music video : VOICE by pentagram

Hey guys..
I had quite an extraordinary weekend and I thought I would share it with you all.
It was one of those rare weeks in Srishti when we did not have any work as such, and almost all my friends had made plans to go back home. I tried to plan a trip for myself, but many times things don’t work out the way you want them to… and same was the case with me!
So a few of us who had nothing to do over the weekend decided on making a music video for the song voice by pentagram. You must have seen the advertisements on VH1..
We were five of us.. I know you don’t know any of them but I will name them nonetheless…
Mana, akshataa, karno, kavya and me.

Day 1:
Saturday, 17th feb, 07
We decided the story line… we were going to amalgamate 3 different stories which revolved around a misfit school girl, a coconut wala, and a young wife.
The base idea had an undertone of a cliché story… but we were proud to be the young budding designers of India and were sure that we would be able to shoot it in such a way that it looked good! U see…the most boring idea can be made to look amazing if u just know how to out it across..!

Mana akshataa and I went off to the city to look for the coconut wala and school uniforms. Eventually we realized that a coconut guy wouldn’t be fit for the role and started hunted for other vendors… from tea selling men to men selling slippers in a kiosk, we talked to everyone, took their numbers and tried to figure out who would befit the role.
The role was simple. The vendor had to simply show frustration, shut down his shop and then walk home and bang into this guy playing music and start dancing there! Finally we found a “hot n spicy” corn selling guy who befitted the role perfectly!

Step number 2: look for school kids from whom we could borrow uniforms. We went from café to café, group to group but to no avail. Bangalore school kids seemed to us like these big time nerds who never stepped out of their houses on a Saturday evening.
Eventually sneha sikand who was also to play a part in the video came to our rescue and arranged for a few pairs of uniforms. Hurray..the job was done… and with our stomachs rumbling and thoughts not going beyond cheese cakes…we succumbed and went off for dessert to this lavish place called spiga. Of course after dessert came a full fledged meal but nonetheless…
All arrangements were done… and the next day was bound to be an action packed day! And…it definitely was.

Day 2
18th feb 2007
THE 3 us spent the night in mana’s house since getting back to our pg at night would be highly unsafe. We woke up early, and carrying all our delicate equipment and a massive boom box, we set out for mg road, where the “film crew” was due to meet.
The first scene we shot was that of the corn guy. As he was going to start dancing in the middle of the mg road pavement with passersby filtering through, one of my friends said to me… “SARGAM GO AND JOIN HIM…HURRRRRY!!!” taken aback and yet afraid of the aspect of dancing in the middle of a public crowd, I trusted my “spur of the moment” instinct shunning all thoughts of embarrassment and walked right on, stopped, danced with the corn guy whose name is annappa and then walked on…

It seemed as if I had accomplished something that time. Usually it is only the first step that is difficult… and there I was…who had danced in front of an entire crowd of unknown people! It was brilliant!!!!! And for all those who don’t know I am highly uncoordinated when it comes to dancing ok!

Of course that wasn’t the end of it was it? No!!!
Later we found ourselves donning the uniforms that we had borrowed…. Skirts and shirts.. ahem… I am not used to that!!!! There we were, running around mg road in school uniforms on a Sunday afternoon… shot the necessary shots and moved on to the next part of our story…
SNEHA SIKAND


What sneha had to do was something that mana and I had tried the day before… run on the mg road pavement
She had to get off at a traffic signal and run…
Simply run…. She ran the length of the mg road and a few more here and there…
What is so amazing about it is that we aren’t the daring extroverts who can go ahead and do whatever we want and whenever. Both sneha and me, could possibly not imagine ourselves doing this kind of a thing. Talking about it is easy… and as for the action part of it… the first step is difficult! Very difficult… that day something drove us on. Perhaps it was our group or whatever… in the end of it all… none of us were embarrassed of nething at all… we felt wholeheartedly proud of what we did and didn’t care if the video didn’t work out..(Which we realized later on watching tht it didn’t!)

In the end…. The psycho things that we did…finally got into us this mad desire to do something weird and well… we thought we just collect random public and dance our asses off on mg road…
We spoke to policemen….and got permission. Got these random ppl and well…danced…simply danced on the streets of Bangalore…asking ppl to join in…
Though we had a party and had fun doing what we did, doing something totally wacko something that we would never even dream of doing normally….
There was one thing that we found strange. None of the people we asked joined us… none… there wasn’t neone in the streets who even acknowledged that something was going on….so is that what “public” is all about? Not opening its eyes to what is going around in the world? Are we going to turn a blind eye to everything that doesn’t concern us? Are we ashamed of being a part of something that is done solely for the purpose of fun and doing something that is weird and not normal??
With these questions echoing in our minds, we dispersed that day, happy and proud pf what we had done and sadly wondering the inevitable question…why.