We’re previously featured  one-person movies. Examples include “Unknown,” “Welcome to the Club,” and “Lonely & Cold.” But Sanmegh Thokade’s “Lift” (the British term for “elevator”) raises the bar. This is the first solo movie we’ve seen in which the moviemaker plays two characters. The protagonist and the antagonist engage in rapid-fire dialogue. How he accomplished this trick is revealed in the BTS clips at the end of the movie. For more insights into this complex production,  you’ll find an interview with the moviemaker below.

Interview with Sanmegh Thokade

MobileMovieMaking: Where are you located?

Sanmegh: I’m originally from Mumbai, India. I lived in and around London for about four years and am now living in Leeds.

MobileMovieMaking:  What motivated you to become a filmmaker?

Sanmegh: I have always been a hardcore movie buff. I choose movies and shows to watch based on their IMDb ratings and critic reviews, rather than what pops up at the homepage of the streaming platforms. I guess I have always been fascinated by the art of filmmaking, rather than watching movies for entertainment. I got into writing when I was in college. My friends used to love the stories I wrote, and I’ve been trying to transform my stories into visual pieces for years. That way, I would get to put more art into those stories because there’s so much more to pour in, like creative cinematography, transitions – it all just adds so much to the text. And I loved picking up on those things from movies, then doing research on how the scene was filmed a particular way.

MobileMovieMaking: How did you develop your moviemaking skills?

Sanmegh: I think it was Tarantino who said he never went to film school to learn it all, he went to films. I never even thought about joining a film school because this was always just a hobby on the side of my regular day job. But because I was always into researching everything I watch in movies if it fascinated me, it automatically got me learning the art. So I learnt a lot of filmmaking skills from the video tutorials, and just years and years of patience working on story after story and getting the plans up for filming them. Hopefully this is just a start and the future works will give me more opportunity to showcase skills better, and help me keep learning.

MobileMovieMaking: Are there any filmmakers who influenced your approach to making movies?

Sanmegh: I’ve only done my first short film and it was a solo project so I don’t consider it as a cinematic thing. It was just something to build a portfolio to be able to approach people and make a team for the larger projects. But in general I have been in love with Christopher Nolan’s storytelling and the way Tarantino builds up scenes into the plot. We also have an Indie director in India, Anuraag Kashyap, who has gone through a terrible struggle for more than a decade until recently when he’s able to make some mainstream movies which are distributed popularly. Such stories inspire me a lot.

MobileMovieMaking: What gave you the idea for “Lift”?

Sanmegh: I have so many stories which have got great reviews by everyone who has read them. But every time I tried to film them, I would spend weeks and months on them only to get shut down because of someone or something coming up, on which the project was dependent. So last year, I spent time making a project which would require just a single cast and me as a single crew, which was to be filmed in one day. And I got 70% of it done, and then the actor bailed out halfway through due to some emergency and then never showed again due to lockdown and various other reasons. That was the point when I realized I need to narrow down the dependencies even further. Because I couldn’t operate the camera and act in it, I tried to think of ways where it would make sense to have the camera fixed. And so the CCTV found footage idea was born. I loved movies like “127 Hours,” where the entire film is driven just by lines and acting. So if I’m in a lift, the intercom was the only way to have some dialogues in the film. And then one thing led to another, and I had the story ready to film.

MobileMovieMaking: How did you plan the shoot?

Sanmegh: There was definitely a script. I always start with a summary of around ten lines. It has brief notes about the scenes and key dialogues. Then I start filling in with details and characters and more dialogues to build up the goal per scene. At that point I move the script to a screenplay editor, format it properly, and  get it reviewed by close friends  who like my kind of brain-teaser movies.  Many times, I change the script quite a bit because I don’t feel it has the impact I felt the day before. A couple of iterations later, I lock the screenplay although there are always changes till the filming day.

MobileMovieMaking: Did you create storyboards or shot lists?

Sanmegh: No, because it was me alone. But as you see in clips found in the credits, I did something similar. I went to the lift, stuck the camera up, and made decisions about the framing, lighting, etc. I even edited a sample before the filming day to see how the output was going to look.

