Chennai: The concept of making crowd funded movies seems to have come a long way since Manthan. The 1975 movie, is said to have been financed with the support of five lakh farmers, who contributed Rs. two each for the venture.
The trend has made a comeback in the last couple of years with half a dozen web portals popping up promising to help movie makers crowd fund their films. And in keeping with the trend, a debutante Tamil movie maker is attempting a crowd funded movie, for which he is offering the investors various kinds of rewards, ranging from rights to view the movie online to a documentary film on the patrons and their families.
He found that the supporting portals charge 'too much' for their service. So he decided to set up his own website and directly market it to the people. "It is small budget movie with a project cost of Rs 75 lakh. Crowd funded movies are now catching up in the country. So we thought we - a young talented crew - should go a step further and reward the investors something new," said Ranjith Kumar, director of the movie.
He was of course inspired by the success of Pawan Kumar's Kannada movie Lucia, which was made through crowd funding and turned out to be a successful project two years ago.
There are not many details available on box office performance of Kurai onrum illai, the first crowd funded movie made in Tamil and released last year.
According to Ranjith, his movie, Payanam Katru Mazhai (Journey Wind Rain) is an experimental independent Tamil feature film narrating a story of a crime investigation.
"We want to leave a memorable foot-print in the history of making films. We are mainly targeting the international film festival circuits and video on demand online release around the world. This film will be shot entirely on locations in Tamil Nadu and scheduled to commence in January-February next year. We are now approaching for crowd funding this project with attractive, worthy and unique limited edition rewards for every supporter of this film," he said.
"If you want to support the movie with Rs 1000, then you will get a pre order ticket to watch the movie online, a brochure book of the film and a few sets of movie posters among other things. We are planning rewards differently for different slabs. If another person supports the project with Rs 5000 he or she would get a Blue Ray copy of the movie with behind the scene videos among other things. If you make your contribution to Rs 10,000 you will get script of the movie and book on the making of movie additionally along with other rewards," Ranjith said.
A visit at the website www.journeywindrainthemovie.com would tell you that a person who supports with Rs 25,000 and above will get special invite for the movie premiere in Chennai along with five prints of photographs by Ranjith on sea among other things. Those who support with Rs 2 lakh will get his or her profile shot by the move director himself.
And those paying Rs.five lakh to support the project will get a 10 minute documentary shot on him or her and family by Ranjith.
Ranjith Kumar, born in Kerala but brought up in Tamil Nadu, started his artistic career as a painter, then turned to photography and design before entering the world of cinema, the one he is obsessed with. A look at photographs taken by him would tell that he has a unique style of capturing the visuals in a way that blurs the thin line between painting and photography.
K C Ramesh who worked for Tamil movies like Mandhirapunnagai and Thennali Raman will be the cinematographer for the movie Payanam Katru Mazhai while music will be done by Sharreth, a well known music director from Kerala and most recognised music linked TV reality shows of Malayalam television channels. Ranjith will be pinning his hopes on new breed of actors like Prem Kumar, George and Manikandan, all linked to theatre world, for the movie.
