“It was good for me. Was it good for you?” asks Communication senior Nikhil Jayaram as he steps back, tilting his head appreciatively. In a restaurant in Chicago, I’m making my film debut. OK, well, I’m an extra, but who’s counting?
“Looks great,” says Communication junior Anthony Kuhnz from behind the camera.
Jayaram, the director, nods to the actors in the scene just shot and turns the page of his script. “Let’s go to the next one.”
Communication freshman Jay Mittal, who’s sitting across from me in one of the out-of-the-way booths in the Viceroy of India on Devon Ave., gives me an exhausted smile and takes another bite of rice. It’s 5 a.m. on Friday and we’ve been in the Viceroy since 10:30 p.m. Thursday, filming Jayaram’s senior directoral project, “Homecoming.”
Although the cast and crew will spend all of their weekend hours on the film, Mittal and I — and a host of other extras — are only here for the restaurant scenes. Still, it’s a big commitment. I’ve pledged my Thursday and Friday night to art, to excitement and to the chance of immortalizing the back of my head on the big screen.
For the uninitiated, around 80 students graduate each year with a major in film from Northwestern. Although many become radio-TV-film majors to learn about theory, only some enter the program because they want to make films. These few are the ones who decide to complete a senior directoral project: choosing a script (most seniors write their own), casting actors (and begging for the time of the all-important extras), shooting the film and then spending weeks in post-production. The finished products are shown in June.
“Homecoming,” a film Jayaram wrote and is now directing and producing, is about a 15-year-old Indian-American boy, Arjun, and his struggle to forge his own identity in spite of — and ultimately with the help of — his Indian father’s strong cultural traditions. Jayaram started writing the story a year ago while taking a screenwriting class. “I was going to do the movie anyway, whether I was taking a class or not,” he says.
“Homecoming” is not the first film he’s written and directed about family and culture. After winning a grant from energy drink company Red Bull last year, he directed “Off Camera,” a film about an interracial relationship that threatens to pull a family apart.
“Homecoming” deals with familial relationships again, but this time in a high school setting. Arjun and his father argue about courtship, appearance and dating.
“It’s not just about the kid coming of age, it’s about the parent coming of age,” Jayaram says. “It’s about how the father has to let go. On one level it’s a story about minorities, but those family relationships are part of everyone’s experience. I didn’t want this (film) to be about being Indian. I’ve lived that for 21 years and to try to portray it in 15 minutes would be ludicrous.”
“This,” says Communication junior Quinn Stephens to me, gesturing to the crowded restaurant where filming has just begun, “is one of the few truly collaborative atmospheres.” Communication senior Osato Dixon and Kuhnz are checking light levels, Jayaram is off in a corner coaching two actors and various people are scurrying around with clipboards and extension cords. As the boom operator, Stephens holds a microphone over the actors while they’re speaking in order to pick up sound.
Whereas Stephens ensures the actors’ voices will come in loud and clear in the film, the actors themselves have other things to worry about. Unlike in live theater, actors have to adapt their characters to out-of-sequence shots and endless takes.
“You have to focus on the technical continuity — was my hand here during the last scene? Was I facing this particular way? — but also on making it real. It’s a skill that I’m still practicing,” says Sonal Shah, who plays Arjun’s love interest, Mona. Shah graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 2002.
“Your energy is directed to one eyeball, which is the camera, when on stage, your energy is directed to your scene partner and to the audience,” she says.
Datta Dav
