With an eye for stories

MASTER CRAFTSMAN

Rajendra Vinod is doing his masters in multimedia at Wiztoonz College of Media and Design, JP Nagar. Despite the pressures of his course, he still takes time out for his passion — filmmaking. It is something that he picked up right from school.

He confesses that he had a lot of stories to tell right from his school days. Rajendra has also armed himself with four other degrees — journalism, B.Tech, M.Sc Applied Psychology and B.Sc Psychology through Annamalai University Distance Education. “A lot of people ask me what I intend to do with so many degrees but I think I need to apply a bit of everything to be able to tell a good story. My idea is to create, engage, educate and inspire people through my stories,” he says.

He concedes that learning filmmaking from scratch was no easy task. “The last 12 months have been a tough ride. I learnt the basics, hand-picked a team and started a studio called ‘Aarvi Films’. It is nothing but the short form of my name. It has been a struggle right from scoring a script, finding a producer and getting the technicalities of filmmaking right. But looking back, it has been worth every moment,” observes Rajendra. 

Rajendra set foot in the world of films with a short film titled ‘It’s my birthday’ which was about his life. This was followed by ‘As Far As’, which delved into relationships. “I am close to my sister, who is almost eleven years older than me. When she got married and left the house, I was lost and some of my films like Payanam capture that feeling. It’s a journey of how I came to terms with that situation,” he recollects. 

Rajendra says that when he started off, there were a lot of subjects he had in mind but he soon realised that they were too ordinary and predictable. “I began working on more complicated subjects and it is my short film called ‘Change’ that really helped me look at the art of filmmaking from a logical perspective.

 ‘Change’ is based on the subject of duality. Every person and everything has two sides,” says Rajendra and points out that ‘Change’ went on to win two national student film awards, given by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. Some of his films have been shown at national and international forums. Rajendra hopes to explore more of the filmmaker in him. He says, “Awards and recognitions inspire me to work harder and create something better.”