enLIghtenment 7 - Sahil Bloom

Don't really know who this guy is but I've seen a lot of his posts on LI.

Here goes something called the 4 types of luck: 

What is beauty to you?

Beauty to me is something that's true to itself in a no-holds-barred kind of way. 

Something that is the way it is because it knows no better, because it cares for no better. 

enLIghtenment 6 - Karthik Sridharan

Kinda agree. 

Viewfinder: A sustainable culture

Some days ago I went for a workshop. It was called Viewfinder: A Sustainable Culture and it was organised and conducted by Dipa De Motwane, producer on Jubilee (among a bunch of other films and series) and mother to Vikram Motwane. The workshop was on a Saturday morning at the Sun n Sand hotel in Juhu. 

It was in a small ballroom up on the second floor. They had put up roundtables all around the ballroom and around each roundtable there were 5 to 6 chairs. We all sat in groups, and in my group was Aarti Bajaj, editor of Jubilee, Rockstar, etc. 

The first session was an overview of the production pipeline, in which Dipa aunty took the audience through the whole production process. She peppered the session with bits of her own experience, and kept it interactive by asking the audience to chip in with their own experiences. 

For the most part, the whole thing felt like an 'in' circle because almost everyone knew each other and had worked with Phantom before. Very few folx - like me - were complete outsiders. But honestly, that's the part I cared for the least, so I went around making connections anyway. 

Then we had lunch. After lunch, the group activities began. They gave us a sheet of paper with some scenarios on them, and we had to brainstorm solutions to those scenarios. They gave us about half an hour to brainstorm, then went around in turns asking each group for their solution to the problem. This worked to break the ice among us, and was a good exercise overall. 

After this session, Dipa aunty spoke about her experiences for a bit (again) before breaking into the next session: a panel discussion with 4 guests from the industry. We had Kazvin Dangor (production designer), Vasan Bala (director), Yashoda Parthasarthy (VFX artist) and Shruti Kapoor (costume designer). They took about an hour to talk to us about how as producers we could support them better. Then the floor was open for questions and answers, and that took about half an hour or so. 

Then we broke for tea and snacks, during which time we socialized some more. I went and spoke to almost everyone, exchanging numbers and handing out my new card. 

The last session was a budgeting overview session by Dipa aunty. She sat on a chair and spoke to everyone this time. This was way more interactive as she threw it open for everyone and fielded questions from the audience. This went on for about a couple of hours, until we finally closed around 7 pm. 

All in all, it wasn't a great workshop or anything. Just about covered the basics. Even more surprising, the 'sustainability' part of the conversation only addressed recycling plastics and using matka water on set. Mental health, gender & disability inclusion, etc weren't even touched on. I get that neurodivergence is a very new concept for most, but LGBTQIA+ awareness should be there in media circles at least by now. 

Anyway, I thought of making a note of all this because we want to do workshops too. We want to see if this kind of a format works by calling in small groups of parents, caregivers, teachers, etc, and doing a neurodivergence 101 primer, across India. Even potentially get a brand on board. 

Must put down all the segments, resources, subjects and formats we could explore. 

Here's a group picture from the workshop - 

OS rollback

A couple of days ago, the 'update system settings' icon on my macbook really frickin' pissed me off. Enough to consider that damn update and just get the icon out of the way. So I installed Ventura and did the full upgrade. Took about 15 minutes, and then the laptop was back on. 

The first half an hour was good, where I explored the new iconography, colors, features, etc. Then I started Ableton to do some Kontakt work. It ran well for about 5 - 10 minutes, while I was working on some light patches, but then as soon as the load got heavier, the damn thing began to lag. 

Now, it wasn't so bad that I couldn't run the instrument at all. But it was bad enough so that whenever I would add more instruments to the track, the whole thing would lag like crazy. 

The laptop was also overheating like crazy. So, for the first time in my life, I decided to do a Mac OS rollback. Here's how to do it, for future purposes: 

 

• Make sure you're not skipping more than 2 OS versions. 1 is ideal. 2 is the most you should go. 
  
