Students launch Thiruvizha, a music album celebrating youth
Photos: M. Periasamy and K. Ananthan
A labour of love The team and their CD Photos: M. Periasamy and K. Ananthan
Engineering and creativity come together beautifully in the music album Thiruvizha (the youth festival).
Great effort
Balancing their studies, semester exams and project work, this group of engineering students of VLB Janakiammal College of Technology and Engineering has come out with the brilliant album. If their launch pad, a 25-minute short film New
Year gave vent to their feelings on the power of youth, Thiruvizha celebrates the joy and pain of love. The catchy theme music says it all.
Promising
It has already earned them a plum assignment with Kovai Home appliances, the South India dealer of Nokia N 95 mobile phones. “The mobile phone comes with multi functions. So, we have shot the ad using two frames (colour and black& white) in Tamil and English,” says R.P. Shivakumar, who dons the director’s role for Thiruvizha.
Lingering melodies
The album has launched R.Vijayanand, a sound engineer from an Australian University, as the music director.
His music is rhythmic, catchy and lingers on.
He has also penned the lyrics for two songs Vizhigalin Arugil and Kanavinil Kanda.
Two engineering students, Anup from Ramakrishna College and N. Srividya from Avinashilingam make their debut as singers with Kanavanil… “We planned it as a mega commercial venture (at a budget of Rs. 3.5 lakhs) with five
songs based on western and folk melodies, but due to lack of funds we restricted it to three songs, a theme music and a video for the title song Moonlight,” adds Shivakumar, who also turned a lyricist with this song, composed by
Rajesh. And he says words such as laser kathirgal, Sidney Sheldon and I-pod are intriguingly used.
A fresh perspective
Singer M.Rajesh’s voice brings freshness to the numbers moonlight and vizhigalin. He is also the music co-ordinator of the album.
The co-director J. Balasubramanian says it took them 11 months to finish the album.
“We also completed three semesters during the same time. We worked continuously for three days (from dawn to dusk) just to record the theme music in Vijayanand’s studio in Chennai. After working on our college projects, we would sit up till 3 a.m. for the album.”
Coimbatore connections
The songs have been recorded at Maya Studio and the cinematography is by Giri Stills in Coimbatore. The beautifully shot video on Race Course Road is a pleasure to watch.
Students R. Purushotaman and Deepti Venkatesan are notable in their understated performances.
“We have used the girl as a predominant element. Different lighting tones and black and white frames show how life turns brighter for a guy when he falls in love.
The first charanam is all about happiness of love supplemented by the greenish tone of the frame and the second one is the pain of love conveyed by a reddish tone,” Shivakumar explains.
Kudos
The song ends on a sad note and that innovative twist has earned them a pat on their shoulders from director R.V.Udayakumar who released the CD. “He also appreciated us for the subtle treatment of the concept,” Balasubramanian adds.
R. Parthiben has done the public relations and the branding is by T.R. Vijayanand of S6teen Limited Technologies (I) Pvt Ltd.
The team pass out of college this year and have jobs waiting for them. But that is not going to stop them from staying connected to the media.
