Little did Shyam Madhavan Sarada know that taking part in an International contest for independent filmmakers by Fox Studios would enable people from around the globe to collaborate and make a movie under his brainchild — Wannabe studios. It all happened by chance.
Like any aspiring director, he too approached people in the movie industry, but it did not work. However, this did not deter him from following his dreams.
The motivation
Shyam, a self-taught painter, illustrator, designer, filmmaker and art director of children’s magazine Melting Pot, recalls: “I met some like-minded artistes in an online forum during the contest. This motivated me to start Wannabe Studios, where independent filmmakers across the globe can exchange ideas online and collaborate with each other.”
Apart from hundreds of wannabe artistes from Germany, Kenya, Nairobi, Dubai, France, the U.S., U.K. and a few from India, Shyam’s online forum boasts various famous international names — filmmaker and writer Jesse Heffring from Canada, director Bradford R Youngs from the U.S. and filmmaker David W. Williams from Australia. The first collaborated independent project is a Tamil-English movie — “Onan”. It revolves around a small-time drug dealer-cum-tourist who wishes to flourish in the trade. Shyam recalls: “I initiated the idea of making a movie together in the online forum. It was a challenge convincing people, but some agreed, and we formed a team. Everything — from conceiving the idea to plot discussion and selection of character — was done online in three months. Neither of us had seen each other. The movie was shot in a fortnight in Chennai and Kochi.”
The cast comprises David Williams, Don Akemi, “Kalloori” Kamakshi and assistant director R. Ramamoorthy, one of the protagonists. The hair stylist is from the U.K., special make-up artiste from Belgium, and the background score is by a German. It was a challenge to shoot the movie with many onlookers, traffic jams and language barriers. “We used a guerrilla tactic of filmmaking where the movie is made on the run. For instance, a chasing scene was discussed in our van, and shot immediately. Since we could not obstruct the traffic and the scene had to be taken at one shot, our characters said their own dialogues using the guidelines given to them.”
The movie has been sent to various film festivals — Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Independent Film Festival, Global Cinema Festival and International Festival of Kerala — and the team is upbeat. And, work has started on their second project “Eight”, a horror film.
