A bunch of techies of Infosys’ Development Centre in Thiruvananthapuram are on song. Their debut ‘musical’ short film, Blue Rose, released on YouTube,has been viewed more than 90,000 times and counting.
“We wanted to do something different to the regular narrative and hence we chose to unfold the storyline of the short film through a musical, punctuated with dialogues,” says Gokul Narayanan, a technology analyst, who directed the short film. This is his second one after Emblica , the runner-up at Technopark’s Qisa short film fête in 2014. “I was looking around for a new project when my colleague Brindly Sujith told me about this Tamil song, ‘Konjum Varthayal,’ that he composed and we hit upon the idea of making a short film around it,” adds Gokul.
The 9.40 minute-filmweaves a soulful tale of a music enthusiast, Alan, who derives inspiration from Rose Ann, a popular television music programme anchor. He gets a reality check when he finds out that Rose Ann’s show is completely scripted and that she herself knows next to nothing about music!
“The title itself gives a clue to the story. A blue rose is not natural. Through Alan’s small story we want to get the message out there to not take anything at face value. Do not believe everything you see/hear, which is particularly relevant for society of today,” explains the director.
Brindly plays Alan, while Aswathy Pillai portrays Rose Ann. Sooraj Santosh, co-founder and lead singer of Masala Coffee band, and Divyavalli Santosh, an UAE-based singer, have sung the lyrics. Save for editing, all the work for the short film was done by the Infosysians themselves. The film, says Gokul, was a weekend project for the techies, shot over two months in scenic locales in the district. It has been produced by project manager Ranjith Pillai under the banner of RP Productions.