MobileMovieMaking: Why did you cast yourself in the movie?

Sanmegh: It made sense to make the film alone because the writer character in the film is also trying to figure out how to make a film alone. So it comes full circle. The story is also about the writer coming up with those stories, which are (as seen in credits) my actual scripts that I plan to film in the future. So I figured it will just perfectly fit together if I play the character myself. Later, when I saw how bad my first rehearsal was, I considered hiring an experienced actor. I have never acted in my whole life. But my parents kept stressing that they want to see me in this because the story is so relatable to my life. And my wife helped a lot to improve my acting by reading lines with me and giving pointers.

MobileMovieMaking: What kinds of challenges did you have to deal with during the shoot?

Sanmegh: I had to film in the lift after midnight to avoid causing disturbance to people using it throughout the day. Plus  I ran into a lot of technical issues with the camera. For example, I couldn’t change batteries when they would run out because if the camera moved even slightly, the whole take would have to be filmed again because a CCTV camera frame should not move between lines.

MobileMovieMaking: Can you offer insights into directing yourself?

Sanmegh: It is very hectic. I wouldn’t advise anyone to do it, especially if you’re just starting out. If there is an option to cast someone, go for it! The problem was much worse in my case because I couldn’t see how the take was, because I couldn’t move the camera to connect it to any other device by wire. So everytime I went to the lift, I used up the full battery by doing as many retakes as I could. Copying the video to my phone wirelessly after each take was an option, but it took ages to transfer and it would mean I’d get less juice to film more takes. So night after night, I just filmed takes, reviewed them during the day, made notes for improving next time, re-filmed the next weekend night again.

MobileMovieMaking: What about the part of the concierge?

Sanmegh: I had to record that dialogue  after my video was ready. So I had to react to the intercom with the other lines playing in my head. I had to make sure to often start my reaction halfway through the imaginary sentence because that’s how anyone would react as often you know what a person is saying halfway through their sentence. That brought in complexities. I wish I could get a team to handle each department on their own so I can focus on writing and directing only, but I have no regrets from filming “Lift” alone because it was an experience of a lifetime for me. With lots and lots of learnings.

MobileMovieMaking:  Can you tell us anything about working with that location?

Sanmegh: I couldn’t rehearse at home because there were things in the lift I wanted to use, like the mirror. The mirror had partition lines running between it and I wanted to use it in a way that my face is reflected in the mirror normally when things are not as bad in the scene. But when the character was struck with suspicion that he had been trapped, I wanted my face to be reflected from across the crack between the mirror pieces to appear slightly distorted. Things like these were only possible when tried inside in the lift as I would have spots to stand at during specific lines. And because the lift was for all residents of the building, I would wake up at 2 AM on Fridays and Saturdays, rehearse until the camera batteries died, and get out before 6 AM so as to not cause inconvenience to any fellow residents. This happened for months. Then, because I was planning to move out,  I asked the building concierge for permission to film in the lift during the day and put up notices for other residents to avoid using this particular lift for a few hours when I was filming. He was very supportive as he has seen me struggle filming in the building the year before. So I printed out small pieces of paper requesting people to use the other lift for a bit. I stuck the notes on the buttons of all floors every time I wanted to film during the day. I finally managed to film the last scene somehow on my last day there! I had planned to have an elaborate climax where the character rushes to the concierge room by running down the stairs and realizing that it is empty. But that ending wasn’t possible to film within the last couple of hours, so I had to settle with the current climax. It wasn’t scripted earlier. I changed the ending the night before moving out. Because my floor had dim lighting,  the outside shot is actually filmed on another floor which I luckily discovered to have better lighting.

MobileMovieMaking: What gear did you use?

Sanmegh: I tried a lot of action cameras. Even after doing a lot of online research to select the camera, I found the first one performed poorly in low light. So I returned it and bought another one, which wasn’t as wide to cover the lift area well. I tried different models of GoPro and I think they only had 110-degrees wide angle. It took more than a month but I finally landed on a camera from APEMAN. It claimed to be 170-degrees wide.

MobileMovieMaking: How about the lighting?

