SPECTRALITE FILMS INC

     In general, various distractions pose a serious threat to our learning process. The couple of minutes spent here and there, let us say, on social media or on other activities seems innocuous at first. But the amount of time you actually spend on things that are not essential to your work add up yearly to precious hours – may be even days - that you could have otherwise spent productively on your learning tasks, or could have used in upgrading your skills. However, we all know creativity is an overwhelming as well as unique business. And it requires solutions which are unique too when you’re experiencing problems. We all need a renewed vigor or passion for the work that we do from time to time.

    We come across so many different kinds of distraction that we can avoid simply by focusing. It happens many a time. We sit at our desks, to get some work done, and immediately we need some mind awakening substance. Next we login to Facebook, which takes almost 20 minutes, - then 60 minutes of YouTube. By the time we get back to work, it's almost lunch. You’re not alone when it comes to distractions. It is not easy staying on task when you need to work for hours at a time.  Nevertheless, at the same time there are ways to walk through a block and keep the "creative spice" fresh inside of you.

    There are a few things that could help you with blocking distractions. Noise cancelling head phones – which help in maintaining focus by blocking ambient noise. Not only do they help in preventing sounds from distracting you, they can also bring out your creative insight when paired with the right music. Kill two birds with one stone; you can do your work while listening to some soft music at the same time. Another amazing set of gadgets we can talk about are smart phones, which you have reason enough to avoid at first thought, since they usually just create distractions. However there are many android apps, for example, which help in blocking distractions. For example, ‘FocusOn’- is an android app that helps in focusing on the task that actually matters to you. Focus on your deadlines and fight procrastination. The app teaches you strict self- discipline and efficient use of time. There are others apps as well like ‘ClearLock’, and ‘Focus Lock’. But do apps really help in blocking distractions? There is no full proof of that. Regardless, if you look at a wider spectrum, smart phones can help in maintaining your creative flow in other ways. With it being a wireless device, you can carry a smart phone with you anywhere you like, and store all your "stuff" (important data you need for your workflow for example). There is no longer the excuse of not having pen and paper. Smart phones are ubiquitous in our lives.

    To be very practical, if distractions are really becoming the major obstacles to your work process, try pushing yourself wholly towards addressing them, and not just focusing on the

creative part. Don’t just treat the symptoms; pull up your chair and listen to what the block has to say. Have a conversation with it. Listen to it, learn from it, and then move on. Face your fears, whatever comes across. Things which ignite your fear, are things you should face more, even if that has nothing to do with creativity.

    Also moving around here and there helps. Kinesthetic learning has proved to work better.  You could even go for a photo walk. Just take pictures of random things and look at what you find afterwards. Watch good movies, trust me it’s a stress buster and on top of that you could even get to learn new things from it, and at the same time keep your creativity alive.

The film industry has always seemed magical to me. From my early days, I fantasized about the iconic pictures and the groundbreaking work done behind a full-length feature film. In particular, it was the alchemy of matte painting and visualization of concepts that captured my imagination. Having the opportunity to write this piece has allowed me to reflect on the creativity, talent and skill l have witnessed over a long time in streamlining the creative process between two highly talented people, Sourav Dhar and Adam Barnett, to bring out the innate vision of Spectralite Films’, “Life Support”.

All this started last year, when Adam Barnett -The founder of Spectralite films’ was in a search of a storyboard artist for his short film, Life Support. To find the right person he dropped the project at an online collaborative networking platform called Creative District (http://www.creativedistrict.com). Here he crossed paths with a very talented Concept Artist/ Matte Painter, Sourav Dhar. Sourav has been into serious matte painting for years. His clear vision and intense knowledge of art helps him to bring out the finest creative works. As they started interacting, Adam discovered that Sourav is a true “art person” and that he lives by art. He began briefing Sourav about the purpose and motive of “Life Support” conveying to Sourav that it is his first indie project, and an attempt to pull up his best creative instincts. He shared the script with Sourav and mentioned that it was selected as a semi finalist in the Holly Shorts Screenplay Contest hosted in Los Angeles, CA, and also might have a chance of being produced by EvilSlave production company, also based in California. Hearing such information and achievement presented a challenge for Sourav as well - to bring out the best storyboards possible.

