[DEPRECATED] Secret Filmmaking Effort: Robbery Drama at Indian Convenience Store Cambridge (RODIC)

NOTE: This is the old original earliest RODIC thought, now deprecated

You should read the new RODIC movie post here.

You may also read this old post to see how dumb and chaotic I was when the RODIC effort had only just begun. And to see how it is okay to be so. Because only by taking one step after the other, and learning along the way, do we go from being dumb and chaoitc to being enlightened.

Only this NOTE section was written on 31st March 2021. The rest of this post is just as it was in June 2020, when the last edit was done, before switchinig gears to The Legend of Tesla Nandi.

Summary

1. Primary purpose of this post is to reach out to new people; people who have never known me, my weeknesses, strengths, loves, revolts, failures, etcetera; and invite them to join the RODIC filmmaking effort.

2. Secondary purpose of this post is to help me overcome my anxieties by writing things down; and because I am anxious about multiple things, you might find some digressions here and there.

3. This summary section was added based on feedback from early readers; and the computer programmer in me is flushed, now that this summary has a point pointing to itself. Haha! (only C++ geeks will get this joke)

Okay, so here is the rest of the post –

Why I Am So Scared

How do I say this. I am scared as shit. I was also scared of admitting that I am scared. But … I don't know. I have felt this exact similar kind of fear before. Maybe a dozen other times in my life. The one that I am feeling now however, is uniquely different, and in a way that is difficult to describe.

I hope writing this post will help me calm it down.

Just so you know, I am writing things in this post I am gonna “say things” in this post, not exactly, but a little bit like Brandon Stanton.

I wish I was good at writing in first person. Like Richard Feynman, or Mahatma Gandhi, or George RR Martin. I love their respective styles. But right now I don't have time to put thoughts into words, even if I had the skill 😂 …

… which I don't either.

It is much faster and easier for me to “talk” like this instead. Like how Brandon Stanton does. You should check out his facebook page called Humans of New York. I think that dude is one of the greatest saints of our era. The stories he shares are like, just wow. You should read them all. No, really. They will make you humble, give you strength, make you laugh, make you cry, and feel a million other things. America should give Brandon its highest civilian honor or something. Other countries too actually. It will encourage more people to do what he does.

= = = = =

Coming back to why I am scared.

What happens is, I get inspired about an idea. And in my mind I think it is really important. So I start working on it immediately. I just jump in. Sometimes that is okay, because the work that a particular idea demands, is just some small tinkering here and there. But then most ideas demand actual consistent work, and a lot of it. And in the moment I am convinced, “Oh, of course I will finish the whole thing!".

But then I don't.

Half of the time it is because I get a new idea, so I start working on the new thing, and completely forget about what I was doing before. Other half of the times I am not distracted like that, but I get really anxious midway, and to get rid of that anxiety, I drop what I was working on, and make up some lie, and I never tell anybody the real reason.

All of that is good, but now the thing doesn't get done.

For example this one time I got an idea –

What if we pair up different employees of a company from time to time, and then get them to work from home TOGETHER, from one of their houses, that too on a weekday? And keep repeating this across the organization.

That could lead to so many good things. (1) We can break day-to-day monotony of office. (2) Individuals might develop new career interests and skills, when exposed to interests and skills of their colleagues. (3) With two employees working together from one person's home, we could spark more bottoms-up innovation. (4) Team morale across the organization would increase, HR departments already spend so much money trying to do that. (5) With smart matching for work from home together, we could unleash more cross-team collaboration. (6) Maybe new product lines will emerge. (7) The big picture vision of the company will surely percolate better. Etcetera. Etcetera.

There will of course be many challenges, in getting two people to work together from one person's house. But we can solve them if we build a structured process and an awesome app!!!

I got really excited about that whole idea. So a friend and I teamed up during a hackathon, and created a working prototype. An app called WORK FROM HOME.

