Last few days were very hectic for me. I was part of the event coordination team for Novell Carnival for dramatics and skit. Carnival celebration was on Saturday and till tuesday, we did not have any script. We discussed so many ideas over last few weeks and till this point of time, we had nothing to start the practice. On tuesday night, I wrote something which was like a baseline but it was still not complete. On wednesday, we (Himanshu, myself, Punya and Subhashis) decided to sit together for couple of hours and complete the script but still by the end of the day we were at the same point where we started at the start of the day. In the evening, we came to know that Himanshu has to leave for his home town due to some personal stuff. By the time we got this news, we all were in “awe” as he was the person who knew the recording, mixing, editing. Well anyways, I learnt some basics of all these stuff from him in couple of minutes and myself and punya decided to divide the tasks among us. We finalized at least first half of the skit and then I had to do the recordings while he will write the other part of skit and do the video shoots.
I did some recordings and by the time it was done, it was already 11’o clock. We left to meet on the next day early morning to complete the other things. After reaching home, I did the mixing and editing of the recordings to put together the final audio track of whatever part we had recorded while Punya wrote the rest of part till 3’o clock (which i didnt know). Next morning I arrived early and saw his mail but there was nothing of script in that mail and also mail text was in such manner that I thought he didnt write anything. When he came to ofc, I asked him of the script and he told “mail nahi dekha kya”. I replied “haan magar usme script nahi hai”. Then we checked mail again, his sent items, his gmail mailbox, it wasnt there. he took my pendrive, rushed back to home and brought the stuff. Till then I did the re-recording and editing of the track I prepared last night.
Once Punya gave me rest of the script, we started recording for that part also but the problem was of availability of the various participants as they were part of other events also and involved in those practices. for some of them, we had to record 20-30 times to get a final recording. for some we used other’s voices. Now we had a new idea of introducing someone known in organization for the guest appearance. We agreed on a common name, our “Managing Director Mr. Sreehari”. Now the problem was “who will go and ask him”. First we thought of taking Subhashis’s manager along with us to talk to him but he suggested to go by ourself only. Then Punya and Subhashis went to him and to the surprise (atleast I was surprised), he agreed very easily. Now the problem was that he had very limited time window of 1 and half hour to do the recording and practice and we didnt even have the complete dialogues. Leaving all recordings other work aside, we had a discussion to finalize his dialogues and then when it was all done, we only had half an hour time left to do the recording and practice with him. He came and practice and also did the recording. At the same time, event management person called to collect the costumes and stuff. So I prepared a final setup to just press a key and start recording and left to others to go ahead with Sreehari’s voice recording. By the time I came back, Sreehari’s recording was done and Now I had to continue with others. Also Punya had to continue with the video shoots.Till the time all recordings were done, it was already 9:30 and still day before the final performance we had not done a single practice. I joined various recordings to prepare a basic audio track so that we could at least have a basic practice for what we will be delivering on next day.
Basic practice was done. Everybody knew from where they had to enter. We gave everyone the audio track so that they know when there dialogues are and departed. By the time I reached home, it was 1AM and I still had to complete the audio track. I asked Karthik to crash at my place that night as he only knew the sound track of Sreehari’s recording. We worked till 3AM and I then uploaded and shared the final audio track with everyone by mail. I was just going to sleep when Punya called that he was having some problems in video editing. I asked him to find any simplistic software so that we can just do the superimposing of this audio with clips and went to sleep. But when the things are hectic, sleep is not the easiest thing you can ask for. Things like “have I missed some recording”,”what are the things I have to carry with me for skit”, “is that music sound merged” were going through my mind again and again. Didnt realise when it was 8’o clock. Asked Karthik to start getting ready and call subhashis also for the 9:30 cab we booked. We were on my way and I still did not have final clip with me. I called Punya to check whether the upload was complete. When we were 15 minutes far from the venue, I got his mail with link to the video. Video file was large and with travelling and Tata Photon signals changing continuously, I could not download the file. I asked to come as early as possible with file on pendrive otherwise I am not going in Arena to face the event management people who were asking for the track from the day before. Our slot for practice was 12’o clock but it was running a little late.Punya arrived at around 12:30. we played the file to check once. To our surprise, some part of audio was missing from the video clip at the end. Boom. Right there we started editing again. People were doing lunch and we were doing the video editing. After editing was done, software was taking so much time to save the file. We kept the laptop open and left it someplace safe to go for lunch. Then we went to event management people and asked them for practice. That guy shouted on us asking where were we till this time. We defended ourselves by saying other people were practicing on stage 😉 .Anyways we got 15 minutes to practice. There were many things missing in the act. After practice, we did the postmortem of practice. Anyways Carnival started. We performed at our slot. All went well followed by a fun filled DJ night. All is well what ends well.
Different Universe 