KOCHI: Declaring their love and loyalty for their institution, a clutch of students from the College of Engineering Trivandrum has made a feature film, CET on Strike. The 90-minute-long Malayalam film, which is written and directed by CETians, is set for release in April. Touted to be the first-ever feature film made by engineering students in Kerala, CET on Strike talks about a strike day on the college campus.
The movie was co-written by director Hesten P Alexi and Sidharth Sunny from the 2018-2022 batch during the second pandemic break. It also features students from the 2018 batch to the present as cast and crew. With their college and nearby places as locations, the film has featured more than 80 casts within the campus using the sync sound method.
Elaborating on their film, director Hesten, an Ernakulam native and former applied electronics student, says, “After the success of our first short film, Pathirakallan, released in 2021, we wanted to create one more before leaving the campus. So Sidharth and I started to work on a 30-minute-long short film inspired by a few real-life incidents from our campus. But by the time we reached the climax, it had the length of a feature.”
“The movie is about a strike on the college campus involving two political parties. It is not a hero-centric movie as three-four characters don the role of protagonists. At the end of the day, the film is about friendships, politics and several aspects of the CETian life,” says the director. To cut down the shooting expenses and camera rent costs, the team practised the scenes and recorded them on a DSLR camera first. It also helped the cast to get comfortable in front of the camera and understand the angles.
“The film cost Rs 8 lakh, which we found through sponsors and by selling printed T-shirts. The cast and crew are CET students. There’s also a song by celebrated singer Jassie Gift. Our photography director Albin Biju pre-visualised the whole film using a normal DSLR to train himself and make the cast camera-friendly,” says Hesten.
Screenwriter Sidharth says the making of the movie posed a great challenge. “There is a rain scene in the movie. But we could not afford Rs 10,000 to rent a water tank lorry. So we followed the DIY method. We collected water from an abandoned well near our college, stored it in an old water tank and later sprinkled it onto the scene using sprinklers we made. The indoor scenes required ceiling lights and holders. For that, we welded the scrap iron bars as frames and tied lights with them. We visited almost all scrap shops in the city to collect the materials. Since we are engineering students, turning scraps into shooting equipment was easy,” he adds.
“We used a construction trolley from the civil engineering department as our camera dolly,” quips the former mechanical engineering student. The fund crunch was a matter of concern for many. “At night, we used to edit the scenes shot on the day to fasten the post-production,” he says.
“It will be a dream to see our film on the big screen. We plan to release it on YouTube, but we wish to have a full-fledged theatre release for all students. The financial constraints for a theatre release still worry us. All our savings are already used up. So it would be very supportive if we receive any financial support,” concludes the director.