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“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”, says Murphy’s law. Your freshly peanut-buttered slice of bread will always fall on the buttered end. The production you had planned out meticulously over a month will end up falling apart at the last moment.
Quick context- we recently shot a video for Villgro, an incubator for social enterprises. This episode involved two organisations they were incubating called Raheja Solar and Raav Techlabs. Abhijit, our Creative Associate, was the standing Director of the whole film. End of context.
The pre-production was smooth sailing. As the shoot dates for Raheja drew nearer, the details were planned meticulously. The script was ready, we had our subjects on stand-by and the visuals were mapped out.
Then our parade got rained on, literally. A storm warning forced us to change location right before D-DAY. Murphy would’ve said, “I told you so”.
While the situation was not optimal, everyone tried to stay positive. This was no time to panic. We crossed our fingers, packed our bags and set off.
We reached the location all wide-eyed and fluffy-tailed. Our positivity paid off. We found some cool spots to shoot there. We also had an impromptu shoot at the local mandi- which went great (when in doubt, shoot B-rolls, folks). The shoot was back on!
Or so we thought until the farmer we were shooting did not turn up.
Okay, maybe it was time to panic after all. Frantic planning ensued again. Finally, we found a new person…who stayed hours away. We might as well have torn up the schedule at this point.
Nevertheless, the team persevered like Rocky conquering the stairs of Philadelphia. Again, we shot as many B-rolls of the farm as we could. As soon as the farmer arrived, we were ready. Channelling the speed of an F1 pitstop crew, the team popped him in the frame, shot the interview and packed up. All within the precious few hours of sunlight left.
It was a race against time, but we pulled it off! The cherry on top? Thanks to all the extra B-rolls we had shot at the farm and mandi, the final video came out well.
Part of the fun in being in a creative studio is the level of surprise that comes with the job. We can plan the script and shoot to a tee, and the universe might decide to play roulette with you. In retrospect, would we have done some things differently? Probably. Did the sun peek into the frames a little more than we hoped? Possibly. Did we have a final output we were proud of? Absolutely.
You win some; you lose some. Sometimes, all you can do is roll with the punches and make the best of what you’ve been dealt. And always shoot B-rolls.
Watch what we pulled off after the series of unfortunate events here:
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