At 27, young talent Raghu Shashtry is bringing his 12 years of cinema experience into his debut Run Antony starring Vinay Rajkumar. The debutant who started his career at an early age of 16 couldn’t have asked for a better platform than being part of Vajreshwari Combines, who is producing the film is made. And when we asked the director about his new beginning, he says, “Of course, I am lucky but I also have years of hard work. I am glad that a big production has accepted my script,” says Raghu, who is not sure how many scripts Vinay, and his father Raghavendra
Rajkumar had been through before finalising his script. “As a director or an actor, we push ourselves to do a film that we would personally like to watch on-screen. In that way, Vinay wanted an enjoyable movie-watching experience that the script of Run Antony provides. In order to bring the next generation of cinema to theatres, in terms of screenplay and the story, Vinay thought this movie fit the bill,” he adds.
Raghu, along with writing the script and doing the direction, attended to Vinay’s make over for Run Antony. “From the moment he and his father showed interest in the movie, three months ago, I have been trying to turn Vinay into Antony. I want him to keep the look till the release of this film. From styling to costume, every detail has been worked out to make him look out of the ordinary. We tried out at least five to six shades before we finally concluded with one look, which has now been revealed,” he says.
Raghu considers the workshop Vinay recently attended in Mumbai as an advantage. “Any school of learning is an experience, which will take him a long way. We also had a workshop for the film and will be having a couple of more classes before we start shooting from December 15.”
Ask Raghu what took him so long to make his entry as a director. In reply, he says, “A director might take 20 years to do his first film but any experience counts. I was into advertising, a scriptwriter, a lyricist and also dabbled in journalism. I pursued all of this to ultimately be a director and helm a film. I am happy to bring in all the years of experience into this film,” says Raghu, who has been working on Run Antony script for the last 5 years.
“I was simultaneously working on 4 to 5 scripts and among them, this was finalised,” says Raghu for whom Run Antony is a beautiful love story with a thriller. “We are mainly focusing on what kind of films will entertain today’s youth and our goal is to reach them. I will not say ‘it is different’ but we are trying to make it unique in its presentation.” Run Antony will have Manohar Joshi as its cinematographer and Manikanth Kadri as the music director. The film will see two new heroines which makers will be announcing today at the muhurath.