The fiction film

TOO MANY IDEAS

Our assignment for the fiction film was to do with creating a story or a sequence of events around any element inspired by our experience with the Lambani people.

We had various ideas - but most of our inspiration seemed to come from the Lambani women's elaborate costumes - since we had mostly involved ourselves with that aspect of their lives while shooting our documentary. These ideas ranged from a young girl taking off her costumes ritualistically to two people parallelly dressing up and waiting for someone - or going to meet someone.

Our other ideas included following the different age-groups - and generations - of Lambani women, and follow how their jewellery changes (and hence symbolize growing up and change in roles).

NARROWING DOWN

We were finally inspired by the history of the Lambani people - how they lead nomadic lifestyles and then changed their old traditions to settle down to a new life.

This lead to an abstract idea of "coming home", which we decided to represent through walking.

STORYBOARD

We formed a storyboard which consisted of following a bare pair of feet which walks through various different kinds of terrain: rocks, grass, mud, shore, etc., gather mud and grime on the feet - "signs" of their travel as well as "signs" of their traditions - and then finally come to a shore - come "home" - where the mud is ritualistically washed off the feet - symbolizing a change in lifestyle and tradition.

LOCATION

We needed a location where we could find different kinds of terrain to show travel - and there was such a place - by a reservoir halfway on the way to Sandur from Bellary. It had big rocks, grass, plants, pebbled shore and red waves of the reservoir.

ADDING AN ELEMENT

We wanted to include only one element to remind ourselves of the inspiration for our film - this was the one single silver anklet. The rest we wanted to not be bound to any particular culture, rather have elements from various, as the film was intended to be about coming home - not about the Lambani tribe - or any other context.

EDITING

We finished our editing in the evening after returning from our shooting. We added a quote to explain the movie right at the beginning to give the viewers a clue as to what it was about - as it was an abstract film and purposefully open to interpretation.