The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : ‘Star power’ rocks Saarang

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‘Star power’ rocks Saarang

Staff Reporter

Soundarya Rajinikanth delivers lecture on animation

PHOTO: K.V. Srinivasan

Making waves: Soundarya Rajinikanth at the Saarang fest at IIT-Madras on Friday. —

CHENNAI: The crowd of students broke into incessant cheers and whistles as Soundarya Rajinikanth took centrestage to deliver a lecture on animation to students who had gathered at IIT-Madras for the Saarang fest on Friday.

Proprietor of Ocher Studios and director of what she said called “India’s first 3D animated film - Sultan the Warrior,” Ms. Soundarya was the first guest lecturer in a series of lectures organised at Saarang for budding film makers.

“If you want to become a filmmaker, first you have to have your crew in place,” she said smiling and commanding almost the same amount of admiration as her father .

Ms. Soundarya then went on to talk about her magnum opus , which stars her father.

“This will be the movie that takes and Indian films into mainstream Hollywood. Though we’ve come a long way with technology we still await the day that visual effects are a part of the film and not forced on to the script. This film does that,” she said.

With plenty of clips of her team’s work,(including clips on the making and the trailer of the film) but a tad too less information, Ms. Soundarya’s lecture ended with an interactive session with the students.

“Technical questions people, nothing personal,” she said smiling at the somewhat boisterous crowd. One enthusiastic student was even offered an interview for a job at her company when he asked if he could take up an internship.

Aniket Baheti, one of the coordinators of the event said that this year the team at Saarang had organised a short film making competition. “The only condition is that films have to be made within the IIT campus. We provide them with some of the required equipment, including editing facilities” he said. The organisers have received over 30 entries from across the country of which they chose 10 finalists, he added.

“The finalists will be judged by a panel of judges and the best short film chosen. In the meanwhile we are also conducting lectures on the subject of filmmaking, of which this was the first,” he said.

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