It’s been a short week, with Holi on Monday, and Good Friday on, well, Friday. I’ve been trying to write a weeknote for the last two weeks and haven’t made any progress.

Other than typing out so this week was…

But I really wanted to keep a record of how we made Project Paper Heist.

Let’s wind the clock back a little to give some context. A friend of ours has been writing a script for a little over two years. When we first heard him tell the story, Vaidehi was immediately excited and wanted to be involved. We pushed him to start working on this script.

He wrote it. We went back and forth on the language, eventually settling on Marathi instead of Hindi because we felt that it might stand a better chance of a theatrical run as a Marathi film.

For two years, we’ve been talking about the script and pitching it to various actors and investors. This is hard to do especially when everyone – writer/director and producers – are green. Everyone wants to work with proven talent. Filmmaking is a risky business, especially after the pandemic. Theatres have a lot of competition from OTTs, live-streaming, and YouTube. The gap between a film releasing in a theatre and it showing on TV or streaming has become so small that if audiences are even slightly iffy about the film, they tend to stay home and watch it from the comfort of their sofas.

Lockdown forced a massive change in the industry.

So, we’re all trying to figure out how to get a film made and seen by audiences among the deluge of media that’s being made and released every day.

I’m not a fan of calling all that work “content”.

Anyway, two weeks ago, our friend called us with great news. A very well respected actor had agreed to be a part of our film.

That put the project into motion.

In the last three weeks, we’ve brought on various heads of department who have been interested in the film or working with us. Friends who are professional writers are helping to get the script in the best shape that it could be. The call for casting has gone out, and auditions will happen soon. A lot of this work can be done because of the goodwill of our friends and colleagues. There isn’t a budget for it to not be that way.

That brings us to this week. There was a snafu with one of our departments. A miscommunication between the HOD and me lead to everyone thinking that we needed to find a new person. Many frantic calls and negotiations ensued. Luckily, the mixup was sorted out before we shook hands with anyone else. All that was left was for me to make several sheepish phone calls thanking people for their time.

Project Paper Heist is the first film that Vaidehi and I are producing on our own. With our previous projects, I’ve either been completely green and followed directions, or wore many hats and burned myself out. This time, we have started with a small team. It lets me focus on the areas where I can make a difference and trust that other tasks are being handled by other members of the team. It also takes pressure off me because I’m the only person on the team right now who doesn’t know Marathi. Everyone has been kind enough to talk in English or Hindi when I’m around, but it would be a challenge to get artists and HODs signed up without speaking the language that the film is in.