India's First Digital Native Movie Site
Follower, a Marathi/ Kannada feature film from debutant writer/ director Harshad Nalawade and from independent film powerhouse, HumaraMovie, premiered at the prestigious 52nd International Film Festival Rotterdam. It received rave reviews and progressively ran to packed screenings.
Continue reading “Marathi/Kannada Film Follower Premieres at Rotterdam”
Writer-director Souvik Gupta whose last outing was creative direction for the anthology series “Fuh se Fantasy” released by VOOT is now out with his next web series called “Yeh Dooriyaan” starring actors Paresh Pahuja (Tiger Zinda Hai fame) and Manjari Fadnnis (Jaane Tu..Ya Jaane Na fame) on the popular YouTube channel Humaramovie. Yeh Dooriyan which was entirely shot during 2020 lockdown is a love story about a long-distance marriage. Even though it was shot during the lockdown, it is not a story about lockdown or the pandemic, it’s just a catalyst and finds very little mention in the series.
The three short films within QSQT are named Essentials, Extension and Losing it, stars Vijay Maurya, Sanjay Dadhich, Vishal Capoor, Muskaan Khubchandani, Akashdeep Arora, Chirag Malhotra and Kunal Malhotra respectively. All the three films were scripted, shot, produced remotely and on a skeletal crew at home observing all social distancing norms laid down by the government. Karan Kulkarni has created the title track and casting has been done by Casting Bay.
Ayyappan, Co-Founder, The Script Room says, “This is our latest, jolly project. It’s titled QSQT (Quarantine Stories of Quarantine Times). Thanks to our friend Tushar (Coconut Films) for calling and saying that his brain is getting fried and can we do something exciting. We got the entire team together on Zoom and immediately started jamming on stories. We had a lot of ideas, thoughts and we shortlisted three plots what will be easily executable, given the lockdown constraints. And we clearly stayed away from very serious, social-purpose kind of narratives and chose light-hearted, insightful stories of the lockdown, more true to our personality as The Script Room.”
Ramsam Co-Founder, The Script Room, says, “We thought we’ll write something that can be shot from home. And instead of writing general stories and shooting during lockdown, we thought we’ll write stories about the lockdown itself. The execution in itself has its own share of ridiculously hilarious stories. Like to begin with casting, it meant not just the cast, but also their house, their willingness to direct themselves, the kind of equipment they have, the speed of their internet to transfer the files. Everything had to be considered. They had to shoot each other, and situations where both of them had to be in the same frame, the camera was placed on a chair, bed, cupboard, books or whatever was available and shoot. And the director was miles away only listening to them talk, and figuring out if it’s ok. It is the shoddiest, crude, organic way of narrating a story, the shaky camera, the bad lighting, the odd angles…it had its own charm. The same reflects in the titling and the music. We kept it raw and intuitive. These may be the stories told with the highest level of restrictions. But we’ve never had greater fun than this.”
He added, “It’s time and we should be grateful that virtual production and filmmaking has become an indirect proponent of social distancing, allowing filmmakers to create full scopes of movies without ever having to cram people onto a production set.”
