Phoools (the film) - a reflection

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The process of creating the Phoools film mirrored the generative nature of the art itself. The process was less about constructing a narrative and more about allowing one to emerge organically from the chaos of just shooting a lot of footage.

It began with an incredibly abstract brief. Instead of a traditional script or storyboard, we had a shared fascination with the flower shape, aligning our team on this nebulous concept was our first major hurdle. We spent countless hours in discussion, made a conscious decision of not crafting a narrative, but building a shared understanding of the film's essence.

From the outset, we made a conscious decision to abandon traditional beginning-middle-end structures. Our aim was to capture the essence of the flower motif - a shape that had begun to haunt my perception, appearing in the most unexpected corners of reality. We approached the filming with a set of loose ideas rather than a rigid script. A delicate balance - we needed enough structure to maintain coherence, but enough freedom to allow for spontaneity and discovery. This method required a deep trust in the process, a belief that meaning would emerge from the accumulation of moments and images.

As we began filming, ideas flowed freely. Our cinematographer might spot a fleeting floral pattern in peeling paint, while our sound designer found rhythms in urban cacophony. Experimentation was celebrated and led us to unexpected locations - from the eerie stillness of an abandoned hunting lodge in Delhi's forest to the pulsing energy of street scenes, each day of shooting was an opportunity for discovery rather than a step towards a predefined goal. This mindset allowed us to remain open to serendipitous moments that often became the most powerful elements of our film.

Now the editing process, was as unconventional and generative as our filming. Faced with 120 GB of footage and no predetermined narrative, we needed a method that would allow patterns and connections to emerge organically. We used figma, an infinite canvas became our playground, a space where we could see our entire film at once. We grouped clips and screenshots according to shapes, rather than time or location, this allowed us to see visual rhythms that might have been missed in a traditional linear edit. Circles clustered with circles, organic shapes found kinship with one another, and the rigid lines of urban architecture created their own constellations. Transitions that might have seemed jarring in a traditional timeline made perfect sense when we could see the visual connections between disparate shots. The order of our images wasn't dictated by time or place, but by the visual echoes between shots, creating a dreamlike flow. This approach to editing was more than just a practical solution to working with non-narrative footage. It became an extension of the film's themes, a way of finding order in chaos, of allowing meaning to emerge from pattern. It reinforced the idea that in both nature and art, complex and beautiful structures can arise from simple rules and relationships.

The original soundtrack was churned up in a matter of a few days. Another problem of working without scripts, we realized was this - we needed the music for the edit, and the edit dictated the music. Its by the brilliant Asteroidbelttangoclub, a lot of back and forth happened. We started with a reference playlist, aligning with each others voice. Film scores are made exactly to accompany the story, which we didn't have at that point. What we had was groups of shots - fast match cuts, transitions, and a lot of shapes. I remember at one point drawing scribbly maps of how the music can build up and flow. Once we realized we had a compatible reference for the scope of what things could sound like there was a marathon of back and forth with AsteroidBeltTangoClub in which audio montages and themes were proposed to go with sections of the footage, and bpm decisions were pinned down for the audio textures in each area, enough to trust we could get into the editing The music wasn't merely accompaniment; it was a vital component of the film's DNA, influencing the rhythm of our edits even as it responded to the visual flow.

Our protagonist's journey mirrored my own experience as an artist obsessed. In the beginning, we see our character noticing floral patterns in the world around him. But as the film progresses, these observations become more than just passive recognition. The boundaries between the observer and the observed begins to dissolve. The flower shapes start to consume the character's reality, much as they had consumed my own creative vision.

The visual language we developed for Phoools is unabashedly psychedelic. This wasn't a conscious choice to create a "trippy" aesthetic, but rather an organic result of trying to faithfully represent the altered state of perception that comes with deep artistic focus. Colors bleed and blend, shapes morph and multiply. Moments of calm observation give way to frenetic sequences of pattern recognition, mirroring the ebbs and flows of creative thought. It's a visual representation of the artist's mind at work - sometimes methodical, sometimes chaotic, always in pursuit of that elusive spark of inspiration.

The everyday objects and scenes we filmed take on new significance when viewed through the lens of our floral obsession. A drain cover becomes a mandala, a tangle of hair transforms into a garden. This heightened, almost hallucinatory perception is not an exaggeration. By embracing the surreal, we've managed to create something paradoxically authentic.

Looking back, Phoools, in its final form, is a waking dream, a psychedelic journey that is about the creative process itself. This reinforced my belief in the power of generative processes, not just as a means of creating art, but as a way of exploring the very nature of creativity itself. Showed me that by surrendering to the flow of ideas, allowing narratives to emerge organically, can transform not just the art, but the artist as well.

Below are the full credits

Phoools (the Film) by @kyu_mehul
Director(s) - Aditya Mishra (@adiboivisuals) and @kyu_mehul
Edited by @adiboivisuals
Cinematographer - Jiten Bachate (@jinsenparker)
Camera Operators - Lokesh (@k4camera), Deepesh Baisla (@deepeshart) and @jinsenparker
Production designer(s): @jinsenparker & @kyu_mehul
Colorist - @adiboivisuals
Original Soundtrack - Asteroidbelttangoclub & Tyler Kiley
Additional Sound - Manu (@childofbrahma)
Stop Motion Animation and additional shots - @adiboivisuals
VFX - @kyu_mehul
Post Production Manager - Sayantan Maity (@maisayantan1)
Typography - Devang Vats (@devang_vats)
Poster - @deepeshart
Special thanks to Agam Jot Singh (@avoilamusic) and Abhinav KJ (@abhinavkj_)

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Further reading, more on the art - https://paragraph.xyz/@kyu-mehul/art