People often think that very few people in the film industry make it big. But these software engineers are making it big without even being educated in film making. Keerthi Natarajan, Snehal Bhosale, Bharath Balemane and Joyita Das, all techies, are premiering their short films Navilugari, Rudra and Misfire at KH Kalasoudha on January 18 at 10.30 am. All of them are part of a film making group at Infosys and have been into film making and acting for over three years.
“Every short film maker aspires to make full-length feature films in future. So it doesn’t matter whether he/she has any monetary gains. It’s the experience that counts,” says an enthusiastic Keerthi, whose film Navilugari (25 minutes) is about love, friendship and other such basic emotions in life. “You can’t possibly find a different plot. Everything has been done and dusted, especially RomComs. But taking a normal story and presenting it differently is what helps short film makers improve. Telling a story in five minutes is both, fun and challenging,” adds the founder of Golden Age Film House.
The other two films, though, fall in the action category. Bharath, the co-director of Rudra, a 12-minute Hindi short film and chairman of By2Coffee Films, says, “Rudra is a gangster movie set in the backdrop of Mumbai. We have shot the film in Bengaluru and this is a rather high budget film,” he says, adding that while most short films have a budget of around Rs 7,000, they have spent over Rs 60,000 on this film and the production has taken over three months. “At Infosys, we are a group of around 450 people in the film making club. We have forums and discuss story lines and this story is an outcome of many brains put together,” he says.
Joyita Das adds that it’s like a breath of fresh air to do something creative after a nine to five job. She’s screening her fourth directorial film, Misfire, a Kannada short film. “Misfire is about three strangers who meet randomly over a smoke, having no clue that their lives had been turned upside down by each other in the past. It’s different from everything I had done before,” says the founder of Rolling Paper Films, who got into film making after having participated in an ad-making competition.
The past three years have seen the short film industry boom, with several films from Bengaluru making it to international film festivals and also going viral on the Net. Keerthi assesses, “Three years ago, people couldn’t afford any equipment. But with the advent of DSLRs, anyone can make short films! I have even people from abroad complimenting me for my older films, thanks to social networking. It is a big boost,” he says, adding that all of them would like to get their films chosen to be screened at international film festivals, which gives all film makers great incentive and recognition.
