Students, housewives can buy rights to a film, says RGV.
By Akanksha Warrier
MUMBAI: Indian filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma recently launched the Telugu horror film Ice Cream. While the film in itself was not interesting enough to make much news, it’s interesting how it made profit for the producers in spite of having had such a short lived box office life. “RGV” gives the credit to his new small budget “flow-cam” technology.
The intriguing penny saver model cuts the ‘unit’ size from a couple of hundreds to a handful. Called the ‘Flowcam’ process, a term christened by RGV himself, this method of filmmaking uses natural light and cameras that cost less than a lakh of rupees.
“Compare with these cameras that almost cost Rs 2 crore. You need a huge crew to prepare the sets. They begin preparation work hours before a shoot begins. But that shoot may last for only a few minutes,” Arun Iqbal Chowdary, who led the technical team for the film, told Business Line.
Taking the help of a robotics engineer, he developed a small, handy frame that can hold the camera firmly as you walk, run or pass it onto a ‘temporary cameramen’ standing on a ladder. “With this, you have eliminated the cost incurred on people and equipment required to set them up,” Arun said.
The technology has an obvious appeal to all new young filmmakers who do not have the luxury of a big budget to their advantage. It has been such a success that four young filmmakers have already announced projects using this technique. Mahesh Kathi, a film critic-cum-filmmaker, has just completed financial closure for the film project – Pesarattu. He pegged the budget at Rs 10 lakh.
Also, in other news, RGV and actor Vishnu Manchu have agreed to auction their new action crime thriller produced by Mohan Babu Corporation through a system aimed at revolutionizing the existing distribution system of the Telugu film industry.
TGV confirmed the news via his Facebook page Wednesday. He has adopted this model of distribution because it’s “impossible to predict the fate of a film”.
He says a film should be evaluated by “anyone” and “everyone” and not just by distributes and buyers. The filmmaker says even college students or friends from an IT firm can buy his film.
“This film can be bought by 3-4 students pooling some money in Guntur or by a group of housewives sitting at a kitty party in Vizag or by 2 friends who work in an IT company in Hyderabad. In short, any of the film watchers can come into film business. Such is the beauty of this model,” he said.
RGV will announce the details of the model with cost on his website www.filmauction.in, which will go live Saturday from 9 a.m. IST.