Sourav presented the first draft of the storyboards last December (2014) and the rest in consecutive short intervals. The results were fantastic. Adam was quite happy with his job but during that period he was going through a very bad phase. He had run out of funds to continue to pay his artist; he was struggling - alone and in crisis. He had no job then, not even enough cash to fetch his food. Nevertheless, what he did have is courage, patience and determination. With that, he approached Sourav and told him frankly about his situation; that he would not be able to pay him immediately, but would surely deliver once he could arrange the funds. Any professional would be have doubts initially and so did Sourav. But with time, Adam’s honesty and his heart ruled. Over the next months of collaboration he was able to pay Sourav in full. Finally, the storyboarding was done. With Adam’s intervention, I had a chance to have a brief interaction with our concept artist last week, to find out his vision regarding ‘art’ being the most consolidate part of any visual storytelling. What I learned allows one to appreciate more fully the inspiration and work behind, “Life Support”.

Q & A with Sourav Dhar

Q: You are a Matte painter by profession. How do you believe storyboarding fits you?

SD: It is similar almost I think. Matte painting is kind of detailed painting in one single frame whereas storyboarding is drawing done frame by frame. The former, essentially based on environment and the later mostly on the character art. Therefore, fundamentally there is no major difference between the two. Both belong to the realistic genre so I can cope up easily. However, I believe dealing with the environment as well as placing the characters in that particular environment with specific camera angles, if done by one single person, makes it much easier even for the director to put things on screen fast. If it were of any particular genre of stylized painting like cartoonish or Manga style, then it would have been a mismatch. However, since Spectralite also focuses on photo realistic/ hyper realistic render it’s not a category error for me.

Q:  How important is art in streamlining the creative process for any venture?

SD: Everything starts with a story, and every reader has his or her own visual for the story read. And the writer himself is no exception, rather his visuals are perhaps most important for his story which he wants to share with the audience. So it solely depends on an artist how he will personify a particular character through the means of his art. I feel art encompasses a broader spectrum of our lives. The art enables us to imagine the unimaginable, and to connect us to the past, the present, and the future sometimes simultaneously. Art eventually gives meaning to the data science provides. Art helps in creating the visuals that even scripts cannot sometimes. For this the most relevant example we can cite are graphic novels, which have been ruling the market for the past several years. They tend to take the shape of movies as well, due to their finely detailed artwork. Also, my love for graphic novels has played a huge role here.

Q: Really ! How did that happen?

SD:  Since childhood I grew up reading the books of famous Indian writer Satyajit Ray, where Prof, Shanku a sci-fi character ruled my adolescence. Also Tintin comics namely ‘Destination Moon’ captivated me so much that I still get the inspiration from them. The minute detailing and the picturesque motion overwhelmed me every time. Here too when I first read the script, the scene “opens in a ‘spaceship’”, instantly recalled all that I have read and visualized, so it helped me a lot.

In ‘Life Support’ too Paul the protagonist can be best justified to the audience through his looks and appearance. So, artwork genuinely plays a major role. Moreover, I think art at its best strikes the universal chord that suggests that we are not alone in our experience of joy, or grief, or courage.

Q: With your matte painting background do you primarily do environment work, or do you also venture into doing creatures or anything character-based?

SD:  Before I started as a professional when I was a student, I use to do many characters, I have no compartmentalization in my mind but in practice, I got more commissions dealing with

environment than with characters.  

Q: So you are not in practice, so in that case how confident you were with the character of Paul in Spectralite-The Life Support?

SD:  Like I told you earlier, I had done characters, and I know the fundamental thing i.e. the anatomy. If in case I feel any difficulty, there is such an abundance of reference material out there, that it is like getting yourself educated on a visual problem to solve.  You can always go out and educate yourself; you can look at lots of imagery.  Moreover, recently I have worked in an American TV series called Atticus’ Activists by Josh Isaacson where I did character sketches for the veteran Hollywood actor Gerry Bednob. The result came out was amazing. I received many appreciations, which indeed pulled my confidence level. So I think it’s all about your imagination and binding things into proper order.   Let us say you have to create a creature and it has a certain base characteristic, say it looks like a dinosaur or something.  Then it becomes easy to know where to start.  You just begin building on top of that. However, I love happy accidents too i.e. combining any two things and bringing out something new out of it. It is often a surprising journey to go on because there is always room for improvisation. I am practically never satisfied and keep on doing little adjustments and fine tunings.

Q: Do you have any spare time for playing video games, sports or indulging in some other activity?