No, these aren’t just random numbers, they’re actually our shoot timings. AM - PM. We’re on the road. Across India. Travel. Music. Film. What more could we possibly ask for? We don’t really mind the hectic hours. In fact, we secretly enjoy them….shhh…

Shooting the Jama Masjid from the opp building

The fun all began some months ago, when we travelled to Singapore for Sutasi.  ‘Sutasi’ is reality talent hunt for artists across Asia. It’s an initiative by a company called Asia Sounds (based in Australia & L.A.) who are looking to promote talented musicians from this side of the world. We travelled there as a part of the Indian contingent to help their production team.

Sutasi has a total of 39 bands from across South, North and South East Asia in the competition, in various categories ranging from Singer-songwriter, singers and bands. That’s a lot of music. Needless to say, there was no place else we would’ve rather been! The show is scheduled to release in India and internationally  soon - we’ll keep you posted on dates. In the meanwhile, you’ll should check the website out (www.sutasi.com) and vote for your favourtie artists - a lot of our Indian bands are a part of the show so be sure to check it out!

While the bulk of the show was shot in Singapore by Asia Sounds, they thought it was important to capture the bands in their home environments to get a flavour of who they are and where they come from. That’s when the decided to pull us into the picture to shoot the Indian bands. And that’s what we’ve been doing for a week now and will be done a week from now.

Yes it's an HD cam..

Sam on night Cam

So far we’ve shot with Nikhil D’souza, Caralisa Monteiro, Sid Coutto & Aparna Dauria in Mumbai, Jalebee Cartel and Septic in Delhi, Cassini’s Division in Calcutta and we still have Guwahati and Bangalore to go! Along with band visuals and interviews we’re also getting to see the city’s as we shooting a bunch of city shots that are going to be used to add flavour to the edits. We love our job

In Mumbai, as a bonus we  got to shoot a gig with Nikhil at Blue frog which was great. City shots are a pain in Mumbai (permissions et al) but hey no pain, no gain right? We managed some beautiful cityscapes (sorry Naeem for waking you up at 8 in the morning!) and overall had great fun re-discovering our city.

The Nik Gig.

Nikhil @ Blue Frog

We got to Delhi on the 28th, tired and hungry but that was quickly resolved thanks to the awesome food at Dhruv’s place and we were charged for our shoot early the next morning (by early we mean 6!) The city is beautiful and the people extremely cooperative- a blessing when you’re shooting in the sweltering heat. Septic were kind enough to humour us and did what we asked them to do for the camera (including waking up at 6! :P). Thanks guys for making the shoot fun and easy.

The Bahai Temple.

The next day was old Delhi - the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Chandni Chowk and Parotha Galli (where we had a 10 course parotha breakfast and missed Jovan terribly). Yes were all about the food! We also got to watch huge jalabees being made which we fed to the Jalabee Cartel boys later in the evening. After a great interview with all four of them, we shot their gig at Shalom and grabbed a bite at Big Chill (Goolshireen not impressed! Next time she’ll take Dev’s advice and eat no 237)

Jalabees

The Jalabee Boys.

After the best Rajma Chawal (in your face Domino’s) and some awesome city and band shots, we were on to Calcutta. Thanks to Dhruv, Dhruv’s Mom and Dad for feeding us and putting up with us for 3 days of madness.

We’re in Calcutta now. Everywhere we look is a frame waiting to be shot. A beautiful city that more than lives up to it’s reputation of visual treats and phenomenal food. Kathi Rolls, Biryani at Shiraz and awesome contimental at Mocambo…  We will keep you posted on the trip as the days go by. For now, it’s seriously time for bed - early wake up call -AGAIN.