 It's filling up. What is? There's about 40 people thus far, which makes me happy. I'm not showing up our hour we're going to today. That's good. That's about what we had, wasn't it? Yeah. It sucked up IMAX was only one day, though. I know. Really? Like, they literally just like, ah, you get one screen of them for one day of IMAX. I know. It really does suck. Because you know what they put in? The movie that's been out now for three or four weeks now. They put the Batman back in IMAX. It's like, they don't know yet. They don't know that people would go see it. But they're missing out on money because I guarantee they're going to get more tickets and butts for part of our hours. Currently. They screwed the pooch on that one. Those seats right here that we're going to go see this in, I'm sure half of them would have chosen IMAX. I would have. Yeah. But still, it'll be great. Yeah. Juice! Action or stupid right? See you at some Corp. I'm Rick. I'm Rick. Instagram, click on. You should go on Twitter. Instagram, and take some paid trumps and post Trimble, click on. Bye! For the love song version of each other. Send us a Dasheed. Today we've got a Q&A session with Sachet Rai. Oh, cool. in 1978. That's fricking awesome. So he apparently went to like, I think a school or something, he went to a seminar with American Film Institute in AFI, right? In 1978. Have you done an AFI project yet? No, I auditioned for quite a few, but I've not gotten anything. I know you've done a couple, right? I've done a couple. I mean, it's great. But I thought it'd be really cool to actually sit and listen to him talk. Goodness, yes. So you would get a prediction. Is he going to have a cigarette? Not America, no. Oh, 1978. He's going to be smoking. He's going to be smoking. 1978, maybe, yeah. Different time. So he was here at AFI. I wonder who was there. Have the man himself? Well, in the 40s, I saw the American films I don't know, Renoir. The first one was the Southerner. And then eventually I saw Diary of a Chambermaid and a few other things. And then I had read about his French work and I was familiar with his father's paintings. And then Renoir, in 49, he came to Calcutta to look for locations for these films. He was probably there when the British were obviously. I was an advertising man at that time. And it so happened that the agency where I work was quite near the hotel where it was staying. So I just went and presented myself as a student of the cinema. And I got to know him quite well because he was comparatively free at that time in the evenings and I would often sort of drop in. And later in 1950, well, he went back to Hollywood and then came back again in the 50s to start shooting. But I'm afraid I was not in position to watch him work because I had my job. I went on a Sunday or maybe a couple of Sundays to watch him. And then I left for England. And it was in England that I first saw Renoir's French films, La Régime du Gère and Petit du Campain and all the rest of them. And even before I had seen them, I had seen them. I had discussed them with him. I had put questions to him about his various films, La Mette humaine. And so that was very, very important for me. The talks that I had with him, even before I had seen his French films, that was very, very important. There's one social comment that you make in all the films that I've seen that you've done. I'm wondering if it has any effect on the Indian people and what kind of effect it does. And that is the vision of the wife, a woman as servant. Is anything happening in India right now as far as that cultural tradition? Well, obviously a lot has happened. There's a tremendous lot of emancipation. And part of that is the theme of Mahanadeva, the big city, which is my middle sixties film. The film deals entirely with that aspect. A wife who would normally be just a housewife. Suddenly it's faced with a situation where she has to go out and find a job to support her husband's income because they are not earning. And they have to just make both ends meet. And she gets a job as a sales girl. The in-laws are terribly upset. The daughter-in-law should go out and do that. But she becomes a success in her work and begins to earn more than the husband. And there's this psychological conflict between the two, finding the house and losing a job, et cetera. It's that, I think, which is very much the kind of thing that you... Right. Do you think the big city was very instrumental in promoting this kind of change? I don't think a film does that, really. As a matter of fact, I must refer to a remark. Remark of Renoir was asked the same question. How much do you think, what kind of influence do you think has a film on society? And he mentioned the instance of La Grande de Leuchon, which was made one year before the Second World War started. It was an anti-war statement, very powerful. But it didn't prevent the war. Mr. Ray, how carefully do you pre-plan your film before you want to make it or your films? When you illustrate them very, very accurately? Yeah. I mean, that's been my practice right from the... Well, the first film had no proper script because the film was made while I still had my advertising job. And it was all in my head. It was shot on weekends, frankly speaking, over a period of two years. Two years because for long stretches, we had no money. That's why I just left Tarantino. In fact, it was shelved several times and everybody was told that, no, that's all. We can't... But later on, I had to be very economical. And if you want to be economical, you have to be disciplined. You have to pre-plan to a considerable extent. And so everything is very carefully planned in my films. My shooting ratio, incidentally, is four to one. It's been that all the way through. I rarely exceed it. And, well, there is room left for improvisation, particularly if you're shooting on location. You get ideas, a certain change of climate. You know, you have those wind rises or clouds come and you have to do new things, which are not in the script and you find new camera angles all the time. But shooting in the studio, confined within the three or four walls of the set, you have to be very, very careful. And in