Four years back on the same day, I uploaded the short film KAN - Kathai Alla Nijam. I have made a video on the "Making of KAN". If you have not seen the short film yet, check it out in the below link.
Before sharing the Making video, I thought I will share my experience and journey. "Enna da ivan, oru super dooper padam edutha maari build up kudukarane"nu neenga nenaikalam. Apadi onnum superaana short film nu solla mudiyathu but the experience I went through in making of the film was nice. For any one who starts with the first short film or who is planning to shoot the first short film, this would definitely be a learning and for my near and dear ones it would be a memory (including me). If you are not interested in this experience, you can watch the Making video alone (below), others please scroll through and read the rest.
Here goes the experience and the journey ...
It was 2013, when they announced a short film competition in Vijay TV as part of their 7th Annual Award. They had given 3 topics First Love’, ‘Man and Woman’, ‘Journey Back Home’ and I chose "First love". Due to the short time for the submission date, I thought of using the existing story of a blogger friend Subramani Dharmar. I got his permission, made slight changes to his story and wrote the screenplay. My brother Nagesh helped me in reviewing & editing the dialogues. I named it as "Kathia Alla Nijam" title resembling one of the programs that happened in Vijay TV just to attract them. I went around in train to find out shooting spots as the script requires scenes to be shot in Railway Station. Bala, one of my friend accompanied me and we took the train from Tambaram towards Chengalpattu. Noted down few stations where we could shoot the film, Polichalur station which was closer to SRM was one of the station which I thought I could use it. Another station was St. Thomas Mount. I also explored the MRTS stations. I was trying to reach out to contacts for a good cinematographer, editor. My hard luck, whoever the contact I was trying to reach they were also working for the same competition. As I didn't get contacts I shelved the project.
After few weeks, through one of the contact one person called me and said he is very eager for acting in that short film. He introduced himself as Raagav and he appreciated the script a lot. Special thanks to him because he was so much interested and it was with his help that we moved ahead a lot. Through him I got a contact for handling the camera Pradeep who was in Tiruvottiyur. I went all the way to Tiruvottiyur to meet Pradeep and discuss about the script. He along with few people had gathered in a small house on 1st floor, was watching a foreign film in projector with the whole place in dark. I went and sat at the last. The film got over in about 10 mins and then they switched on the light. There was one elderly person about 45-50 and he started asking questions about the film. I was just sitting and observing the conversation. Once the conversation got over, I met Pradeep and his master. Explained the script to both of them. Later had another discussion with Pradeep alone. He was suggesting me to work on the details of the script with respect to camera angle. He asked if I have done the Story Board, but I hadnt. He said there are some softwares, but at the least he suggested to take photos for every scene as to how I wanted it. Basically i had to create the story with photos first. That was a lesson that I learnt that day.
Raagav was very much excited, infact more than me. He shared a list of small time models for the heroine character. Meanwhile, one of his friend's cousin Saranya who was working in Cognizant was interested in acting. We asked her to come over to Velacherry MRTS railway station (That was a much better station to shoot). Explained the story, screenplay to Saranya. Raagav also listened to it one more time. Then as per Pradeep (Cinematographer) suggestion we did photo shoot for every scene. This really gave a very good idea for me to shoot the film. Next day, Raagav and I alone went to the Velacheery MRTS railway station again to do some photoshoots for his portion alone. We also travelled to couple of stations to see if they were better.
Next hurdle was the shooting permission. Normally we need permission to shoot in public place. Railway stations belong to central government and that added more difficulties. Again Raagav was the saviour, he gave a contact of a person Karthik who teaches in MGR film studio for the DFT students. Karthik had studied DFT and became a lecture there itself. DFT students have an option to get permission using their bonafide document template and this would be a final year project for them. So Karthik referred one of the student. But the problem is I have to put the student's name as director and myself as Assistant director. I was fine with that. They have to fill in the details like the station name, date and time when the shoot would be and then go to central railway station and get a seal & signature. We were all set to start the shoot and was waiting for the guy to submit & get the permission. But then he was not reachable and not traceable. This delayed our shoot. Then Karthik assigned another student. When that guy when to central station, they told him that they no longer grant permission in the DFT bonafide format and that the format has changed. So he came back without permission. After that I got busy with office project and Raagav got a feature film opportunity.
