Today is Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s birthday. A very happy birthday ShahRukh! I admire him for his achievements because he came from a simple middle class background and has achieved a lot in Bollywood where friends become foe overnight. He is a hard-worker. He seems to be extremely passionate about his work, film-making and acting.
When I look at film-making from the layman’s point of view or how much ever I have observed while watching Behind-the-scenes episodes just before the release, the creative head in me says:
“Architecture is like Film-making”.
You might say.. Interesting, but how?
Film-making is an act of making films, from an initial idea, story or commission through script writing, shooting, editing and distribution to an audience.
In Architecture, it all begins with a concept in the architect’s mind, like a story in the director’s head. The director is the Architect here. He is the one calling all the shots. He is the controller of the whole environment which he creates in and around his building just like how the Director gets the filming set done by the set designers and with the help of other technical professionals.
The drawing on his desk is his film in pre-production/production process. The main leads here are Light and Ventilation. Just imagine a flamboyantly designed building without these two and you’ll know why I chose these two as the main leads. Without light there is no vision and without ventilation a space becomes uninhabitable. Typically a film-making process involves several people and takes from a few months to years to complete, just like our building-construction process. It also has to deal with a huge range of socio-economic and political contexts and variety of technologies and techniques.
Stages:
Development: This is a stage where the director comes up with the concept and sits around with his assistant directors and the producer (client). Here the producer’s whims and fancies are heard and a product suitable to that is prepared. Nowadays, the producers give creative freedom to the directors. They seem to have this unflinching belief in their director’s concept. The producers are intelligent people. They are investing their hard-earned or hardly earned money on that and they want the product to be a success, a marvel in itself, a thing that breaks all box office records, creates history and an end product so remarkable that it eventually becomes a part of the producer’s and the director’s identity.
A producer chooses the director carefully. Either he goes to the master director or he approaches his assistants to branch out and don the cap of a director, which is every assistant director’s dream. This is why we should choose the place where we want to do our internships/apprenticeships very carefully.We should be choosers at all costs and not beggars. The teacher who guides us is equally important in this business, be it cinema or Architecture.So choosing carefully is the mantra. we are like a pound of clay. Gets instantly molded in the way the master molds it.
Cinema is highly glossed and gobbles up much media space and public attention.Nowadays Architecture too is looked upon as an unusual and an interesting profession. Strangely there is a huge increase in the matrimonial column with “Wanted an Architect-groom” or an “architect-bride”. People jump at the word Architect. Some of my non-architect friends say it is a sense of prestige to have an Architect as a spouse. Architects are sexy. They are everywhere.. doing all sorts of things..creative,industrious,intelligent and fun-loving people who are notoriously known for their risk-taking ability and their readiness to experiments and experiences.
Bollywood is a big thing in India. We all hate it but can’t live without it. It’s like our local markets. We all hate it, don’t want to do a thing about it and the funny thing is we can’t survive without it. We casually ask people ” which movie did you watch recently?” but we usually hesitate OR it is uncommon to ask them “Hey! What book are you reading?” or “Hey! Did you visit that gallery? It has a showcase of paintings done by so-and-so artist.” The generation is changing.
We can’t help.We are like this only!
To be continued tomorrow…in part 2 of this series.