any case, we couldn't afford to be wasteful in the circumstances that we were. I operate my own camera now. I've been doing so for the last 15 years. Not that I have no trust in my cameraman's operational abilities, but I feel that ever since we've been using an air flex, that is the best position to judge the acting from is through the lens. And also, I noticed that working with non-professionals, they are happier if they don't see my face, whatever it is. Which is often like a ranger's off an air booth. I'm not so staring at them like that. Yeah, that's true. So they are happier. They feel more relaxed. And I enjoy operating, but I have a lighting cameraman. And of course, nothing, it's all done through discussions. And now I'm using a second cameraman. I started with one cameraman, Shabrota Mithra, who was a beginner at that time. He was 21 when he shot the first film. Never handled a movie camera in his life. But I had to have a new cameraman because all the professionals said that you can't shoot in rain and you can't shoot out the doors. The light keeps changing. The sun goes down a few parts, et cetera. So I had to have a new cameraman and we decided on certain basic things. Who doesn't know you can't do it that way? We were great admirers, both of us were great admirers of Côte d'Averson and we believed in available light. And we aimed at simulating available light in the studio by using bounce lights. And this is interesting because, well, this head didn't happen with the first film, but with the second film when we had to shoot interiors in the studio, supposedly houses in Benares where there was a central courtyard with no roof on top and the light all came from the sky and it was a kind of top, top lighting, shadowless that we started using bounce lighting with cloth stretched over the, over and the lights bounced back from those. And we had also had boards framed white pieces of white cloth, large enormous things and bounced back from that. Except for night scenes where there is a source of light established and you follow that source as much as possible. If it's candle, if it's lantern, if it's electric light, you follow the source. It simplifies things, you know. And later, well, I think about seven or eight years after that, I read an article in the American cinematographer written by Sven Nyquist saying, this was at the time of through a glass darkly, and I think that they had invented bounce lighting. I'm sorry, but we've been doing it since ever since, since 1953 or before. What a shock. So that's- America never takes a gun over something they didn't do. A camera man and myself, but I compose my images and I operate them. There's a focus puller, of course, and there's a lighting camera man. And everything is decided beforehand with a color film, all the color schemes, every piece of costume, I go out myself to buy the material. And my scripts are all individual forms. They're not sort of written documents which can be duplicated and handed out to the various members of the crew. They're just little sketches, frame sketches with directions down on the right-hand side and little notes on dialogue and camera movements. Because I don't think it's a literary medium anyway. Why waste words? Why try it? Because if it's only when the question of publication comes that you have to devise a kind of part novel, part drama. Great point. How has censorship affected your films? Not to any serious extent. There was, because I have more or has been oblique in my statements, even on human relationship, we can't afford to be too permissive, you know. In any case, we know. We cannot and I have, I'm not particularly anxious to be too permissive because I think that one, there has to be some room left for suggestion and obliqueness and, but there is, I believe, a strong political censorship. There is a censorship of violence. I mean, there's a lot of fighting in the new commercial cinema, but there's no blood shown. Apparently, you're free to show a lot of bashing about, but if you show ketchup, then you're in for it. What are some of the current favourites in India right now from American films, current type of history? Well, Godfather had a tremendous success. I'm sure Star Wars is going to be a tremendous success. Jaws will be a tremendous success. Exorcist is playing in Calcutta now for the last three months when I left. Wonder when this was released. Well, it's the same as, yeah. This is nice. Yeah, I know, I want to know. Robust time reaction. We'll talk about Jaws after. The censorship was not applied to those films. The present Board of Censors seems to be very lenient as far as forum films go. We've had one flu of the Cuckoo's Nest, which was shown with very few cuts. I saw it in somewhere abroad and then I saw it in Calcutta again. I noticed very, very few cuts. So the present to a group of... It always depends on the individuals who comprise the Board. And if they are sensible people with some understanding of film art, they will be lenient when they see an important work of art. No, I was just thinking I could listen to them for three hours and there it goes. It ends. It was only a little 11 minute clip, but it went by. It's got to be a fool. Yeah, I don't know. That was magic. Yeah, you could listen to great artists all the week to talk about it all the time. But especially to somebody who I never thought we'd actually be able to get an interview, especially in English. That's the clearest, longest anything I've ever seen of Satyajit Rai. And the most in-depth on the actual process. It's process in it. The reason I was saying what it was about Jaws is 78 was when it came out, I think it was either 77 or 78. Jaws? But I wonder if he saw it like early, pre-release before it became popular. Which I doubt because before Jaws came out, word on the street in the industry was this is an absolute disaster. Cause Spielberg had problems with his mechanical shark. He went over budget, dryfuss and Shaw were fighting all the time. And it was predictions were it was gonna be terrible. Well, and then it became one of the first blockbusters. So it's very interesting. I'd love to know when he saw it. And if you're not