Sanmegh: The existing lights were too harsh. Bright spots were blowing out in the footage. So as seen in the credits scene, I simply used a piece of baking paper to diffuse the light and it worked alright. In an ideal world, I would’ve liked another source of light from the side on my face to hide the shadows, but it was just not possible to hide it for a single-person fixed-camera film in such a confined space.

MobileMovieMaking: Could you talk about editing the movie?

Sanmegh: I used the DaVinci Resolve community version software to edit the video. For some reason, I could never get it to play back while editing. So I had to sync up the video and audio tracks by literally scrolling through the timeline and it would stutter its way through. I used syllables like ‘m’, ‘p’ to sync the audio as those were visually clear in the video from the lip movement. To export the footage  just to be able to play it back sometimes took more than four hours even though I used my laptop with i7, SSD and 16GB RAM. I approached a professional editor towards the end just to check that, and it was behaving the same way on his machine. So it wasn’t my machine but the software itself. I’m not sure what went wrong. Probably the codec of the camera’s outfile file. I would suggest that new filmmakers do a small end-to-end trial of their equipment and software beforehand to ensure compatibility.

MobileMovieMaking: What are the advantages of shooting with an action camera rather than a traditional camera?

Sanmegh: I needed to have something small that I could stick up in a corner of the lift. I wouldn’t have had that flexibility with my traditional camera or even my phone.

MobileMovieMaking: Any disadvantages in using an action camera instead of the traditional camera?

Sanmegh:  I couldn’t find even an expensive action camera to have video quality as good as my traditional camera. But I guess it works for some shots and for films like “Lift,” which are meant to show footage from a security camera.

MobileMovieMaking: How long did the entire production take?

Sanmegh: About four months, mainly because I was only able to do rehearsals and work on the film on weekends after midnight and wrap up before the next morning. I needed more than one month just for editing.

MobileMovieMaking:  Could you share your process in creating the sound track?

Sanmegh: I did add many sound effects in the film using objects found at home which make similar sounds, like the button being pressed in the film is actually my kitchen’s electric hob sound. But as far as the soundtrack is concerned, I didn’t have more time to spend on this project, nor did I want to, because I have taken a break from work to try out a bit of filming and the editing took longer than expected. I wanted to pick up other projects as soon as possible, so I used the royalty-free music online.

MobileMovieMaking:  How do you feel about the finished movie?

Sanmegh: Of course, there are many things I don’t like (especially my acting in this), but I feel like every content has its purpose. And the purpose of “Lift” was to serve as a portfolio, not a cinematic masterpiece. And it has done its job quite well. The fact that so many people across the world found it relatable and inspiring is a bonus I never dreamt of. And even though there are many things that I don’t like here, I still feel I wouldn’t have been able to do it much differently due to the creative constraints of  it being a single-person fixed-camera short film. I didn’t expect to like my first short film, but because this one ended up coming full circle (the way filming this connected with the actual script’s plot) makes me feel proud of it, and especially finally finishing and releasing the first short film against all odds.

MobileMovieMaking: What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out making movies?

Sanmegh: I am only starting out too, but if I have to use my one experience of completing a project I would say that you just need to have patience to bring it to completion and get it out there. You don’t need to make it big on your first try, but it will be worth it when you see the bigger picture. If I hadn’t failed to finish so many times before, it wouldn’t have led to this desperation to inspire a single-person short film. You learn a lot on your journey, and it pays off when you least expect it. Through this first short film, all I expected was that a few fellow filmmakers going through the same struggle would relate and I might start talking to the like-minded people and maybe someday form a team to collaborate with for other projects. The video crossing 1000 views in the first three days was a very unexpected and pleasant surprise. All the feedback about how people, irrespective of their jobs, are relating to the story has made me realize there is always an audience waiting to see your content.

MobileMovieMaking: What’s the best way for readers to keep up your work?

Sanmegh:  I’ve just set up a YouTube channel because I didn’t want to spend time trying to find distributors for “Lift.”

# # #

The editors of MobileMovieMaking have chosen “Lift” as the Mobile Movie of the Week.