Editorial Notes: –
QSQT CAST/CREW
Short Film 1 – Essentials
Cast – • Vijay Maurya – Known for Gully Boy. (Instagram Followers – 6276, Twitter Followers – 1868)
• Sanjay Dadhich – Featured in MS – Dhoni as Satya Prakash, in Sacred Games as Gaston, In Made in Heaven as Ali. Also had a role in Taare Zameen Par.Upcoming – Amriki Pandit (based on life of R. Madhavan) – (Instagram Followers – 1219)
• Vishal Capoor Crew:-
• Long Distance Director – Ujjwal Kabra
• On location direction – Vijay Maurya
Short Film 2 – Extension
Cast – • Muskaan Khubchandani – Was in Telugu film George Reddy. A failry known face in commercials – Lakme, Wotta Girl. Was last seen in Veere Di Wedding as Young Avni – Upcoming Movie – Laxxmi Bomb starring Akshay Kumar. (Instagram – 59.1K, Twitter – 1690)
• Akashdeep Arora – Was in Movie Uri – The Surgical Strike as the Drone Operator. Played a small role in Amazon Series Mirzapur. Was seen in Inside Edge – As Tanay a team analyst for the Mavericks. (Instagram – 14K, Twitter – 143)
Crew: • Long Distance Director – Indrasish Mukherjee
Short Film 3 – Losing It
Cast – • Chirag Malhotra – Was last seen in movie Helicopter Eela as Yash.( Instagram – 18.6K )
• Kunal Malhotra
Crew: –
• Long Distance Director – Ramsam
For all three films
• Music- Karan Kulkarni (Title Track)- Composed music for films such as Shahid, Peddlers, Happy Journey. Composed background score for movies like Tumhari Sulu, Aligarh and & Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, for which he also got a nomination at Filmfare Award for Best Background Score in 2020. (Instagram – 1093 Followers, Twitter- 455 Followers)
• Co-Producer-Suraj Shetty
• Executive Producers- Tushar Raut & Nupur Guha
• Concept, Story, Script, Dialogues Production- The Script Room (Rajesh Ramaswamy & Ayyappan Raj)
Continue reading “The Script Room releases a trilogy of shorts titled QSQT on Humaramovie”
Ram Sir was around to guide me for Kuch Kuch Locha Hain but this time I was on my own: Navdeep Chhabra
Navdeep Chhabra is back with ‘The Meeeting’
Actor Navdeep Chhabra who made his Bollywood debut with Kuch Kuch Locha Hai is now gearing up for his next release. Sharing Screen space with Sunny Leone and Ram Kapoor was a learning experience for this Delhi boy and now he is back on screen with a short film, The Meeeting. Continue reading “Navdeep Chhabra is back with ‘The Meeeting’”
Nitesh Ranglani’s short feature, Pocket Mummy, produced by Suburban Diagnostics, released digitally by Humaramovie, today, on the occasion of Mother’s Day. The film features acclaimed veteran actress Madhoo Shah as the Mother and Parzaan Dastur as her son.Continue reading “Pocket Mummy: An Ode to Motherhood!”
Any creative venture can only expect to flourish provided it has the right kind of backing and needless to say that for a medium like web-series which is still in its nascent stage in India,the right kind of backing is key. We at MAM have gone about speaking to Abhishek Gautam of Humaramovie,one of the two producers of Shouvik Gupta’s web-series, Ranjish. Abhishek Gautam is an MBA from SCMHRD, Pune, who quit his corporate life to pursue a career in media and entertainment. Like a lot of MBAs, he chose to join a startup – Humaramovie- owned by Preety Ali (wife of Imtiaz Ali) along with three more people. At Humaramovie, Abhishek has handled creative development, operational assignments and even human resources.Continue reading ““The audience is ready. The more relevant question is whether the content providers are ready”: Abhishek Gautam on Producing Web-Series “Ranjish” and More”
As the very common saying goes ‘TV is writer’s medium, Theatre is actor’s medium and Film is a director’s medium’. A small web-series like ‘RANJISH’ is more similar to film than television. However, as someone who wrote and directed it, I had to shoulder the maximum responsibility of the series. Having said that, nothing like this is possible without collaborative effort from many people. And RANJISH would not have been possible if the producers, the cast and the crew had not put in their weight and support behind it to the best of their abilities.Continue reading “The Crew of RANJISH: A Web-Series”
After making a handful of short films, it was an obvious urge to make something bigger. It is undoubtedly tough for a mere short filmmaker to venture into making feature films, and my dream of making something beyond shorts seemed to delay indefinitely. And then came the trend of web-series. For that, a lot web-content developers in India, including me, must be hugely indebted to TVF for making Permanent Roommates. It opened a new avenue for a film-like expression with a rather feasible chance of getting audience.Continue reading “All About “Ranjish”: A Web-Series”
mad about moviez.in 