After the hackathon I continued building WORK FROM HOME for many weeks. But I never finished it. Because after a while I started working on a different thing – a new storytelling format called PhonePop.

This kind of abrupt jumping from one idea to the other is not healthy. I am aware of that now. I have also learned the importance of focus and sustained work. But learning the importance of something, is very different from learning the skill of it. I still struggle with focus. No matter how hard I try, my mind automatically switches to a new something. And then hours later I am like, oh no!

The only thing I have been consistent with is this one idea. I have been building on it slowly, slowly but consistently. Adding small bits over many days, months, even years. Kinda like collecting coins in a piggy bank. When a piggy bank is full, you are supposed to break it open, and thats it, its party time after that. However, what I am now all filled up with, the only thing that I have been consistent with, is the idea of filmmaking. There are many films I have been writing, but this one particular film is now fully baked in my head. So in this case, actual work now begins, now that the idea bank is all filled up. And last month a mysterious voice said to me, “Okay, it is now time”.

I don't know where the voice came from, but it made me feel a strange calm … and resolve … and excitement. And a lot of crippling fear too. Because the imaginary idea must now be translated into reality.

Fuck!

But I have all this history. Of starting things, but not finishing them well.

Double fuck!!

Plus filmmaking is equal parts commerce and art. So there are artistic fears about – writers block, plot holes, bringing out various emotions on screen, etcetera. And there are entrepreneurial fears like – How will we raise money? Find distribution? Make things commercially viable? And so on.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Ya, all of these things combined is why I am so afraid. If I fail this time, a dream that has been brewing for a long time will die. And the thought of that is pretty scary.

Written Down Mission

I have found that clarity of thought is the best antidote to fear. And I have also found that I don't always have clarity of thought. 🙈

But I do have a “sense” of things when I start out. And then sometimes, with some of the things, after putting in some early work — that sense evolves into a clear thought. You must write things down at that point. Atleast have a written down Mission and a written down Purpose. And then depending on the project, maybe write down other things too.

Fear continues to be around, but now I can keep coming back to a written down mission and a written down purpose whenever I am afraid, or whenever I get unconciously distracted, which happens way too many times unfortunately.

The movie project that this post is about was brewing for a very long time, and has reached the point where a team has begun to form around it. Before I share whatever I am publicly allowed to, about our secret filmmaking effort — things like the film's plot, some character details, current status, project risk, etcetera — let me start by writing down what the mission of this particular movie making effort is.

We are not from the world of professional filmmaking. So as complete outsiders, our team's mission is to make a compelling 2 hour long movie, code-named RODIC, and get it to play across 1000+ theatre screens in the US and in India, before June 2021.

If it sounds like that mission is very unrealistic, wait until you read the film's plot a little further down. Haha!

Btw, as of today, the day of my 34th birthday, which happens to be Shakira's 43rd birthday, we are a team of 2 we are a team of 5, but hopefully we will soon become a team of about 100 to 150 awesome people, and everything that sounds unrealistic will start taking shape.

About RODIC

Let me first tell you about the title of this film, RODIC, before sharing updates on other things, which are probably more important.

Film's Title

I have a little bit of an obsession about naming projects. Whatever the project may be. It could be an app I want to make, a book I wish to write, a blog, a movie, or even my pipedream of going to the gym regularly or doing yoga everyday! I have a name for every effort, and I obsess over how I name them. Sometimes I have multiple names for a project, and usually some deep philosophical stupid-ass reason behind each name too. Haha. I am sorry, but not sorry.

This naming obsession slows things down, I know; what it also does though, is that it triggers a very interesting internal thought process, one that I like to indulge in, and be enriched by.

= = =

How do teams decide what a film's title should be? Should it be long or short? Should it be about a character, or the story, or about the universe that the character and the story are both based in? Or something else?

You see, most films seem to have short titles like Titanic (1997, USA), or Eega (2012, India), or Dangal (2016, India). While some films have long titles too, like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008, USA), or Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Ata Hai (1980, India).

