myindia

By: Sharmila Ray

So I have been receiving pressure for not getting right to editing this project…. So I thought it would be good to blog about my feelings… because… that is what blogs are about… feelings and perspective.. so here are my feelings about the “MYINDIA” project…

We came back from India in November… Thanksgiving… then Christmas… Then… New Year… January… I finally started to get comfy in LA… then… I had to move rooms…. in Late February… then… and then… and then…

I guess… I could have a number of excuses for you… on why the process has not yet started… But
mainly I was not mentally ready to tackle such a daunting task:

• Two months worth of footage.
• Two months of living in India and understanding how that
has changed my life
• I was a one woman show… shot and lived in the
documentary now I have to edit!
• How do I digest all the things that we have seen in India
with the obese I live with in the states?

Mostly… I just needed a break and to refocus myself on returning my life back to normal and finding a way of surviving in the plastic jungle of Los Angeles… I was truly blessed by the unemployment
gods…but I know that my good fortune is not a permanent, so I have to hustle. As of now…I’m working for free and lovin it… I do know that I am in the right career path… and that I would love to get a job in the industry… but I know that I have to prove to folks that I can work and not expect a job to just land in my hot little lap. So if anybody needs a production designer… send them my way…see… always on the hustle!

Up to Speed…

About a month or so ago I put an ad out in Craigs List for an assistant editor… I got a lot of responses and ended up starting to edit/organize with my find… but just like everyone else in LA… he was on the hustle and ended up interning at NBC… Which is amazing and wonderful… I’m stoked that he got a gig like that… and excited that he did not run off with my hard drive. So i’m back to square one… and a half… Within the past couple of months I’ve been working with these Indie Workforce kats and have been having a ball! Through them I was able to find Cain… this weekend I will be handing over the hard drive to him, crossing my fingers and hoping that he will be able to make sense of all the footage.

Sanyo… I Still Hate You…

So I have found out that with the sanyo xacti footage I have to convert all my files into a different format that FCP (Final Cut Pro) could read…Converting files take a grip of time… Like a grip! So
hopefully Cain can help me figure out a more efficient way of handling this process. Right now I have to used MPEG stream clip to convert files… but maybe there is a magical better way of doing it… If somebody knows anything about this… your insight would be valuable.

In Short…But Still Looking Tall…

I am still gathering footage for the film… I went to Boston to interview some professor ladies and hung

out with another family that adopted an indian child… I am in the process of interviewing a couple of other people and groups…so the doc is growing into a completely different entity.

In closing…I got the “MyIndia” elephant logo tattooed on my wrist to remind me to finish. The tat is never coming off… because this experience will always be with me… so it might not be tomorrow… but soon… very soon…