KOCHI: It is not often that you meet someone who has given up a cushy job at an IT firm to take a plunge into the uncertain world of movie making. However, Nishant Pillai, the founder of Budget Lab Productions has done just that. Launched officially in 2014, the production company’s first venture was a short film titled Corporate, but it wasn’t until last year that Nishant found the courage to jump feet first into his pet project. Since then, the company has produced two short films, with another being in the post-production stage and is also looking to helm a web series conceptualised by budding filmmakers.
“My attempt is to provide a platform for aspiring directors and scriptwriters who have great ideas but lack the resources. So we started a Malayalam short film production contest wherein we invited scripts from enthusiastic filmmakers and the winning script selected by the jury was produced under our banner,” says Nishant about the competition which has successfully completed its third edition recently. While the first edition of the competition registered 218 entries, the latest one received over a thousand submissions. “This time around we partnered with brands like Swiggy and Friday Film House who came on board as sponsors. Season three had three winners instead of one. Apart from this, we gave the top five shortlisted contestants the opportunity to meet Vijay Babu to narrate their movie scripts,” adds Nishant.
Cheerful about the positive response, Nishant’s company is organising another unique contest, this time for travel vloggers. Called Destination Vlogger 360, an open bid has been made inviting video submissions of travelogues from anywhere across the globe in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil or Kannada. “What we came across during the short filmmaking competition was that filmmakers from other languages also wanted to take part. Hence we decided to open the vlogger contest to submissions from multiple languages coming from around the world. We have been getting calls from places like Malaysia,” remarks Nishant. Nishant with his production house hopes to ride the wave of acclaim and support young artists.