The Golden Triangle | An Inside Look Into The Making Of My Documentary
/On Monday 3rd of August, I released my very first documentary, The Golden Triangle. In today's blog, I want to give you an inside look into how it all came together and how this video was produced.
The Golden Triangle is a phrase that the Indian tourism industry has been using for years. Indian history is so vast and if you are travelling to India for a historic journey, it's best to do your research on which era you'd like a glimpse into. Thus, bringing us back to the Golden Triangle. It refers to the three cities - Delhi, Agra, Jaipur - which when you see on a map of India forms a triangle. The history behind these three cities is the Mughal Dynasty of India.
The idea for this documentary came to me when I was holidaying in India over December - January (2014 - 2015). I was visiting all three cities and initially I had planned on releasing the videos of these three cities from a travel perspective. However, amidst a conversation, my mum mentioned that I am doing a project and I should do a good job of it and that's when it sparked, why not research and make it into a documentary.
I've always been very fascinated with the Mughal Dynasty in India. In fact, visiting the Taj is always on my list of 'go to' places every time I visit India. I had managed to get extensive footage of all three cities specifically of the Forts, Taj and whatever else relates to this dynasty. My only disappointment was that even though we went to Agra, we weren't able to go to Fatehpur Sikri, which is roughly an hour's drive from Agra, depending on traffic. This city also plays a role in the Mughal Dynasty as you'll hear about it in the documentary video at the top of this blog. I have however been to Fatehpur Sikri in the past. Nonetheless I worked with whatever footage I did manage to gather.
Once I returned from my travels, I started working through the footage and produced the travel videos and side-by-side started researching on this era. Often, we only hear about the first six Mughal Emperors, as they had the most impact during this dynasty. After the sixth Emperor, Aurangzeb died, the Mughal rule was deteriorating. In Indian history, it is often told that Aurangzeb 'dug the grave' of the Mughal rule. Whilst there were many more rulers after Aurangzeb, none of them were successful in ruling the way their ancestors did ultimately losing their rule to the British.
This journey of producing this documentary has been a great project for me. I had migrated from India at a very young age, and had only studied very little of the Indian history. This project gave me a chance to appreciate the history more and really understand the incidents that occurred in history. I am not a film maker per se, but this is a field I really am enjoying. I hope you enjoy watching the documentary and hope that it imparts some knowledge of the Indian history with you.
Until next time,
MiliG