A snowboarding Film 

Passion Project - Set in the second-coldest place in the world, Iftekhar, a 30-year-old engineer at the power plant in the small town of Drass, located in Kargil district of India, rides his snowboard to his office in heavy snowfall to fix a power outage in the town.

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Making - I was living in Drasstown, a high altitude Himalayan region in India, during the start of the winter season and learning about the winter sports that were played in temperatures of -30 degrees. There were three different sports that were traditionally played by the people of Drass: ice hockey, archery, and polo. Ice hockey was the most popular and was loved by the people. I wanted to write a short story about one of the sports. I was trying to write something on ice hockey while researching emotional aspects of the game, but my heart was somewhere else. I have always been fascinated by snowboarding, which is not commonly practiced in Drasstown. Out of nowhere, I met Iftekhar, who was a local of Drass and worked in the power department of the town. He also did snowboarding and climbing as a hobby, which got me intrigued. He told me a few things that planted a story in my head. He was the only snowboarder in Drasstown, and he showed me inclines and passages where he would ride his snowboard alone, sometimes he would even board to his office. I made it into a longline about it and decided to shoot it alone with one camera, two lenses, and no crew. 

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I had planned to shoot it in a span of 3 days in minus 25 degrees, and I knew what I was getting into. Firstly, shooting snowboarding without a gimble, drone, or FPV to track the subject was an injustice to filming this sport, so I drafted a story, and gave importance to the situation around the character, and let the sport remain a decorative element in the film. Secondly, it was the middle of the winter in Drass town,  the snow was powder snow, and riding boards on it almost became impossible since it needed to be pressed by a grooming vehicle. We didn't have those facilities. We managed by pressing the snow with our skies and using areas where the Indian Army would practice their skiing. From the beginning, I knew that the film wouldn't have 10 foot rail jumps or a standard style of boarding in the snow parks, and it wouldn't look like one of those extreme Red Bull films, but it would have a story and might look organic. ​

 

Shooting Day 1 was indoors, and Iftekhar's house was perfect for the scene. It had beautiful Ladakhi architecture and colorful carpets, which give an idea of the culture and lifestyle of Drass. I wanted to use those strong colors in the house to express authenticity in the film. Iftekhar, as a person, had a distinct way of making kahwah (a traditional preparation of green tea widely consumed in the Kashmir and Ladakh regions of India). Creatively, it made sense to integrate the kahwa-making process with everything that's happening in the phone call scene. I found it an interesting expression when people multitask while they are on their phones. I saw Iftekhar as a character in this film, he had naturally sluggish body movements and came across almost like a goofy and lazy guy. He was seemingly expressionless and gave flat emotional reactions to everything, so it's hard to figure out whether he is sad or happy. I liked that trait about him and asked him to be himself. ​

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Day 2 and 3 were spent shooting in the snowcapped mountains. Climbing up and down the mountain in two to three feet of powder snow was the only way to shoot this film. I couldn't use the other snowboard because I didn't know how to ride it, so I tried to slide on the snow and made quite a few failed attempts to capture stable footage. Day 3 was grueling, as it was snowing heavily in the boarding in the narrow passage sequence, and soon there was condensation inside my ND filters, and I had to shoot that scene on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. After that, there was a whiteout. The color of the sky matched the snow on the ground. It felt like I was inside an infinitely bright white box. My camera blew up the whites, and it was not possible to control it.

Color -I have edited and graded this on Davinci Resolve. A few clips were shot at 120 fps in 8-bit HD, which was then superscaled using the AI feature in Da Vinci. It's cooked in Aces by fusing Fuji, Kodak, and Agfa film stocks to get the look that I wanted.

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Team

Cinematography, Edited, Graded, and Directed by Abhimanyu Aneja | Snowboarder  - Iftekhar Hussian | Skier Friends- Nawaz Azim & Adil Polda | Post Sound Support - Debarup Paul | Phone call 3 Voice Over - Mohammed Iqbal Mir