Have you been hooked to Netflix's Ghoul, of late? Well, you can now catch some thrill and suspense in Odia too. Thanks to director Anupam Patnaik, the first Odia psychological horror web series, Panic Shots, is set for release on September 10. Ahead of its release, The City Express caught up with Anupam to bring you some insight into the first-of-its-kind series.
"The theme of this anthology is horror. By horror, it doesn’t mean ghosts, sound effects and special makeup. It deals with the mental state of a person who can be scared of anything, basically an intense feeling of fear, shock and disgust," said Anupam.
The series will be released on the Youtube Channel of Technoart Productionz. It features state award-winning actors like Barsha Nayak and Choudhury Bikas Das. " We have roped in popular TV and film stars such as Hara Rath, Manisha Rath, Biswadeep Das, Pragyan Bohidar, Manju Pradhan and stand-up comedian Roshan Bisoi for the series," he added.
The series has been written by Roshan Bisoi. The music has been composed by Ankesh Ashish. But, how did Anupam stumble upon the idea of making this web series? "After producing Tulasi Apa, Odisha’s first biopic last year, we had faced the trouble of getting screens and distributors as it was an off beat film. We wanted to have particular niche audience for our films. More so, it is experimental and digital is the new 70mm. All of it somehow came together to create this series. The idea was always to go for a horror film, but due to the aforementioned disadvantages, we stuck with web series. It was a cumulative team decision, to be fair," he added.
The filmmaker claimed that the series was shot on a shoestring budget. He used whatever resources he had on his own side. "I took my Canon 5D Mark III to get the shoot done and the rest relied on post-production. The crew was limited and even the makeup was more than often applied by the artists themselves," he added.
The scene of online viewership is evolving in the State. "There are already several players in this field, and we are getting into it lately. If you ask my opinion on viewership, I have always been of the opinion that our Odia people deserve better things on screen. It’s a two-way road. If we don’t give them good stuff, they won’t come up and ask for it. Most filmmakers, I have heard saying, we make sub-standard things because the audience likes it. I beg to differ at this point. I believe that, till the point there is just money and MBA-run movie industry, there can’t be good films and we will be constantly feeding the fodder of mediocrity to our audience," he added.