The night after celebrating our wing's (awesome) hostel-night video, we woke up with a buzzing discussion about a competition for making the best 'Adieu Video'. The 'Adieu' is the official farewell function at IITM, held in the middle of April. Although I'm not particularly sure as to who organises the function (institute or alumni association), it is a big day in the year of all final year students at IIT.
Being hung over by the previous night's party, we were quite short of ideas. All of us were certain that we didn't want to go down the conventional route taken for such videos, that depict the life (from first year to last) of a student - the class of videos that are now known as toothpaste videos. At the same time, we didn't want to make the video a collage of images - something we all thought was better fit for a musically synchronised slide show. We wanted to make a video about the places at IIT and the people at those places. We decided to go with a concept similar to our wing video, based on the video by Matt Harding.
What followed in the next few days was pure crazy. None of us had any clue about the efforts and the pains it would take to organise something at an institute level. We had great faith in our ability to enthuse the lethargic people - unfortunately, they didn't share the same opinion. We would set out before sunrise, searching for the best and most memorable spots in the institute. We went trying to convince the people at various places to dance.
After spending nearly seventy-two hours doing nothing but the video, the video was finally ready. And what looked like a Herculean task less than two days ago, was a polished product. If you haven't had a look at the video already, do check it out! And if you have, you could always have another look.
Like the previous video, we deserve no credit for the idea itself! That belongs purely to Matt Harding, for his startlingly simple idea that has caught the imagination of millions worldwide! However, we still hope you'd appreciate our execution of the idea.
Some interesting trivia about the video -
- Although the video shows more than 70 locations at IITM, a total of 92 locations were shot for the video.
- The video has over 500 different people from IITM.
- The video was shot and edited in less than four full days!
- All the videos have been taken using a normal digicam, that almost everyone seems to carry around these days.
- No blue-screen and those sort of funky techniques were used - more because we had no clue how to use them!
- Animesh Agarwal was chased out of the temple by an extremely angry priest, when he saw him dancing at the temple!
- The swimming pool scene is real - and yes, it kick's ass!
- The blackbuck scene happened after spending ninety frustrating minutes, cycling around the institute, trying to find a group of deer that we could dance around!
- No still images were used - even though that meant no Shaastra and Saarang!
- This video has been made by a group of 20 extremely lazy tenth-wingers of Godav.
- A video called 'The Unmaking' can be found on YouTube, which contains some of the scenes that did not make the cut for the final video.
1) All the profs who did not reproach us when we told them our ridiculous plan!
2) Shiwani Gupta and Destiny Decoder, who were always ready to help out.
3) Cavity aka Bhopali for all the enthusiam he put in bringing people to dance.
4) The freshies in our hostel, who got dragged around, but never complained (to us).
5) And last but not the least, the guy from Narmad, who danced with us at OAT, and in the most subtle ways, making us believe that such a video will be possible!
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