I cannot imagine any of these films with a different title now. I love them all so very much.

What really makes me jump out of joy, are project titles that have a hidden message in them, or clues to unexpected twists, or some sort of easter eggs, etcetera. Take for example the Tesla cars. I got unreasonably excited the way folks at Telsa first created the modelS, followed by modelX, then model3**, and then the modelY, all so that the Tesla cars when lined up together could spell S-3-X-Y

** (Mercedes blocked Tesla from using the name model-E for stupid trademark reasons 😒 but now I like S-3-X more than S-E-X, haha 😅)

Anyways, I have already digressed wayyy too much. So - the film we are making has a geeky and a long title, Robbery Drama at Indian Convenience Store Cambridge, and that title has hidden clues about the movie in it too! Aha!

Just so you know, I am very OCD about this title, and it cannot change. What I mean by that is - as we make the movie it is okay if we change key parts of its plot, or change small bits of dialog here and there. In fact it is highly encouraged that our film evolves, and changes, and every team member brings in something new. But we are not allowed to change the title, because there are many aspects of the movie connected to it. I was even thinking - what if we only have the title of the film on the posters, and nothing else. It is difficult however, to use such a lenghty name all the time, so for easy reference we have the code-name RODIC, which is much shorter and has a nice ring to it. RODIC is not an acronym, it is just a short code-name that sounds cool, and is made up of random letters picked form the actual movie title. The actual title remains Robbery Drama at Indian Convenience Store Cambridge.

Quick History

As a kid I always used to call them पिच्चर; it is a Hindi word that sounds like ‘pitch’ + ‘err’ spoken together, with more stress on the ‘err’ part; and I absolutely loved every single one of them that I saw.

Mostly the bam bam action ones.

As a 34 year old now, I sometimes call them movies*, sometimes I would say lets go watch such-n-such film*, and many a times I still refer to them as पिच्चर (pitch-err)* when I am around Hindi speaking people; what hasn't changed though is how much I love them. And now it is not just the bam bam action ones, now I love them all, and quite intimately or excitedly, depending on the movie.

If they ever decide to give an oscar to the happiest and most greatful audience person, it would go do me 😃

But something started changing. Being an audience person was enough, but not enough. I don't know why.

About 6-7 years ago I started feeling these tugs at my heart. They were drawing me into the world of making films. It started as a gentle invisible thing and grew overtime into a very strong desire. So I started hanging out at local TV studios during my free time, and began writing film plots and screenplays, amongst many other things like doing open mics, editing videos, helping on the sets, etcetera. The stories that would come to the writer me were very grand or complex. They would require very elaborate sets, or a very big cast, or a very long time; for any of them to be made into a good film. I never attempted to convert this plots and screenplays into movies, would not have been comercially viable.

Then one day, after years of agonizing, I thought okay, lets try to come up with a story that can be an awesome theatrical experience, but everything about the story should be based only in one single location. It was immediately apparent that costs would come down drastically if we could do that. Over the next many months however, it also became clear that a film's story cannot be created by force.

A compelling single location story took its own sweet long time to emerge.

Robbery Drama at Indian Convenience Store Cambridge is that ficticious story that emerged. And a town square in Cambridge Massachusetts, exactly halfway between Harvard and MIT, is that single location where all the action takes place.

Genre & Plot

RODIC is a multiple genre movie. Five main genres that apply to this film are:

1. Crime
2. Comedy
3. Drama
4. Thriller
5. and … Street Music! 😃

Along with a running theme of Politics and Religion, which I don't think are movie genres so to speak.

Hey now, not so long ago there were no movies of the genre Sci-Fi, or Horror, or Animation, so it is not like new genres cannot ever be attempted. We are 200% gonna file RODIC under all the above genres on imdb, including Street Music.

