Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
No-budget filmmakers
|
"I Just Don't Get It!" SUDHISH KAMATH on the country's first no-budget feature length film
|
A dream comes true... Pradeep Kalipurayath and Vijay Prabakaran — Pic. by S. Thanthoni
"WHEN I was ten years old, I knew I wanted to make movies, but I knew no one was going to give me the money. So I started putting away a dollar every week of my life. If I missed a week, I made it up later, from age 10 on. Now, you're looking at enough to get us started. 2,184 dollars."
"But movies cost millions of dollars to make."
"That's after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten per cent of the net. Cash, every movie costs $ 2,884."
Bobby Bowfinger was 49 when he made his film "Chubby Rain" with that budget. But that was fiction, it only happened in a Steve Martin movie called "Bowfinger".
Cut to reality, location Chennai.
Two friends from college drift away. Vijay Prabakaran goes to study direction at the Vancouver Film School while Pradeep Kalipurayath learns the art the hard way, working on ad films, music videos and doing odd production jobs, including a stint with Southern Spice music.
Year 2004, late October.
The friends catch up, spend some time re-editing some of their earlier works with each other's help during a rather unproductive season. One tea-break then, turns out to be the break that the 23-year olds were looking for. The cup is half-full. "Let's make a movie," says Vijay. "Cool," says Pradeep. "Low-budget?" asks Vijay. "No-budget," replies Pradeep. "Cool," says Vijay. So, they made a movie called "I Just Don't Get It."
Venting frustration
"Both of us were creatively frustrated," recalls Vijay. "I basically wanted to vent out my frustration. Any script needs to have emotional content. So I just had to put what I wanted to say in the script. The film is about two guys making a movie called "Waiting like a church on a Saturday" with absolutely no money."
"Yes, it's possible to make a movie with no money," says Pradeep, who has floated a company called Poor Man Production. Vijay has his own company, called Dark Tree Entertainment.
"I Just Don't Get It" is a co-production of these two companies. Vijay directed the film, Pradeep did the cinematography and the lighting. The guys found a hero in digital video. "The medium does not matter as long as the script is honest," Vijay explains.
And to make video look like a film, Pradeep built his own lights with rat-traps and cupboards, used an office chair as a trolley and used PVC pipes to create their own Boom mikes which captured live sound.
Team work
"We made a deal with a friend and borrowed her camera (Sony PD-150 Mini DV)," laughs Vijay. "We've been in Madras all these years, so we just had to pull strings and convince people to get the locations that the script demanded," says Pradeep.
Convincing was easy because the duo had a neat portfolio. "We just had to show our work to let them trust us," says Vijay. Pradeep put up posters calling for volunteers to act and help behind the camera. Soon, interns from MOP Vaishnav College chipped in to take care of production work.
"We made ourselves pretty clear right in the beginning. No money does not mean no commitment," says Vijay.
"Besides, we're making the film for the festival circuit. We will probably release VCDs and DVDs later," adds Pradeep.
The cast
Their friends, theatre personalities Nikhil Cherain, (from `Grease'), Tejas Sridhar (who did the stage version of `About a Boy' in London, who was on a holiday in Chennai), Freddy Koikaran and Roshni Menon, played key roles in the film. Avial, a Malayalam rock band that Pradeep had shot a music video for, readily agreed to do a couple of tracks for the film.
"Nikhil Cherian plays the lead. His band called Garage Monsters is doing a track. And Manikanth Kadri is doing our score," says Vijay, who has an editing set-up at home and is currently editing the film himself.
So there, all taken care of, with no money. "Not no money exactly, you can say little money. We had to spend a few hundreds on building lights and buying tape," says Vijay.
Bobby Bowfinger could have further cut costs, eh?
The modus operandi
How Vijay & Pradeep made the film:
November 1
Start scripting the film, 'I just don't get it.'
November 10
Posters calling for cast and crew willing to work for free are out.
November 17
Start rehearsals with their cast, Nikhil Cherian and Tejas Sridhar.
November 25
They start shoot with borrowed camera, equipment and self-made lights.
December 17
They finish shoot.
Today
Post-production work is in progress.
January 3, 2005
They plan to courier it to the Hong Kong Film Festival, the deadline is January 7.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
