Two broad categories

1) Concept: Scene wise rationale behind scene, the philosophy, Ideation, Iterative approach
to meetings and how the concept evolved

The Concept of Jijibisha:

According to an article, 15 Hindi Words You Can’t Translate Into English, Ever, “Jijibisha
means the intense desire to live and to continue living to the fullest in the highest sense of
being” (Mukherjee, 2017).

Another way to look at this is this word describes someone who loves their life and has a
strong ambition to prosper.
Usually, it's a person who loves life and always has intense emotions going on within.
He or she can go to any lengths to protect their loved ones, and is very forgiving at heart.

Ideas:
After learning about jijibisha, we jumped into a brainstorming session with the team. The
ideas that we came across in the brainstorming session were:
1. Story of a soldier: A soldier’s sacrifice in a war or at the border is least least
appreciated, but they protect us day and night.
2. Jijibisha of a student: A student strives hard to make a beautiful future but in the
process they face many challenges and failures. We wanted to portray the Jijibisha in
the students' journey.
3. Jijibisha of dogs: Dogs need to search for food, water and shelter their whole lives
and they need to be street smart and find a pack to survive. We wanted to showcase
the jijibisha in dogs.
4. Jijibisha of parents: Mothers endure pain to give birth to kids and fathers act strict to
keep the family safe. We wanted to portray their unconditional love towards their
children and family.

We as a team decided to make a movie on Joka's pets because we look at their lives everyday.

We all have come across many ups and downs throughout our lives, but deep out in our heart
there is a fire that keeps us going. The Pandemic and all the tragedy it caused caused pain to
humans, many lost their loved ones and the friends but however the desire to live longs
keeps on going on. This desire to live long is not only in humans, but can be seen in the
smallest organism that strives to live. To breathe, to feed themselves, to survive, to feed their
babies, to save themselves from animals above them in the food chain. There is beauty in it,
beauty in how our defense mechanism works and keeps us alive. In how it functions without
us even trying hard for it. How each human living being is Curious and exploratory on a soul
level, new challenges feel exciting. Knowing that the world can be hard sometimes you try to
enjoy every moment to the fullest.

Jijibisha as we experienced in Joka. The way in which each individual strives to achieve their
best, competent and willful, yet burned out. How we wake up everyday knowing there's a
challenge ahead and here in IIM Calcutta, it is the survival of the fittest. How a little slack
can cost us so much harm, all this in the hope that one day it was sustaining this competition
the one thing we can leverage.

2) Technical: The editing, the song selection, the narration

Narration:
After finalizing the topic and getting the contents, the next phase was to represent our
perspective subtly. We didn't want the movie to be content-heavy, so we focused on keeping
the narration as minimal as possible and let the audience grasp the critical elements out of
each scene.
We decided to break down the narration (mentioned in exhibit 1) into the daily aspects of our
furry friend's struggles. We divided the scenes broadly into four categories:
1. Introduction- We decided to start by introducing our campus and the beautiful lives
each one lives here. We wanted to bring the concept of how Joka is not a place only
for the management students but also a home for other beings, about their lives and
the struggles they go through regularly.
2. Jijibisha to stay together- The objective behind keeping this was to show everyone
that without any prior connections or grudges, how our furry friends find love and
care for each other and how this affection desires them to live.
3. Jijibisha to eat- This was the most crucial aspect to showcase; the major problem
faced by most of the street animals, not only on our campus but all over India, was to
get good food. We wanted to show their struggle and efforts to find food to sustain
and stay healthy to live long.
4. The last scene- This was an important scene, where the message we wanted to
narrate was how protecting their friends, their territory, and self becomes the ultimate
motive of living for these animals. And how with all the challenging situations they
face, they never give up and always work with more challenging conditions.

Exhibit 1: Narration
1) Start with introduction of animals at campus
Joka....a land of 7 lakes... a beautiful campus where students come every year with the hope
of getting their dreams accomplished and making big happen.
Joka.... a mesmerizing place where not only people stay and live their dreams but also give
shelter to our homeless furry friends and make their dream come true too!!
Let's hear more about these furry friends.. their dreams.. their life.. their desire to live.. their
JIJIBISHA!

2) Jijibisha to stay together- pets playing

The joy of running carefree with their friends, tugging at them, playing with them, barking and
chasing cars, and the love they receive from each student... make their dull, monotonous life
worth living.

3) Jijibisha to eat
Finding food to eat, just for survival, is not an easy job. We have to seek out garbage bins
and bags to see if we can find anything that humans have left behind. Most foods have
already been decaying, but it’s all that we can get to eat if they have to survive. We feel
lucky to come across a kind and gentle Joka family who feed us milk and biscuits. Some
even pat us on the head and say loving words while we thank them with a wagging tail and a
full belly.

4) Jijibisha to protect territory

Who is there to take care when they fall sick or are too weak to walk? When they are too old
and frail to move? No one. They are all alone in this cruel, selfish world, and they have to
fend for themselves. They have to protect themselves. They have to defend their territory
and their friends.
Life on the street toughens them and makes them ready to face all hardships. It makes them
a fighter and also someone who can share with our fellow beings.
And here we are living despite it all!!
It's a dream for many of them to stay in a welcoming family surrounded by warmth, love, and
happiness. They want to be our best friends.. This dream gives them hope to live... to fight
for their dream and to desire to live.

Technical aspect
Song selection: The initial idea was to not add any songs but the idea soon
evolved into putting in songs that would complement the narration and add
another layer of emotional depth to the video. The video starts with a very
calm and cinematic background music that adds atmosphere to the video and
sets the overall mood for the upcoming sections of the video. The piece peaks
during the reveal of the title of the video that adds emphasis to the title of
jijibisha. The background score stops in the mid section of the video where
there was an intentional effort to focus more on the narration and providing
narration over silent track acted as a vacuum after music heavy intro which
helps in viewer focus more on the speech and the visuals. The background
music comes again slowly in the last part of the video. We wanted the video to
end on an emotional note and the music perfectly helps in delivering that
emotion.

Editing: The video has a total of 19 different clips pieced together to form a
coherent story line. There is a scene in the midway that was meant to show the
jijibisha of cats interacting with each other. It is a combination of different
shots combined together to make a single narrative. It starts with a long take
of two cats lazily interacting with each other which pans to another cat
watching from a distance. There is a cut to show that same cat entering the
previous scene by walking towards the sleeping cat. This entire edit was done
to emphasize the communication process between animals by trying to
observe them from a third person perspective.
Cinematography: The scenes were shot from an iphone because the flexibility
offered by recording videos from an iphone was immense compared to using a
traditional big sized dslr camera. The aim was to capture animal interaction
and their lives passively which feels like a documentary. Some raw videos were
very long in length as no activity happened for most of the time. A lot of the
filming involved staying in place for a long period of time and capturing
interesting moments. The animals became comfortable after some time and
acted as if the cameraman was not present. The cats and dogs literally dropped
their guards and carried on with their normal routines. The last section of the
video was a continuous take where there was a fight between two groups of
dogs. It was a challenging shot as a lot of interesting actions were performed
on both the sides of the frame simultaneously and it was difficult to decide the
parts of the frame that needed more focus and attention.