Cinema is more than a passion for Midhun Murali and Nevin Fradian. Having made two short films and with a third one in its post-production stage, they come out as a confident pair with clear-cut plans for the future.
They've been friends from college – the P.A.Aziz College of Engineering, where Midhun and Nevin did civil engineering and mechanical engineering courses respectively. Dancers of a dance group called Do or Die, they found that they were in step with each other when it came to creative ventures like theatre and cinema too. “In 2010, we worked together on a skit for a college event. While I directed it, Midhun did the editing. We hit it off immediately,” says Nevin. Cinema became their favourite topic of discussion; soon they started working on scripts and even had a couple of film scripts ready.
First step
The 2010 edition of Crossroads, an annual technical and cultural festival of Mar Baselios College of Engineering, included a short film festival. “That set us thinking about our first short film, Beyond . By then, we'd already met a couple of people from the film industry with our scripts. We thought a short film would be our first step in pursuing our dream,” says Midhun. The film was about how “the soul leaves a body a few micro seconds before death and its confrontation with the soul-reaper”. Directed and written by Nevin, it had cinematography and editing by Midhun. It had won the award for best editing at Inter-campus Cinemascope Convention (ICCON) short film festival, a first-of-its-kind professional campus short film festival in Kerala, in 2011.
Their second short movie, F Friend , came out in January this year. A slick take on how friendships can sour relationships, it has got over 29,000 views since it was posted on YouTube on March 23. Written and directed by Nevin, the film was edited by Midhun. He was also the associate director. Rijo George scored the music, and Vishnu Prabhakar and Bipin Raveendran handled photography. Visual effects was by Arun Pillai who worked in the Malayalam movie Second Show . Nevin played the baddie in the movie. “The work was appreciated by actor-scriptwriter Murali Gopy,” says the excited duo.
They are now bringing out Shaeey , a short film in Malayalam (the other two were English works).
“It is a comedy flick that revolves around the life of an engineering graduate. It tells about his dream, that of finding his girl, and his adventures, rather misadventures, while attempting to find her!” says Midhun.
Now, their plan is to build a firm foundation to turn their reel dreams into reality. Nevin, who worked in Technopark for sometime, is all set to go abroad to work to “garner a financial nest while pursuing my passion.” Meanwhile, Midhun is going to Chennai to do a one-year course in editing. “By the time I complete the course, Nevin should be back and we should be able to reach the next destination in our journey in cinema,” he says.
They have brought out the films under the banner 22 Pictures. “We share the same birthday, July 22. So, the name!,” says Midhun.
