The low-profile editor Praveen Pudi who apprenticed during the making of Choodalani Undi , Rajakumarudu and worked as an assistant editor to Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao, Chanti, Marthand Venkatesh is now suddenly a name to reckon with. He is currently working on Trivikram Srinivas-Allu Arjun film S/O Satyamurthy , Prakash Rao-PVP Productions film starring Anushka and Annapurna Studios-Nagaruna film Soggade Chinni Nayana .
He talks about his journey, “Earlier during the film process one had to develop the negative, print the positive, do the sound synch. But all one needs to do now is to add a memory card into the computer and drag it into the software. We did digital editing for Aazad, Bhadri and Kushi and then I worked as a free lancer for corporate films, documentaries and television advertisements and later shifted to Pawan Kalyan Creative Works as an associate editor and in a few years I was on my own.
We used to see films since childhood but I particularly never thought I should take up this craft; I came here purely for financial reasons and slowly started liking it. I learnt what editing was all about and watched the senior editors work and learnt many things.”
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He defines editing as creating a story for a visual medium. Directors narrate a story verbally through imagination and the editors according to the visual interpretation construct a story. He adds, “Basically all the navarasas have a timing and the editing depends according to the pace of the navarasas. It is creating an emotion through the vision and pacing of the story. After digitalisation, there have been many changes and things have become very easy. Once a scene or a portion is chopped it can be rejoined. A director’s emotion and the editor’s emotion has to run in a parallel manner. Hits and flops are not in our hands but we can give a good crisp copy.”
The big films that fetched Praveen Pudi popularity are Pilla Zamindar, Julayi, Gunde Jari Gallanthayindi, Attharintiki Daredi, Manam etc. He observes that the challenges faced by the editor usually depends on the genre of the script. “ Julayi has an intellectual presentation, Manam dealt with three generations, Gunde Jari… is a confusion drama..Pilla Zamidar an emotional drama. Editing is not technical as everyone thinks it is sheer story telling. At the end of the day, the audience should understand it.
I also worked with Sreekar Prasad and each editor has individual skill sets and different patterns of editing all of which are based on the genre. Chanti is known for his soft and clear story telling and holds people emotionally. Marthand has his forte in love and romantic films..family sentiments. Sreekar is good at variation in scripts that crosses all language barriers. There is a different pacing for each story,” he quips.
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Finally Praveen says his aim is to work on a Bollywood film and at the moment is booked for a few Tamil projects and will be moving into the Tamil industry shortly.