theatre mein hota toh kitna achcha hota.”

Tell us about your shooting process.

It is organic because we capture it from a distance. My beautiful team is the one shooting it. We just try and interact with the family as much as we can and give them their space.

The idea for us is to not direct them. We don’t make them act like SRK and Kajol. These are real people, so we honour their ceremonies, respect their guests and their space.

Today, brides demand that their family or fiancé set aside a budget for a wedding shoot by you. How does that feel?

It is very exciting. You know, earlier we would think we wouldn’t be able to shoot more than 12 or 15 weddings a year. But we are doing these workshops and training sessions and are trying to expand as a team, so that a lot more brides can have their dream come true and we can make it a lot cheaper for everyone to afford something like this. We want to shoot it very nicely and package it the way they want it.

Tell us about your workshops, ‘The Classroom of Love’.

We get thousands of requests every year and we can’t shoot them all. So somebody needs to shoot them because everybody needs a beautiful memory. It is exciting to know that so many people like your work and want to learn from it. So I wish to inspire the participants with the fact that I didn’t learn at any film school. I learnt film-making on my own. In these workshops, I just guide and teach them that they can also learn on their own.

What would you say is the easiest and the most difficult part of the job?

The easiest part is shooting, anybody can shoot. But the difficult part is editing and cutting. Finding the right song, the right mood, the right emotion, the words and to keep doing that over and over again and staying inspired every time – that’s the difficult part.

What do you enjoy the most about TWF?

Meeting different people and the different cultures I get to experience.  I hardly knew much about India, now I get to travel the world. We get to make a difference to people’s lives. We get to work with them and learn from them.

You think music makes for a great theme at weddings. Why?

Because if you record your own song for your wedding, that song will be yours for life. It will be the song which you danced to, it will be the song you walked to, the song that your father gave you away on. It could be the song that will play in the lobby of the hotel when your guests arrve. It could be played on every anniversary.  It is your song, so music becomes the theme of your wedding and it is way cheaper than any Moroccan fibre palace.

Hear the song recently recorded by The Wedding Filmer:

Chal le Chal | The Wedding Filmer

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Kharcha paani

5 things to know before working in a start up

A job in a start-up company is often a rollercoaster ride. Know what you are getting into before taking the plunge.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

These days, several youngsters are opting to intern or even work part-time at start-ups for the work experience. After all, working in a start-up can prepare one for bigger responsibilities in a way nothing else can.

As training grounds go, start-ups can be a valuable space for grooming and shaping young talent to take on responsibility and different roles. But those who are initially daunted are people who join start-ups after working with traditional corporate set-ups, because the work culture challenges all the concepts they are familiar with.

Here are 5 things you should know before you work at a start-up:

1. The pay is low. You can’t expect to be paid as per industry standards because let’s face it, the company will take a while to match itself to industry standards. Besides, start-ups often cannot promise yearly increments, especially in the first two years of consolidating their own business.

For more experienced employees, it is a good idea to negotiate your pay package at the start itself because there will be few revisions at a later stage. Also, don’t expect a huge increment at the end of the year, especially if the company is doing steady business and is not drawing too much revenue.

2. You will work long hours. Any new business puts in long working hours to get ahead. Occasionally, you may have to even work on weekends, but you can put your foot down if you see this becoming a regular routine. Normally, the working hours even out as the days pass, but if you join the company before it officially launches, you are in for very long hours at the office, sometimes for months at a time.

“I interned with a web development company started by four engineers last year,” says Shreyasi Nakwe, a Mumbai-based media student. “I ran errands for them, made copies, typed out endless paperwork, and I was initially unable to cope with working 12-hour days. But I slowly began to understand their work and even enjoy it.”

Working for startups3. There may be no ‘structure’ to your work. Often, the organisation at start-ups is a more ‘horizontal’ one, with about five key employees and one (or more, if there are partners) bosses. Most companies don’t hire too many people to cut down on overheads. The negative here is that often, you might be required to perform several duties at once. A Mumbai based media management start-up two years ago started with just three employees – the owner and two managers. “For the first six months, the three of us would handle all the tasks ourselves – some days I was the CEO as well as the office boy,” laughs Pratesh Doshi, the owner of the business.