familiar with some of the terms, look them up. Some of them are outdated. Bounce lighting's not outdated. They still do bounce lighting all the time. And you have to, especially if you're doing, they do it all the time when you're doing an interior. And sometimes it isn't a direct bounce. Sometimes it's just a filter. But you have to create the outdoor light if you're doing a, for example, a house as an interior, which is very common, you need the light outside. And it's crazy sometimes when you're on a set. This is not natural light, by the way. It is weird if you're on set sometimes, like I was doing this thing where we were on a train all day and it was just green screen, but the lighting was natural light. So it felt like a really nice sunny day all day, but it was gray and stormy outside. So anytime you went outside, you had that cool disconnect cause time stands still in a sound stage. You're in the time that's created. And when you go out back outside, you're like, whoa, that was trippy. So, man, I could listen to him talk all day. Yeah, I wonder if there's a longer run. I didn't see it anywhere. It's the only one I saw. If there is, you can let us know. Cause yeah, I could listen to him talk all day. It's also so interesting. The time that this was put out. So obviously the audience is asking different questions. The public perception of film is different at that time than it obviously is now. And the advancements technologically obviously, but he's very much, he wouldn't surprise me if he liked the films of Orson Welles cause he's very much like Orson Welles. Orson Welles was asked about making movies and why he was so successful with his first few films. And he said, because I didn't know what I could fail at. And you don't, you just start. You just do it. I didn't know how to write a screenplay. I didn't know how to use a camera. I just wanted to do it. And his choice of a cinematographer who's gonna do something because all the other ones said, well, you can't do that. It's like, well, I'll go get somebody who'll do it because they don't know what they can't do. Great encouragement for me because one of the reasons I've tried to turn barbarian into a screenplay and formatting, it's insane. I need to go back into it and stop thinking format and just let it be. Because you really don't need, it's not a literary form. You don't need your screenplay to be in a particular format. It's not a published work. And he also seems like, and I think that's actually most directors, I feel like if you're a director who's not a control freak perfectionist, I feel like there's very few who aren't control freaks as directors. It just comes with the territory. And if you're not in control, you have someone you trust implicitly and you'll use them every time. Example, directors may not be so into it that they're gonna go literally choose the costume material, but I guarantee their costumer is gonna be somebody that they trust implicitly as if they were doing it themselves. Yeah, yeah. That's why you see a lot of directors do a bunch of different things. Vishal doing composing and directing and writing. And you see, we talk about this all the time. There's a reason people work with the same people over and over again. Send a photographer, yeah. They trust and know that they're gonna get what they want done. Most directors, obviously actors have stereotypes. Every position has stereotypes. Right. Directors, it's, they're very, I don't know, is it type A? That is just- Yeah, type A dictatorial type of thing. Like they're just, I have some of that in me. Very much so. I trust very few people to do anything, especially when it comes to, like if it's something I'm working on, I just- Yeah, because you have to have a clear vision and you have to be able to tell everybody this is what I want. And it's hard to express that. Yeah. And sometimes you've just gotta say like, cause that's what I want to have done. That's just, and you can't, if you don't have a clear vision and you're just there, but it's a strange monster because you also have to be collaborative. Yeah. It's a strange monster. It's not definitively type A and dictatorial. It's funny. When we did the million video, I didn't direct that. I had a- What a great team. A friend of mine who, it's not really, we've worked together a few times. And he did a great job. I loved him. And the whole team he brought on was fantastic. But it was also a struggle for me because he wanted to do stuff, especially when we got to the editing part of it, that I was like, I, no. And that's where the producer has final say, kids. Cause that's true in the industry as well. Because obviously- The producer can't tell the director no. Because obviously I had a specific vision of what I wanted the video to look like. And he, certain shots as a director, he liked more, but I saw it visually. I was like, that's not, that's not what we need. And which is why a lot of directors produce. Yeah. Because they want to have the final say cause the person who's paying the bills can say, no, no, no, no, this is my investment. I want to return on investment. So, yeah. It's a big collaborative effort. That's why the geniuses are so fun to- What a gift that is. Fun to listen to. If there's more of this video. Please let us know if there's more of this video. I'd love to watch it in its entirety. So please let us know. Down below. Oh, won't you be our next Satya Jint Rai film? We'll do for one. We are do. Last one was in, do we watch one in Classic Month? We did not watch one this past Classic Month, no. No, we did. No, we didn't. No, we didn't. What was it? We watched a Bengali film. We watched a Bengali film, it wasn't Satya Jint Rai. What was it? I feel like it was him. I don't believe it was. I feel like our last Satya Jint Rai was a big city. Sorry, I'm looking. So, Subdu was our last Bobb, you see Bengali. The Stranger, I told you. Yeah, it was The Stranger. Oh crap, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I think we did. Early, like the very first ones we watched that one. Yep, you're right. It's been a long year or something. Anyways, let us know what the next Satya Jint Rai film should be down below.