Films come abbreviated

SHORT CUT

Perfect for our falling attention spans and an entertainment that fits right into our youtube and iphone lives is the short film. “In a city like Bangalore, approximately seven hours is required for commuting and watching a movie in a theatre. Movie watching is becoming more stressful than relaxing,” opines K S Raghunandan, a short film maker, “Short films are the perfect solution to our cramped lifestyles. It’s the future.”

Raghu has been in the business for about half a decade and has his own production house called Flaunge. “The short film culture is big in countries like the US, UK and we are trying to bring it to India. With the advent of social media, even corporates are taking to the short film,” he says. Hrish Thota, another  short film maker, agrees,
“Last year, we made Tour of Nilgris, a short film on the promotional cycling event across South India.” Both firmly believe that the internet is an important vehicle on which short films can make their presence felt. “Sites like youtube has endless potential in terms of audience reach,” says Hrish.

“And with branding heavily titled towards the internet space, the video is becoming the best medium to reach the desired market,” adds Raghu.  Naveen Dwaraknath is a short film maker, whose film, The Shadow, was screened at a film festival in Kerala. Naveen has also made a Kannada film, Arvina Haadi.

“While English does dominate the short film space, there are  films made in regional languages. There are some aspects of our culture that cannot be expressed in English,” he says. Hrish says that the aesthetic aspects of the film lose credibility if it is in English, “Many short film makers make films in English first, only to realise that they’re better expressed in say,Telugu or Tamil,” he says. One of the trends of short films in the country is that they tend to be nonfiction. “The lower production costs associated with nonfiction films tends to be the reason,” says Hrish. “Also, it is a space to represent the common man whose more often that not left out in the glamour of Bollywood and other commercial cinema,” says Naveen.

For some, short films are like a preparatory school, that makes the big leap into commercial films easier. Pawan Kumar, who made short films for NGOs until a couple of years ago, now works of feature films. He worked on the screenplay of Manasare and sees the short film as a platform for aspiring feature film makers. “My acquaintance with camera and editing basics from my short film days has given me the confidence of writing screenplays for big mainstream projects.”

Is there a place for the short film beside the internet? Says Hrish, “Yes. Shamiana Short film Festival in Mumbai is now an integral part of the art junkie’s calendar.” “ Many production houses in the West have taken to short films. Its not long before big production houses like Yash Raj embrace the short film!,” exclaims Raghu.