Unfortunately I cannot publicly share the entire moive plot, the film being a thriller and all, but a reasonable plot summary would be as below —

RODIC's plot: A corrupt journalist, a corrupt police officer, a corrupt university professor, a corrupt Harvard girl, a corrupt MIT boy, a corrupt store owner, a corrupt homeless couple, some not-so-bad people, and an upright politician — all deviously scheme, and it works out for them all.

Characters & Casting

Listed below are some of the key characters of RODIC. Please note that the movie has many other significant speaking parts, about ~20 to ~30 more than the ones listed below. The best way to audition for them is to attend one of Daily Screenplay Jamming sessions. You can find more details about it in this same post here.

Also, please feel free to challenge the body type and personality of any of the characters listed below. In fact, you are encouraged to do so. I am convinced that doing so will only make our movie better. We have a collaborative team based method of final screenplay writing, and it must be combined with an ethos of challenging the characters.

But sorry, some character attributes are key to the story and cannot change. Like the gender, age, and ethnicity. If we start changing those as well, then it would be like going back 3 years in time, and developing a whole new story. And we are fucking massively late already. ⏰💣💥

Okay, here is the list of characters —

1. Victoria Connors-Cladwell

   Female, early 30's, ethnicity white american. Body type not like that of Margot Robbie (skinny), or Megan Fox (athletic), or Emilia Clarke (petite), or Melissa McCarthy (large), but full-bodied leaning towards large. Character's personality will be expressive, witty, and flirty. Story id of the character is ‘firedJournalist’.

2. Margaret Preston

   Female, late 40's, ethnicity white american. Body type fit to skinny. Characters personality will be combative at times, kind at times, bipolar throughout, and a drug junkie-ish homeless. Story id of the character is ‘homelessCouple’.

3. Vincent Freeman

   Male, late 50's, ethnicity white american. Body type fit to skinny. Characters personality will be talkitive, confident about dumb things, and a drug junkie-ish homeless. Story id of the character is ‘homelessCouple’.

4. Kamal Patel

   Male, early 30's, ethnicity brown indian. Body type slightly larger than fit. Characters personality will be brainy, pervert ish but playful, and vengeful. Story id of the character is ‘storehelpMIT’.

5. Margaret Reeves

   Female, early 20's, ethnicity white american. Body type fit. Characters presonality will be very very smart, politically ambitious, and someone who can play boys like a guitar. Story id of the character is ‘storehelpHarvard’.

6. Jared Koufmann

   Male, late 60's, ethnicity black american. Body type homely to large. Characters personality type is helpful, kind, serious, and responsible; untimidating but firm; and a little OK Boomer. Story id of the character is ‘olderPolitican’.

7. Lulu Alcott

   Female, early 30's, ethnicity white american. Body type hawt model. Characters personality is like that of gossip magazines, full of lies and fake glamor, but there are hidden undercurrents of something deep wanting to express itself. Story id of the character is ‘gossipJournalist’.

8. Kanu Patel

   Male, early 60's, ethnicity brown indian. Body type unfit homely but not large. Characters personality type is business minded, jovial and smiling with good customers, serious with bad customers, very strict with his son. Story id of the character is ‘storeOwner’.

9. Mala Patel

   Female, early 50's, ethnicity brown indian. Body type unfit but not large. Characters personality type is very colorful, more out there than most people her age. Story id of the character is ‘storeOwner’.

10. Andrew Middleton

    Male, early 40's, ethnicity white american. Body type fit to homely. Characters personality in public is witty, I don't give a fuck, and very sure of himself; in private is a little sleazy. Story id of the character is ‘comicPolitician’.

11. Chris Gazley

    Male, early 20's, ethnicity white american. Body type extremely fit and athletic. Characters personality is sexy, heroic, and smart; like Tom Cruise from the first Top Gun, but with a little less hot headedness. Story id of the character is ‘rookiePolice’.

