City Block Video Shoot - Day 2

So we began the journey from Jagan's aunt's house at 8am; we were heading to the location for the shoot. We discovered we had a new make up artist - the first one obviously gave up on us and probably wanted to share the pain of making us look decent with someone else!

The new location was in a village so we had breakfast at a teashop... unfortunately, the owner only had appam and egg roast.

We were surrounded by paddy fields and greenery. Again, we needed to set up all the sound equipment. After setting up came the make up - and the make up artist requested Sunil to go first. Bad move! Everyone including Tom asked the make up man not to do that but he was very insistent... maybe he was speaking from experience! A couple of hours later (!) the make up man began complaining about all his make up being utilised on just one person. This meant the rest of the band faced the camera without any make up... This WAS a waste of time and make up - Sunil looked no different than 2 hours earlier!

Shooting commenced and by 1pm, we needed a lunch break. Jagan's aunt had very kindly prepared a good, old-fashioned home cooked meal - Kerala rice, fish curry and other accompaniments. The house helper, Rajappan, bought some toddy from the toddy shop - Anish and Saji had beaming smiles stretched across their faces! Jagan's cousins, Joe and Jubin, were also helping. After lunch, as tradition goes, we took a nap - Sunil was over the moon!

After awaking, we began shooting again. Usually we would get a lot of onlookers, comprising of the local villagers, but because of a village funeral, visitors were few. But soon, children began returning from school and stopped to get a view of the shoot - for them, it was a first to see a band performing. They were so excited, they wanted to get a feel of the drums and strums of the guitar. Anish and Sunil entertained the children and showed them how to play their instruments.

The days shoot was over.. Jagan's aunt was ready and armed with tea and snack (tapioca and fish fry!) We packed all our stuff after eating and prepared ourselves for the journey back to Cochin..

Unfortunately, nobody remembered the issues we previously had with the accelerator cable. The driver of the vehicle was sleeping the whole day so on our way back, we had to stop once to sort out the same problem as before.

Eventually we got back home. We dropped off Tom and his assistant in Fort Cochin (he was planning to go shoot a boat race in Allepey the next day). He said he would shoot some additional footage without the band members.

Now... we are awaiting the pre-edited version of our video for City Blocks but in the meantime please enjoy this promotional video clip of the days' shooting!