Anyone with a love for singing probably knows what karaoke is. We’ll go as far as venturing that some of you hip people have even heard of the marryoke. But we’ll bet that you have no clue what holioke is. Well let us tell you.
A portmanteau that combines holiday and karaoke, holioke is something a young couple from Goa came up with. Possibly.
Princy Mehta and Amrit Vatsa live an idyllic life in Goa with Mehta teaching dance and Vatsa doing photography and making documentary films. Vatsa's love for filming and Mehta's passion for dance that helped them shed inhibitions regular human beings like you and I would have, and what do you get? A completely Bollywood-style holiday video that captures the best of a destination and yet has the couple at the centre of it all.
Mehta and Vatsa didn’t just experience Italy, they danced their way through the country, not to mention being held by the army for flying a drone camera in a no-fly zone. Adventure in spades. They decided on the song, after much deliberation, before they left on their holiday. (“Aahista Aahista” from Bachna Ae Haseenon) As they travelled, they stopped at what they considered the most scenic spots.
They used a light camera when they shot each other and switched to a GoPro when they both wanted to be in the shot, lip-syncing their way to realising their personal Bollywood aspirations.
It all began when they took a vacation last year and went to New Zealand where they did the same thing for a lark. They say the response when they posted on social media was so great that they went better prepared this time. “Amrit handles the technical work and I the aesthetic,” says Mehta. I feel good - a New Zealand Holioke by Amrit & Princy featuring themselves from Amrit Vatsa on Vimeo. And this is what Vatsa’s says on a status message (set to public) on Facebook where he’s posted the video.
“The first half of the song features Alta Badia, Venice, Rome and Florence. The second half shows us cycling along the coastline from Naples to Sorrento to Salerno (crossing Amalfi) and the non-cycling shots are from the beautiful Capri Island. Equipment used: 80% to 90% shot on GoPro Hero4 (almost always on a Feiyu ultra 3 axis Gimbal held in our hands). For the aerial shots, we would attach the same GoPro to a DJI Phantom2 (which is a quadcopter). Also used GoPro Hero3 for very few shots. Some portions were shot on Panasonic GH4+12mmf2, either handheld or on a mechanical chinese gimbal (CAME-H4). The Panasonic was also used to shoot all the time-lapse that you see. We did not carry any DSLR or heavy lenses or tripod or any other heavy gear in this vacation.”
Take a look:
It isn’t just Mehta and Vatsa who want to star in their holiday documentation. Alpesh Sangvi, travel lover and an avid photographer, posted pictures of a Greece vacation with his wife. Highly stylised, the pictures have also seen some post-processing and could easily be mistaken for a still from a Bollywood film.
A tip of the hat to these couples for living their dream holidays and documenting their memories in this stunning manner. People staring, a suspicious army and weather changes: nothing gets in the way of a young Indian couple fed on a steady diet of Bollywood-style romance.