BENGALURU: An NRI team in the US is all set to bring out the first Kannada feature film to be shot completely in a foreign location. The idea is the brainchild of Rahul Ram, a techie and a self-taught filmmaker. Titled Vedanti, the movie, if goes as planned, will be released in April.
“Engineering buys me bread and butter but storytelling helps me digest it,” quips Rahul, who works in a start-up in California.
The 70-minute-long murder mystery is shot completely in California. The cast and crew, except cinematographer, are Kannadigas living in the US. Almost all of them are freshers with no major experience in film-making or acting. Rahul himself handpicked all of them. Though the script was ready long back, the movie took shape only after he met a few actors following a drama show in the US.
“I narrated them the script.
They really liked the concept and that’s how we went ahead with Vedanti,” Rahul says. The trailer has evoked good response from Kannadigas in India and abroad. The film is currently in the post-production stage. A techie Ganesh Sharma Tyagalli, a native of Bengaluru, plays the lead role – detective Harish Vedanti – in the film.
Rahul says he always believed that there was a good potential for Kannada films in the US, thanks to the IT revolution. “When I wanted to build a profile for myself and get an audience base in the US, murder mystery was my go-to genre, as it can be narrated in short run-time and gives me scope to portray my narrative skills.” He adds that it took him a while to understand US-based Kannada audience and come up with something that could be of their interest.
“I wrote a one-liner on a character called Harish Vedanti. I already had a skeleton of murder mystery and fused both to make a movie. I started jotting other characters and plot structure in November 2016.Since it was my second job as a script writer, it took a few months to complete the script. I narrated the story to my team in mid Jan 2017. We shot the first scene in April and the last scene in October,” Rahul recalls.
Talking about the challenges he faced, Rahul says, “Unlike other films, it was easy to find a producer in my case because of the script, which speaks for itself. The major challenge was scheduling and executing, as all of them were software professionals who had a regular job and the film was only part-time.”
Made with a shoestring budget, the team has used Canon 5D Mark iii to shoot the entire film. When asked if they are planning to release the film in India, Rahul says, “We are not sure on the theatrical release in India yet, but we have figured out other medium to present it to Indian audience. My passion to narrate a story visually is financially backed by Subbu Padmanabh and Rohith Ramesh. Jojan T Antony has captured the visuals and Ganesh Murthy is colouring it. My screenplay is guided by Srikant Krishna’s tunes. Visually, I have been helped by many artists in the US,” he says.
The lead actor Ganesh Sharma Tyagalli says Vedanti has been a highly enriching experience for him.
He calls Vedanti an audacious dream of Rahul and says, “I am very happy to be part of creating a Kannada film entirely here in America with local artistes. We have received great responses from the film community for our trailer and this is just a beginning of greater things for us.”