It’s a techie life: Password to reel adventures

Techie Basil Joseph debuts his 17-minute film Priyamvada Katharayano? on YouTube on September 28

Basil Joseph

More and more techies, it seems, are being charmed by the reel world. Just look at the numbers who signed up for a recent short film fete at Technopark or the popularity of film appreciation sessions organised by Nakshatra (a part of Natana, Technopark’s cultural club). There are quite a number of techies in the city who consider films and filmmaking more of a passion than a hobby; techies who are willing to spend their free time and resources on making movies.

The latest to join the bandwagon is techie Basil Joseph and his friends and colleagues Vineesh Kumar, Vishnu Soman, Muralikrishnan, Basil Ummer, Sumi Premachandran, and Nidin Nandakumar, among others, all of whom work for a multi-national company in Technopark.

Their 17-minute short film

Priyamvadha Katharayano? will be released

on September 28 at 6.30 p.m. on YouTube channel Supershersha.

Says Basil Joseph, the director and one of the lead actors of the film: “I’ve always been a film buff and taught myself the basics of filmmaking from online tutorials. Technology is so easily available these days and all it takes to make a film is a will to do it and a certain amount of dedication.” Earlier, Basil, a graduate of the College of Engineering (CET), Thiruvananthapuram, made a seven-minute short film, one with a serious storyline, titled

Shh . “It won much appreciation from my colleagues and friends. From then on I’d been thinking of making a film on a slightly bigger canvas.”

The story of Priyamvadha Katharayano? is based on an eponymous short story written by Arun Kayamkulam on his popular Malayalam blog ‘Kayamkulam Superfast’. Incidentally, Arun is also a techie and works at Infopark in Kochi. According to Arun’s blog, the story and the characters, except Arun himself, is inspired by real-life people and an incident that happened to them. Says Basil: “One of my friends sent me the link to Arun’s story with the post script that it would be ideal for our movie. We all loved it and immediately got in touch with Arun. He replied after a couple of days saying that he was super excited about it and that his only condition was that we should give him credit. He is now one of our champion promoters.”

Priyamvadha Katharayano? is a poignant and comedy-filled tale about four techies, Prakash, Xavier, Sebastian and Basil, who work at Technopark. When Prakash starts describing one Priyamvada, waxing lyrical about how she is ‘as fair as milk’, her ‘loyalty’, her loveable nature… even her love for eating chicken, the others are charmed and start to fantasise about her. Fantasising about her brings about a lot of changes in the three. Xavier, for instance, loses his melancholia. Then Prakash invites them to his home in Thrissur for Onam lunch and the trio are all giddy that they will finally get to meet the beautiful Priyamvada. Only, there is a bit of a surprise in store when they meet the real Priyamvada…

It took the group seven days to shoot the film, shooting only in the evenings and weekends. “From getting a producer (Vineesh) to getting people to act in the film, it was all easy. The only real challenge we faced was to coordinate everybody’s schedules. It helped that we all worked in the same company,” says Basil. Only the editing (by Appu Bhattathiri) and music (by Basil’s CET buddy Siddhartha Pradeep) were outsourced. “I’d finish work and go to Appu’s place to edit the film till 5 a.m. and then go back to work at 9 a.m.!” says Basil.

The young techie is not done with filmmaking. Already, he’s planning his next film based on a story by his colleague Sreejith Nair.