12. Erik Humphrey

    Male, late 20's, ethnicity white american. Body type unathlectic but not large. Characters personality is probably innocent, but definitely very unaware and demanding. Story id of the character is ‘secretCustomer’.

13. Ted Eagerton

    Male, late 70's, ethnicity white american. Body type unathlectic but not large. Characters personality is that of a piss drunk and weird person. Story id of the character is ‘uglyHomeless’.

14. Mangesh Pundarika Mallareddy

    Male, early 40's, ethnicity brown indian. Body type unathlectic and slightly large. Characters personality is that of a getting things done kinda guy. Leaves others problems to others. Story id of the character is ‘restaurantOwner’.

15. Luftiyah Mohamed Abdulmajid

    Female, late 40's, ethnicity brown pakistani. Body type fit but not athletic. Characters personality is that of a very independent and outspoken person. She knows she is pretty, and she knows others know it as well. Story id of the character is ‘secretCustomer’.

Also, also, I know how it feels when we are not picked for a role, I have been there myself. So please do tell us if you have innovative audition process ideas that can address that to whatever degree.

Agile v/s Traditional

Before I tell you the current status of work; things like how much of the RODIC movie pre-production is done and what the next steps are; you need to know how we are following a mix of filmmaking and software making process!

Over the last few years, I met a lot of creative film people. And everybody I met, told me the same thing, “You first need to write down the complete film script. Other things like, putting together a team, raising money, doing auditions, scouting of locations, test shoots, all of that can happen only after you have written down the full script." I am not quoting people word to word, but that was the gist of what every artist and business person I met said. And I am talking about artists from all departments, be it music, cinematography, lights, sound, acting, makeup, or 200 other art forms that come together to make a movie.

The software engineer in me however, wanted to rebel against that rule of “write the complete script first”.

I have since learned the importance and usefulness of wrting down the script, and I am not a stupid rebel anymore.

During the rebel phase, I wanted to write the RODIC film, shoot it, and edit it — all in parallel — and repeat those 3 parallel steps over many consequtive cycles of two weeks each. I was convinced that we would make a better movie that way, because there is a similar process of software making, called agile methodology, and I have seen that process do wonders!

A software team that works the agile way, does the planning, coding, and testing of an app, all in parallel, and in a series of many short sprints. At the end of every sprint, which is about 1 or 2 weeks long, the team does a demo of what they have built so far. Then they use feedback from the demo to plan and code for the next sprint, which is again 1 or 2 weeks long. And then do another demo at the end of that … and so on. After many such consecutive sprints a great software app gets made. This process is called the agile methodology process, because you don't plan the whole app before you begin working on it. You plan and work in parallel, and your team is flexible and fast.

Replacing the traditional filmmaking method, with such an agile method as is, is not the right thing to do. There are many reasons why it would fail. For Example: How would you get all team members available continuously for a long period of time? How would you work out a system of payments?

So it got me and a friend thinking. Could we marry the agile method of software making, with the full script method of filmmaking, and bring out the best parts of both? And in trying to answer that we invented a new stage / process of filmmaking called, Daily Screenplay Jamming. This is how it fits into the existing traditional stages of filmmaking.

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STAGES OF FILMMAKING
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- Development
- Daily Screenplay Jamming (new)
- Pre-production
- Production
- Post-production
- Distribution

You can find details of our team's Daily Screenplay Jamming right after the next couple of sections, that give you an overview of the current status of the project; and its budget, revenue, and risk calculations.

Current Status

Allow me to keep this section short to keep it more effective. Our movie RODIC is in the pre-production phasse now, and the table below has an overview of the current work status.

To learn about them in detail, please attend one of our Daily Screenplay Jamming meets, or send us an email at MovieTeamRodic@gmail.com.

Our next steps and related deadlines are:

Budget, Revenue & Risk

• BUDGET = A total of 2 million USD, with a 50:50 split between planned and unplanned expenditure.

