My first film-making advice …

Episode 1

It was the year, 2006. I was just out of my engineering and was still unsure of what I really wanted to do with my life. Cinema held a serious fascination for me and I badly wanted to get into films but had no clue how to. I didn’t know anyone from the film fraternity either.

Those were the days when I thought the actors write scripts & dialogues! I was not even aware of a director’s role in a film.  A friend of mine who also wanted to get into films and myself made a great team in “Hunting for the oppurtunity”. It wasn’t easy then compared to these days because technology hadn’t evolved much and the reach was limited. The only active social platform was Orkut. But then again, there were hardly any filmmakers out there on Orkut.

We were trying to meet directors & actors by waiting for hours in Gandhinagar, but there was hardly any luck. It was exactly what people had told us – It’s not easy to make cinema nor easy to meet someone from the cinema. I will share more about this journey in another column. For now, let me jump few months ahead.

We were attending various events too, just to get in touch with someone connected to cinema. One such event was organized by TIMES OF INDIA – a career fair. Kavitha Lankesh Ma’am was the Chief Guest. After the event, we went to speak to her like how students try to talk to their lecturer after class hour. I was so confused and I think I might have asked her a million things. She was very polite and told me just one thing – If you are really interested in direction, do a short film on your own.

The idea of making a short film was going on in my head, But how and where to start?

( I just wished Ma’am had told me this too. Maybe, she wanted me to figure this one out on my own )

In the Next column: How we did do the film? What was the film?

CUT TO THE CLIMAX: Thank you Kavitha Lankesh Ma’am. I did do my short film. In fact, quite of few of them! One of them got me to work with Ramesh Aravind Sir and another one “Sulle Sathya” was featured at Cannes Film Festival 2012 as the 1st ever Kannada Short Film at the festival.