If you like to stick to only doing what your role expects of you, do reconsider your decision to work in a start-up, especially if it has very few people on the payroll, or else it might get frustrating for you.

4. You will grow faster. Since most start-ups have a fairly flat structure, with not many bosses to report to, your work is noticed faster and your growth is higher in less time. A small company size ensures that each individual member is being scrutinised closely and his or her efforts are noticed by top management quicker. Hence, it is possible to go from a junior position to a mid-level position fairly quickly, as compared to bigger workplaces.

You must be a team player. “Start-ups thrive on team spirit and team building,” says Rupam Gala, an HR professional who liaises with several start-ups in the country for personnel training purposes. “Employees have to remember that since the company is new, even the owner and CEO are fairly new to the game. In that sense, the entire team is on the journey together.” The company will expect you to pull more than your weight in the initial days of work, and if you have been hired at a senior position, you will be expected to take on a mentoring role. “Everyone has to gel with the team because the nature of the business can change drastically in a single day,” Rupam says.

(Pictures courtesy trak.in, e27.co. Images are used for representational purpose only)

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Trends

Book trailers: ‘Watching’ stories

There is something so inherently wrong about book trailers. This is a book geek’s rant, but it bears thinking over.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

Ours is a generation of consumers. We are not just fashionably materialistic but also nerdy in our hoarding ways. And so, books aren’t meant to be passed on from one sibling to another, not unless they are super expensive. With the advent of the Rs 99 only book, everyone is a reader. And thanks to the marketing gimmicks which are meticulously planned, one hears more about the book even before anybody reads it.

The story of the IITian writer is now legend; he wrote a book categorically with a marketing vision in mind, and the woman editor of a prominent publishing house rejected his draft for reasons quite literary. She stood her ground for rejecting his supposed magnum opus. But his book finally found a home, and his first ‘blockbuster’ book created a furore. This gave many Dalal Street writers and IITians with scant knowledge (and regards) for the rules of English grammar and sentence construction the impetus to start writing books. As long as the cash registers are ringing, who cares!

After the books, come book trailers

The latest to join the marketing brigade are the book trailers. Yes, you read it right – forget waiting for a plum movie deal to come their way, the over-imaginative publishing teams are giving the readers a sneak video peak of the upcoming books. Animation, visual effects, voiceovers by stars and a launch pad for the trailer attended by Bollywood stars…this is how future ‘successful’ books are anticipated and marketed these days.

Amish Tripathi’s no-holds barred Scion of Ikshvaku trailer had set tongues wagging even before the hugely successful book launch. With the slick animation, one feels the book might have been written for a television adaptation in the future. There are other book trailers wherein the protagonist narrates crucial paragraphs to intrigue the readers among the viewers. And there are a few authors who like to question the audience on the perplexities of the character’s situation – thus building the suspense.

 

Do we need to market books like this?

But these marketing ideas rob away the charm of a book. Each book, I believe, has a unique voice. And that voice is the one given by the reader. The world an author creates with his words can be interpreted in myriad ways by each individual reader. Our experiences and circumstances give the book and its character a unique shape in our imaginations. This silhouette will forever be etched in our mind and that is what makes books and their stories memorable.

It is said each book comes to you at the right time. So while a Romeo And Juliet will be taught and read in school, it is only when you experience the first throes of love will you grasp the true meaning of Shakespeare’s words.

By releasing book trailers, marketing teams are subtly telling the readers ‘how’ to read. These dictate what kind of voice the book’s protagonist should talk in, how they should look and much more. One of the reasons movie adaptations of books are disliked by many readers is the loss of the unique voice. With every reader being forced to imagine the book as interpreted by the director, it loses its charm.

Your mind’s eye is what binds you to a book. A few exceptions to the movie-book adaptations are the superhero and sci-fi fantasy films. Their futuristic world is undoubtedly hazy in everyone’s mind and hence a clear image of the author’s writings is appreciated.

