Darshan called and asked if I would shoot an exhibition for him. I said yes. I quoted twelve thousand rupees. I had never shot an exhibition.
He gave me the number of his rental agency, Multi Media Cinegears, and told them I was good for it. I walked in and picked up ten lakh rupees worth of equipment on his name.
He had not met me.
The cinegears guys taught me how to use the gimbal, which was very kind of them given the circumstances.
I shot it. It was a good job done badly. Then I took five days to edit something that should have taken two.
Darshan came to my house. He sat down next to me and taught me how to edit properly. How to build a timeline. Content selection. Safety margins. How to pick music. What the flow of a final cut is supposed to feel like. How to pull the best one minute out of an hour.
Then he paid me the full twelve thousand anyway.
I gave that money to my dad, which almost covered what he had put in for my laptop.
He took me on two real estate projects after that, which is the only reason I had anything to show when 1GRP called.
I do not edit anymore. I have people who are better at it than I ever was. But the reason the agency does podcasts at all is that somebody taught me how to find the one minute that matters inside an hour of footage, and he taught me that sitting on the floor of my house after I had wasted five days of his time.
At the time it did not seem like much. It never does.