Surendar Chawdhary's Rehearsals for his Diploma film

Surendar Chawdhary was preparing for the shoot of his Diploma film VILAAP and he used to discuss the script with his cinematographer R.S. Agarwal and associates Kasturi R Murthy and myself. His film was about a tree being cut in a forest and humanises the event by showing various incidents that happened under the tree. For the opening shot he wanted a leaf falling from the tree on to the ground. The problem was that he wanted the single leaf in tight closeup and follow the falling leaf's movement using a crane. It was a pretty tough task indeed and required precise operation of the crane as well as the camera. Since he very much needed the dramatic shot for his film, we decided whether it was possible to such a camera operation by conducting a trial during our practical class.

I did the trial using the Arri Blimp camera mounted on a crane and as Surendar dropped the leaf in front of the camera, the crane was moved according to the trajectory of the leaf's fall. When there was wind it just moved out of frame and we had to wait for the windless period.

Myself on the camera with Surendar

After several trials we were able to synchronize the fall of the leaf with the camera and crane movements so that the leaf was always in the frame till the very end. Thus Surendar was assured that the shot he wanted so badly for his Diploma film could indeed be taken .

The shot set up

Later on the actual shot was taken by R.S. Agarwal himself during the Diploma film shooting and was incorporated in the film. Such attention to detail and meticulous planning by Surendar paid rich dividends later 0n. Eventually his film won the Grand Prix of Winged-Ibex statue in the short film category at the First Tehran International Film Festival 1972 and several other honours.

A rare Group Photograph

Towards the end of the Second year, after a student gathering at the Institute some one hurriedly organized a group photo session, which resulted in a rare photograph containing a large number of students. (1970,1971 and 1972 Batches)



To see the names of the persons, please check the List against the numbers marked on the photograph:

1.A. Swami Nathan, 2.Arun Kumar Nigam, 3. Madhusudhan, 4. Desh Gautam, 5. Balbir Sharma, 7. Page, 8.Mushir Ahmed, 9.Mrs.Mushir Ahmed, 10. Mrs. Jagat Murari, 11 Jagat Murari ,12 B.K. Chaturvedi,13. Sudhartha Basu, 14 Imtiaz Ahmedkan Pathan , 16.A.S.Kanal,17, J P Singhal (SPW), 18. J.K.Patra, 19 Akki Hame Chander, 20 Venugopal K Thakkar, 21 Surendra Sahu, 22 . Kumar Nayak, 23 T.N. Mohan, 25 Baba Majagavankar, 26. J. P. Dikshit, 27 Vinay Shukla, 30. HarishChawla,31. Harish Gupta, 32 S,K.Jolly, 36. M.Azad, 37 Harbhajan Singh, 40. Bhaskar Unni, 42. Amrit Lal Lakhanpal. 44. Manoj Kumar(SRSE), 45, Ramachandra Babu, 47. Deepak Dhar,48. Baburao Tanajee Rokade 49. Raza Murad, 50. Subhash Soin, 51. Anil Jain Satish Aima, 52. K.R.Mohanan, 53. G,R,Menon, 54. Krishna Ragahav, 56. Faisal (Jordan)58 .Surendra Chowdhary, 60. Peer Mohammed, 62 .Venkataswami Naidu Jatla, 64 Kasturi Ramachandra Murthy, 65. Paulose,66. Umesh Bihari Mathur, 69. Shyamal Krishna Ghosh, 71. V.N.Raina ,72. Satish Kumar Gupta(SRSE), 75. Kabir Rawther. 76. S K Srivastav (SRSE)

The list is incomplete - I request my friends to provide me the missing names so that I can complete the list.

I think the picture was taken by none other than K.K.Jaiswal as he is missing from the photo. The light was fading as it was quite late in the evening and some more photos were taken, one of which is given below.



Baba Majgavkar ( standing first from left) Surendra Sahu (centre with glasses)Deepak Dhar (tall person in the back row) are among the few in this smaller group.


I found another photograph , which was slightly out of focus with a slight rearrangement, this time I am sitting down in the front row ( second from left) flanked by K.K.Jaiswal on my right and Baba Majgavkar on my left.


( My thanks to K.K.Jaiswal for filling up some of the missing names)