• SCREENS = Our target is to release RODIC at over 1000+ theatre screens across the US and India.

• TARGET REVENUE = A total of 10 million USD. Anything above that we would consider a bonus.

• CURRENT RISK OF FAILURE = 76% as of 27th February 2020.

• FINAL RISK OF FAILURE = By the time release day approaches, in July 2021, we want the risk of failure to be 30%.

Daily Screenplay Jamming

TODO

SHARE DETAILS SUCH AS:

1. What is **Daily Screenplay Jamming**?
2. How can an artist or business person attend it?
3. What quick preparation one must do before attending?

Be a part of RODIC filmmaking effort

To execute a movie project successfully, about 100 artists and 100 business people must become a team, and then that team needs to do some seriously kickass work. There simply is no-other-way. And it is a lot of gruelling hard work too.

And a lot of fun as well.

So with that said, we invite you to be a part of the RODIC filmmaking effort; whether you want to be on the artist side of the team, or the business side, or both.

You are welcome to —

Join As Production Cast:

• You can find key characters of our movie listed here. Please get in touch with us to do screen trials for any of them.

• We have only confirmed 1 actor so far, for the role of Kamal Patel, the storehelpMIT guy. Every other role still needs casting.

• Other than the longer character roles listed in this post, there are many shorter roles with significant speaking parts, and they are all pretty quirky and awesome!

• Best way to try for any of the roles, longer or not, is to drop by one of our Daily Screenplay Jams, described in this same post here.

Join As Production Crew:

• If you have a burning desire to be part of a film team, and you are skilled in one or more filmmaking departments, and you haven't worked on a 1000+ theatre screens release yet, then please do reach out to us.

• We are keen to team up with you and make a dent in the universe!

Join As Member of Pre-Production Team:

• You should definitely consider doing this if you like the idea of our team driven film pre-production process, called Pre-Production Jams.

• Even if you do not like the idea just try attending one of the Jams, and see what it is, and how it works. We do them daily, and the process is described earlier in this post here.

• This is as easy as participating in an online video call. You can join from anywhere you are, using just a phone or a computer.

• Attending Pre-Production Jams can lead to you becoming an actor in the final movie, or getting paid for various kinds of pre production contributions, such as, sharing feedback from the audience viewpoint, suggesting dialouge changes, providing trigger ideas for writing sub-plots, etcetera.

Join As Investor:

• If you have $2000 USD or more that you are willing to risk after evaluating our work, we invite you to join our filmmaking effort as an investor.

• Our film team will work to earn you a profit against your investment. Your investment will not be an angel fund or a donation.

• You can start with $2000 USD and invest more overtime.

• We will keep you posted at all times - about the current status of work; current project risk; and the next steps.

• As noted in an earlier section here, our film RODIC's total budget is 2 million USD; target revenue is 10 million USD; and the current risk of failure is 79%.

• The risk of failure goes down as our work progresses. After the film has been fully shot, edited, and distributed, the risk of failure should be at 30% just before the final release.

Join As Well-Wisher:

• You can give us helpful suggestions by sending an email to MovieTeamRodic@gmail.com. There are many aspects of art, making movies, and doing business, that we do not know, and are still learning; so your suggestions might actually help us prevent a massive failure.

• As a well-wisher you are encouraged to ask us all kinds of questions related to RODIC; because in answering you, we will be forced to articulate our own thoughts better, and our filmmaking process will improve.

• I will update this post with some example suggestions and questions later on, so for now, you can even send a mail that just says “Hi Sumeet, look forward to hearing more about RODIC”; and after looking at some example questions you can ask us more. The address to reach us is MovieTeamRodic@gmail.com.

You & YouTube

You can see how we are going about RODIC filmmaking efforts, if you join my YouTube channel – “American Indian Curiosities”.

There are 3 categories of videos 🎥 on it.