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series is another exception. The happiness and thrill a reader feels when Harry enters the magical realm of Hogwarts and seeing it on the screen is what makes the series more lovable.

As for the Indian book trailers, only time will tell how profitable they are for the publishers. Till then, let us just wait and ‘watch’ these books.

What do you think of book trailers? Tell us in the comments section below.

(Picture courtesy indianexpress.com. Image is a file picture of Amish Tripathi’s book launch)

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Trends

Mumbai is choking on its own filth

The BMC’s environmental status report for Mumbai and an independent report by city-based NGO reveal disturbing pollution levels in Mumbai.
by Praja Foundation, Mumbai

Mumbai is home to 12.44 million (enough to fill the Wankhede stadium approximately 376 times) people, today. Every sixth Mumbaikar hails from a slum.The net waste production of our city is over 10,060 MT (Million Tonnes) of garbage everyday. The waste is disposed at the Deonar and Mulund dumping grounds,both of which have been due for closure since more than five years now. Cars on Mumbai roads, cause untold congestion, air and noise pollution.Toxic nitrogen dioxide (causes acid-rain, and ozone layer depletion resulting in hotter summers) and Suspended Particulate Matter levels are rising every day.

Water contamination

Water contamination levels in Mumbai reached an all time high at 19.9% in the 2012-2013 period,then,dipped to 10.84% in 2013-2014. C-ward leads in level of water contamination, followed by L-ward. Water is most cont amina ted during monsoon, bec ause of bacteriological content. Results of this are reflected in health. L-ward reported highest number of Diarrhoea cases:11,967 (2012-2013) and 9,631 (2013-2014). Water contamination in M/W, L and N ward has been constant through the last three year period,reflecting badly on the ward’s efforts to deal with contamination. G/S and H/E ward managed to reduce levels of contamination greatly this year, while C-ward which had the highest level of water contamination in 2012-2013,has managed to come back down to its 2011- 2012 level.

Sea water

The Coastal sea water shows remarkably high levels of Disolved Oxygen (DO),Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Fecal Coliform.At high BOD levels, organisms like leeches and sludge worms become numerous.While organisms like caddis fly larvae and mayfly nymphs which are significant food for several fish (trout, crayfish,salamander, frog, bats) and water bird species,die.The presence of high levels of Fecal coliform proves that high levels of human and animal waste is dumped in the water. Fecal coliform attracts dangerous waterborne diseases such as giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis (diseases of the intestine).

Air pollution in MumbaiLandfills

Most of Mumbai’s daily waste goes to Dumping Grounds at Deonar (132 hectares) and Mulund (25 hectares). Both these dumping grounds have been scheduled to close for years now.

Sewage

The 2013-2014 report does not to say anything about the status of the last year’s projects. Sites of Water Pollution Vakola Nullah Mithi River 9 locations 26 locations Ingress of sewage flow water pollution Mithi River flows majorly through Kurla,Saki Naka and Powai.Kurla is in L-ward where the maximum number of Malaria and Diarrhoea cases were seen in the last year.L-ward also has the second most contaminated water.As per Praja’s data L-ward councillors ask (save,Anuradha Pednekar and Saeeda Khan who are members of the Public Health commitee) an average of one questions per year on the topic of health.The councillors need to raise more questions on this subject to bring about positive change in the situation. Average Dry weather flow capacity of the greater Mumbai sewage system has not increased by even 0.1 MLD in the last one year – both reports have the same numbers.

(Pictures courtesy sites.google.com, www.mpg.de. Images are used for representational purpose only)

 

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Kharcha paani

Rs 9,000 cr for Mumbai’s coastal road?

A report studies the proposal to build a coastal road and reveals that it will dishouse hawkers, affect the beaches and ecology.
by Praja Foundation, Mumbai

The often repeated phrase of developing Mumbai into Shanghai, or for that matter, an International Financial Centre (IFC), has been a product of the imagination and aspiration of a lot of people, including citizens and planners, and recently by our Chief Minister, Shri. Devendra Fadnavis. No doubt such ideas and intentions to make Mumbai a world class city are appreciated, but the problem arises when the city is unable to provide even basic amenities such as good roads, affordable housing, mass transit etc.to its citizens, which makes the dream of IFC much more distant. Moreover, such aspirations of creating a world class city always miss out on the question of how to achieve it. The policies and steps to achieve the goal are always absent even in the articulations of the chief minister.

