हम - a series

So I went to Amit's new Bandra house today, to discuss some work stuff. 

It's an independent place off Hill Road, near St Andrew's Church. Cozy little house, with Amit's books strewn all around, a tiny bedroom, and a big room adjacent to it that could easily be turned into a small studio space. 

Anyway, after we discussed work, I wanted to shoot a short, experimental factual that I'd been mulling over in my head for a while. A series called हम which means 'Us', about us as a people. Indians. 

Multiple 1-minute episodes, each with a different (albeit regular) person, someone you could bump into while walking on the road. 

Could do this with rickshawallas, panwallas, corporate executives, filmmakers, photographers, the whole gamut. See what each person says, what their honest opinion about things is. Ask them questions like: 

1. What's the biggest life lesson you've had? 

2. Do you know Amit Shah? What do you think about him? 

3. Are you able to look at someone and say what kind of person they are? 

4. This Hindu Muslim fight... is it justified? 

5. This caste fight... Brahmin, dalit, shatriya... is it relevant to you? 

6. A lot of people aren't comfortable with the idea of women working. What do you think about that? 

7. When were you when demonetisation happened? What's the biggest way in which it affected you? 

8. In what way was the lockdown good for you, and in what way was it bad? 

9. Do you know Rihanna? 

        10. Do you think the government is doing right by the farmers? 

Etc, etc. Not very esoteric questions, but ones nonetheless that are relevant to us today and could paint a picture of how society thinks. 

Decided to start it off with Amit. The question I asked him was:

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. Do you agree? 

He gave a decent answer. I padded it up with some b-roll that we shot around his place, walking around in the streets near his house. 

Came back home and put together a quick 1-min edit, and was nice to see the idea materialize. It's definitely got a message, but I'm not sure it'll pick up. 

For starters, it's not really entertaining, and I don't know to what extent people will want to see regular people give their opinion about things without knowing much about their background. At least that's what the edit showed me. 

But at the same time, I can't pinpoint what it's missing. Definitely don't want to do a vox pop kind of thing where I or someone else goes around asking people questions. That's just not very appealing to me. 

Meh. At least the experiment happened. Maybe I'll tweak the format a bit, add something, make it crisper, don't know. 

Watch it here if you want :).