  
• Use the App Store to download whichever OS version you want to install 
  
  
• Take an empty USB drive that can hold more than the size of the OS installer 
  
  
• Go to Disk Utility and erase the USB. Name it USB and format it in the style of MAC OS Extended (Journaled) 
  
  
• Once it's erased, go to Terminal and run this command: sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USB --nointeraction 
  
  
• Enter your password 
  
  
• Take another empty hard drive that can hold more than the size of your Mac's hard drive. 
  
  
• Go to Time Machine, follow the instructions there and back up all your data to the current moment 
  
  
• Restart the laptop. Hold down Cmd + R to boot in recovery mode 
  
  
• When it throws up options on the main screen, choose to Erase the MAC OS HDD (takes about a couple of minutes at best) 
  
  
• Restart the laptop. Hold down Option while the laptop boots up 
  
  
• When the options pop up, click 'Install Mac OS *name*' 
  
  
• Enter your password, click continue, and click on the Mac OS internal HDD
  
  
• After installation, it'll ask you whether you want to continue with the blank HDD or migrate data using Time Machine. Click on the Time Machine option 
  
  
• This takes about 45 minutes or so, and when done, your laptop is like the older version of itself but with the OS you want

So yes, I'm running Monterey for now, which is higher up than Big Sur but not significantly better than it. The laptop's still heating up, so don't know how that will pan out.   

But if this doesn't work, I'm going to go back to Big Sur. Have used that on the office Mac computer and it works like a breeze. 

Edit: 2 days later - Did this. Went back to Big Sur cuz Monterey sucks too. Laptop's not heating up with Big Sur. Not yet at least. Also, made the bootable drive a bit differently today- dragged the location addresses and files over to Terminal and found out that it puts in the command by itself. Also- the process was much longer today, but went as smoothly as ever. 

Edit: All right, f this. Sitting in August and the office machine has still not adjusted to Monterey. So screw it, rolling back to Big Sur 11.7.7. 

Edit: Rolled back to 11.7.7 but it just wasn't going past the login screen. Figured it was an issue with my Time Machine, so erased the HDD and reinstalled Big Sur 11.7.9 without loading up a TM backup this time. 

Which basically meant I sat and spent my whole evening (Aug 21) installing back apps and plug-ins. On the plus side, the machine is super fast now, so the editors will thank me.  

Here's a video to come back to: 

No more installing updates. 

Edit Sep 16 '24: 

Power off the laptop without the USB stick

Cmd + R

Select Utilities in the mini bar

Click Startup Security Utility

Click ‘Medium Security’

Click ‘Allow booting from external or removable media’

Shut down

Insert USB stick

Hold ‘Option’ while powering on MacBook

enLIghtenment 5 - Prateek Shah

Prateek Shah runs a website called Digital Defynd which is kind of like an aggregator of online courses. I really like some of his advice and general tips on entrepreneurship and running a business. 

 

enLIghtenment 4 - Smita Ram

This one's nice because it's got some info on work in the social sector. And some nice insights on general entrepreneurship as well. 

enLIghtenment 3 - Alex Pall

Most of these messages are not what they seem to be. Most of this talk is best taken with a full cup of salt. I know all that. But still, on bad days, it's still nice to read these. Somehow works wonders for the dopamine release. 

 

We bought a shoot backdrop... finally!

Up until now we'd been shooting in the studio against the white wall. 

We keep talking about getting the backdrop, but never end up doing it. 

Then last week, someone was watching an Instagram video, and said we should just get that backdrop. 

So we chose two colors, over which there was some debate. Finally, we got a blue one and a beige one. 

Just this morning we set it up. Looks quite decent, although we did have to use some clamps at the sides to stretch it out and cover the wrinkles. 

Even shot a tiny little bit without any lights just to see what the frame would look like. Ngl it looks pretty kickass. 

So that's that. New backdrop for all our shoots. 

And if we get bored of the colors, we'll just have to get new cloth. Everything else is already set. 

Creative process

Step 1 - Creative Direction by Ray Smiling 

Step 2 - 6Ws & SQVID 

Mirch masala - Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies 

Shuffle around.  

enLIghtenment 2 - Jeff Bezos

So another one of these Linked In videos that really hit home. 

Especially where he says: “You can't follow the fashion when you're trying to do a startup company, or really anything in life. If you're going to build a company, pick something that you think is interesting, that has the intersection of genuinely creating real customer value, and then just stay right there and let the wave catch you.” 

Sounds pretty much like what we're trying to build here.