A proposed Western Coastal Road (WCR) (costing Rs 9,000 crore), which will join Nariman Point in the south to Malad-Kandivali areas in the North is expected to be completed in the next two years. The said road is planned to be used for high speed commuting as a part of the development process. It is evident from the proposal that just like the Bandra-Worli sea link this might also become a white elephant for the city from the point of view of the number of people using it.

Moreover, the cost of the project is so high that the amount can be better used for the development of some other means of Public Transport like Railways, Metros or BRTS etc., ensuring efficiency when one compared to the number of people using the present public transport system to Bandra-Worli Sea link. Thankfully, logic prevailed and the other proposed plans as part of the Western Freeway Sea Link Project, including Worli-Haji Ali,Bandra-Versova and Nariman Point-Haji Ali link were scrapped by the Government of Maharashtra. But why replace it with Coastal Road?

One should remember that investment begets investment. Investment in infrastructure inspires investment in construction and property development in the same vicinity. The Western edge of Mumbai is the worst place to encourage new development, because land areas will be scarce and of extremely high value. It will be the development that benefits the very rich and promotes their wellbeing, both for scenic residences and restaurants and fast car movement along the same prosperous Western edge. It will accentuate the divide between the very rich and vast majority of the city’s population, which can be dangerous for the city.

The experience in cities all over the world has been that magnifying the divide between rich and poor in the city is ultimately harmful to both. If we are planning for the growth of Mumbai then there is no doubt it must be eastwards onto the mainland where ample land is available, with a much stronger east-west connection from the Greater Mumbai Peninsula.

Read the entire report here. Read newspaper reports of the proposed coastal road here and here.

(Picture courtesy thehindu.com. The image is an artist’s impression of the proposed coastal road)

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Youngsters are donating blood more than ever before

Young people are considered ‘safe donors’ for others. Hearteningly, the numbers of young blood donors in the country are increasing.
Dr Sunita Dubeby Dr Sunita Dube, Chairperson, MedscapeIndia

Safe blood donors are the cornerstone of a safe and adequate supply of blood to the needy. The safest blood donors are the youngsters from the low-risk populations. Safe blood saves lives – but, for too many patients across the country whose survival depends on blood transfusion, blood transfusion is either not available or not safe. However, one can witness a change in the scenario with an increasing number of youngsters donating their blood on regular basis. These youngsters are quite knowledgeable when it comes to the process of blood donation and post-blood donation care.

Statistics say that accidents, diseases, surgeries and deliveries account for loss of a large number of precious lives due to non-availability of blood. In order to meet the growing requirements, organisations conducting blood donation camps should aim to initiate the youth into voluntary blood donation. Evidence shows that the prevalence of infection with HIV, hepatitis viruses and other transfusion-transmissible infections is invariably lowest among voluntary unpaid donors who give blood for purely altruistic reasons.

Voluntary young donors are more likely to be honest in answering questions about their health and lifestyle that help to screen those at risk of carrying these infections. We should aim at catching them young so that they become our lifelong blood donors and end up being centurion donors. There is an urgent need to organise planned programs to create awareness amongst the country’s population to ensure regular supply of good quality blood – disease free blood. Awareness also needs to be created to help the community understand the advantages of blood donation.

We have been organising blood donation camps on a regular basis. Nearly, 50 to 60 per cent of our donors are youngsters. MedScapeIndia also gives adequate attention to donor care, effective communication between blood centre staff and blood donors and initiatives for retention of voluntary blood donors.

Blood donation activity requires trust and public confidence. It is only through the provision of a quality blood service that the confidence can be built amongst the people. World Blood Donor Day on June 14 is therefore a reminder about the importance of resources needed to help address specific responsibilities of blood donation programs.

(Picture courtesy www.hindustantimes.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

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