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Issue #62 – Student Successes
by L. Swift and Jeff McQ
Just three months into his Film Connection apprenticeship, Nelson Kelkar has been getting something of a crash course in filmmaking, having recently accompanied his mentors Bayou Bennett and Daniel Lir (aka, the Dream Team) to the Philippines for a documentary film shoot!
Nelson’s search for a film school began in South Carolina, where he was currently living, but nothing seemed to be a good fit. “They all have a program, like two years, three years,” he says. “A person like me who has a lot of responsibility…cannot do two years.” Coming across the Film Connection, he decided to enroll—and specifically, he decided to come to California to be mentored by husband-wife filmmaking duo Bayou and Daniel of Dolce Films in Los Angeles.
Little did he know where that move would take him.
It turned out that the couple were slated to shoot a documentary in the Philippines for Lourdes Duque Baron for her nonprofit organization Hope For the World, which raises support for medical missions to provide treatment and supplies to the impoverished in that country. It would prove to be a perfect learning ground for Nelson, who agreed to come along and assist.
“He learned a ton of filmmaking on that trip,” says Bayou. “That was a huge thing because a documentary is a specific thing. You can’t talk, you can’t laugh when you are doing an interview. You don’t want to be heard on the camera, and so I’m teaching him how to interview, [with] Daniel teaching him the framing, the color, white balance. We taught him everything, like how to use his camera…I think he learned a lot.”
Daniel agrees. “We really put him through a little lab where we had him shoot some footage, look at it, analyze how to improve it and go re-shoot and look at the footage again,” he says. “I think it is really important for a filmmaker not to just know how to write a script, but to know how to do all the genres that you can possibly get hired to do.”
While a trip to the Philippines might not have been a good fit for every film student just starting out, for Nelson it seemed tailor-made. As native of India, he was already well-versed in international travel, and as a minister himself, Nelson was already familiar with the sometimes stark realities of mission work. Still, the opportunity to document the reality of medical missions moved him.
“It was tiring,” he says, “but when you see people’s faces… you know, the sacrifices the doctors are making and the people like family, like somebody’s had a surgery, and then you see them, like, okay, everything is fine for them and their family—on their faces, when you see their smiles, all tiredness is gone.”
The experience also impacted his mentor Daniel Lir. “It was very intense,” says Daniel. “But seeing how the doctors came from the United States on their own dime to help these people and did 60 surgeries a day…seeing how they help these people was totally inspiring.”
While the documentary shoot itself proved a great learning experience for Nelson, his pairing with the Dream Team has also proved to be a great fit, since both mentors and apprentice look for positivity in their work, and an opportunity to serve the greater good. “We had a good story there that we feel needs to be told,” Bayou explains. “I think having a higher purpose or reason for what you are doing… once you start doing these things, you are going to get haters. You just are. And it is a sign of success….You just have to recognize that actually means you are doing something important.”
Now back in the U.S., Nelson’s next stage of apprenticeship is to learn the editing process by editing the footage he and the Dream Team filmed overseas. But he’s already thinking past his apprenticeship toward future collaborations with his mentors. “We’ll also make some documentaries in India,” he says. “I’m already visiting with them about making the movie in India and U.S. combined.”
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