Garbage

garbage

(Click on the above name to view the film)

 ~ Overview ~

Written & Directed By : Vivek Kapoor
Produced By : Vivek Kapoor, Shuvam Dey Sarkar, Sourav Dutta
Edited By : Sourav Dutta
Art Direction : Shuvam Dey Sarkar
Music : - N/A
Story-Boarding :- Sourav Dutta


Genre: - Documentary/Drama
Film Type: Slide Show
Run Time: - 4:17 Minutes
Country: India/Kolkata
Language: - Silent
Colour: Colour

Plot: - 'a self realization'

Garbage is a hand painted slide show, that documents the life of a garbage cleaner. Working together with my old chap, the project is really challenging, and I am ready for it..!!

This is going to be an extraordinary experience. Pictures painted first by hand, then given effects in PS and then at last placing them side by side with a perfect background music and SFX, can really make you feel like a film..but its not, its just a slide show.

To some extent you can say that it is an experiment. A single picture can speak thousand words. So let it be a story through pictures. Lets try and make them as realistic as possible. This was what our idea was when we started the work. Working with a very small team of four or five we are trying our level best to put a very realistic visualization of our society.

Garbage is a sort of a documentary (or you can say a slide show) film that we are trying to make, the facts that we are using to make up the story are all real. Its very closely related to the common outlined standard of living of the garbage cleaners, or in simple word Sweepers.

While doing our research work for this project we found how difficult it is to stay alive as a garbage cleaner. They clean our society so that we can stay healthy, but unfortunately no one takes care of their health, not even the government.

The following is a part of our research work...

227 Class IV Pune Municipal Corporation(PMC) employees, with an average age of 45 years, have died in the last 30 months.

They were all working as “conservancy staff” — collecting and disposing garbage, sweeping roads, cleaning underground sewage lines and unclogging manholes.

Records obtained by The Indian Express reveal that according to the PMC’s Employment Welfare Register, 40 such employees have died in the first six months of 2007-08 itself; 107 in 2006-07 and 80 in 2005-06. Incidentally, 2005-06 is the first year for which the PMC tabulated such data.

Of the 107 who died in 2006-07, 81 were men and 26 women.

The age of the victims is a stark reminder of the fact that their deaths were early: 32 were in the 30-40 year category, 38 in the 40-50 year bracket, 37 above 50 years.

Of course, 227 is a small slice of the current 6826 employees in the PMC’s conservancy staff but officials admit that the problem could be much more serious. In fact, the figures came to light only when relatives of the dead filed to claim the Rs 15,000-dole under the employment welfare scheme and a job for a family member.

The Pre-Production

Lots of thinking were done at the initial stage of story-boarding. The story is very simple and straignt forward, but to put that through a slide show was really challenging. Not only that, the story clearly conveys a very strong message, about the society & the life of a garbage cleaner. Time was a very big factor for this project. The main thing is that we can not hurry, the entire slides that has been used in this project, has to be drawn entirely by hand. Though the slides has been dipped later in the added flavor of Photoshop, still the initial work was done entire by hand. And that credit goes to our art director, Shuvam.

The most important part for this project is the story boarding. The entire concept or story was first written down (scene wise), then the scenes were divided into sub-scenes. Then it was the time for story boarding, the first step towards the visualization of the story or the concept. It has to be good, to make this entire project the 'best'. The story boarding for this project was done in the early month of June 2009. Then it was handed over to the art director, for drawings.

Production

Nothing much to say about the production. Its only hard work. Drawing the slides with such an acuracy is a time taking work. So just have a look at the pictures(click here), and you will understand that how much hard word has been put behind this project.

Background Music & Special Effect Sounds

Needless to say that in a silent film the music is one of the most important part and medium of expression. Since there is no dialogues, the music replaces the mood and atmosphere of a particular scene. As a result we spent quite a lot of time in music.

Selecting, editing & applying the right background music at the right place is very important. The additinal sound effects are just like some added flavors, that makes it look little realistic. Keeping in mind that this is a zero budget film, the only source of music is 'internet' & some OSTs of different films. Compiling this all we came across some amazing background scores.

to be continues...