The Odd Conversation

Pavan Deep Singh's latest Super 8 film is based on a radio play that he's been writing and is part of a series short films that he's planning with actor Dharmesh Patel.

The series of shorts are about the frustrations and gradual despair of one man, a likeable person who unfortunately goes off the rails, degenerates and ultimately commits a murder.

Both actors in 'The Odd Conversation' have a background in theatre and Dharmesh was in Silver Street (a BBC drama on the BBC Asian Network) as one of the main characters 'Arun Chauhan' until recently.

Pav told us more about the making The Odd Conversation...

We used a Braun 6080 with an enlarged/widened gate, we were going to shoot at 25fps, but because the sequence was sligthty more than 3 minutes the camera was set at 18fps.

We did 7 takes in total and we used two different stocks the 64T (which I hate and I only used it because it's cheap) and Kodak vision 2 200 which I love, I have uploaded two versions showing the two stocks on YouTube (the Vision 2 is above). The telecine was fairly cheap and was a let down really, it was done on a workprinter (not by me) and I don't think it is good especially for negative film, when I get a bit of cash I will get a rank transfer, probably by Pro 8 as they can handle the wider frame.

The sound was recorded on the spot via a tie microphone attached to Dharmesh's jacket and the mini disc recorder was placed in his back pocket, the mike was from Jessops, very cheap. I synced the sound in the NLE which was tricky but fun, no additional sound effects were added. We used a monopod with a weight attached to it as a steadycam, we had no money at all.