1. Public and Open: These are videos about random silly things, or useful things, or human experiences that make me curious. For example: How I worked on second hand $40 chairs, and made them better than $3000 worth chairs! Or, how women in America tie their hair buns on the top of their head, like Shiva, while women in India tie them towards the bottom end 🙆

2. Public and Briefly Open: These are videos where I articualte my socio-political thoughts and questions. I keep these videos openly available on the channel for about 1 to 2 months, after which they are still public, but not listed on the channel page anymore, so that the listed space is not too serious, and has more fun stuff 😃

3. Private: These videos are where you can see how our team is going about RODIC filmmaking efforts. This is all behind the scenes stuff, and more; like summary of our team meetings; recording of our pre-production jams, how we are raising investment, acquiring locations, preparing for the shoot, finding distributors, etcetera 💰🎬

So do consider joining the channel “American Indian Curiosities” on YouTube, and see what we do over the next one to two years.

And remember, RODIC is just a code name that is easier and quicker to write, our movie's release title will be – “Robbery Drama At Indian Convenience Store Cambridge”.

Written Down Purpose

Even after we become a film-team of 150 to 200 people; and every team member is either an awesome artist, or an awesome business person, or both; and we are also able to raise the required 2 million dollars capital; it would still be mighty difficult to acheive what we are setting out to do; because our written down mission from earlier in this post, is by no means something easy.

In fact, it is probably borderline impossible –

We are not from the world of professional filmmaking. So as complete outsiders, our team's mission is to make a compelling 2 hour long movie, code-named RODIC, and get it to play across 1000+ theatre screens in the US and in India, before June 2021.

But isn't that the fun part!

For a team of complete outsiders to get a film released across 1000+ theatre screens in the US and India — the film will have to be bought by one or more of the established distribution companies, like, Warner Bros, A24, Neon, Dharma Productions, UTV Spotboy, Amazon Studios, Reliance Entertainment; or by some other distribution companies that are a good match.

For established distribution companies to consider buying our film RODIC; a good number of festival audience, or sale agents, or film representatives will have to genuinely like our film, and bring it to the distributors attention as a profitable bet.

For festival audience or sales agents to genuinely like our film — our film RODIC will have to be completed first, and that completed version will have to be very compelling.

For our film to be very compelling — we will have to craft an engaging plot, write a crisp screenplay, cast actors for all roles, prepare schedules, stick to those time schedules, shoot flim at cinematic location, delight with our cinematography, edit rigorously, create music that emotes every mood, do sound mixing meticulously, agonize over folly effects, get the right costumes, makeup, lights, cameras, lenses, etcetera, etcetera.

Doing all of these things as newcomers / outsiders will be quite a challegne! We will have to be a team that works like a beast 🐉🐎💯

We will also have to raise a reasonably large amount of capital investment, be responsible for that money, and make our film commercially viable.

With that kind of work in front of us, we will have many fuckups all along the way, BIG fuckups, and it is not enough for our team to just have a written down mission, we need a written down purpose as well. Having a written down purpose gives us that something that any team member can fall back on when bad things happen.

So here goes –

As a team of professional film industry outsiders, we want to make the film Robbery Drama At Indian Convenience Store Cambridge (RODIC), and fulfil the written down mission, so that everybody on the team can then go on to make more films, and have them be commercially viable and successful.

You see now, why my heart is so full of fear 😰

For me personally, there already are the following English, Hindi, and Telugu language films that I feel compelled to make sometime soon. They have all been brewing slowly and steadily.

• Lets Fly, Rise High, High as a Rocket Ship
• कम खर्चे वाली शादी
• ముసలివాడు ముసలావిడ ఇప్పుడు ఏమి అమెరికా తిరుగుతారు

But for these films that are listed above, and many others that I feel compelled to write and make, the mysterious inner voice hasn't said that gentle thing, “Okay, it is now time."; the way it did for RODIC.

And I am afraid of failing that inner voice 💔