Years passed by. In 2015, there was this competition by Pepsi as they were the main sponsor for IPL. They called it as Crash the Pepsi IPL. Winners would get chance to watch the finals in the stadium. Work was relatively less pressure and I thought of capitalizing this opportunity. I made 3 ads (all of it are available in this blog). This again boosted my confidence. In 2016, I was out of project and decided to pick the short film from where I left. Raagav was not in touch so thought of working with one of my office colleague. First choice was Yugesh as the lead actor and for cinematography I thought will get help from Tamil, who was good at photography and had a DSLR camera. Rajesh JC was the second choice for the lead actor. Raji (Rajalakshmi) who had left Thirdware (she was getting married) sometime back came to office to talk to admin for some purpose. The moment I saw her I thought she would be the right candidate for the stranger girl. I asked her if she was willing and she straight away noded yes without any reluctance. Now I still needed one more girl (only 3 characters involved in the script). One of the weekend, I went to my friend's place Rajiv Menon, who was good at music composition to ask if he would be ready to work on the BGM for my short film. He was no more composing music but was into a business by that time (recording cutomized musical note for the people who buy cars), he had tied up with couple of auto dealers. I told the script and his wife was excited to play the 2nd girl's role. I had decided the roles but still the major problem of shooting permission in railway station was haunting me. I went and looked around deserted railway stations with help of Saran, thought we could shoot there without permission. They were really deserted but the problem was that they were also very dirty, there were so many shrubs grown and platform wasn't good enough. I also traveled to other stations like Korattur, Vyasarpadi junction and infact took couple of rounds from Central till Avadi back and forth. Then fixed one of the station Hindustan college where there was only one counter. So decided to shoot the film without permission, if anyone asks, thought will ask sorry and escape from the place. I also changed the first portion of the script to Bus stand instead of railway station, the 2nd portion however had scenes in railway station. For bus stop scenes, Saran again gave a beautiful location in Korattur.
Decided on the date for bus stop shoot, since yugesh was not available... fixed Rajesh JC. So all 3 of us Rajesh, Rajalakshmi and I went to korattur, little interior. I took my panasonic lumix FZ35 (thanks to Sankaraman who suggested this camera while we were in the US in 2008-2009), my tripod and we went to the destination. I was still confused about where to keep the camera and what angle should I shoot, whole night this was running in my mind. Then decided to go with the flow. We tried to shoot the same scenes in multiple angles, front, side ways over the shoulder on both sides. For the first scene alone we took many attempts. There was lot of laughter as the actors were also not used to this. We didn't know how to ask the common people near the bus stand not to look at camera or to look at us. Few ignored us and that helped us but then there were couple of people who were just starring at us. We finished the shoot of bus stop scene by evening with Rajesh & Raji and winded up. Another weekend went to the Railway station with Rajesh, Suprita and Vijay (Tamil was not available, luckily Vijay had a DSLR too). We first finished the shots in the platform. Then boarded the train and took some shots in iphone 6s. While returning we took the same sequence once more time in a different angle, different seat. Similarly winded up the shoot by evening. I took couple of days (2 weekends) to do the complete editing myself using Adobe Premier. I searched for bgms, sounds on the net and used them at the appropriate places. We also went to a dubbing studio KV Media for professional dubbing (it costed around Rs 500 per hour). We went 3 diff days to dub for Rajesh, Raji and Suprita for their portions independantly and thats the only cost that I spent apart from food and snacks for the actors. Kathir from KV Media was professional in the dubbing and helped us a lot to dub properly. Later used the dubbed tracks in my editing and synchronized them. Finally uploaded the video on 5th June 2016 (fours years back). What an experience and journey. This wouldn't have happened without many people's support whose name I have included in this whole article. Thanks to all of them and to my family and close friends. I'm sure I will make it big one day and reading this will be nice recollecting the memories. Hope you liked reading this and so did I by sharing. Leave your comments, feedback if any, would really help me a lot.
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