Journalism of Courage
US-based Shailaja Gupta hopes that with an in-video pay-wall release of her maiden film Walkaway ,she will ,she will inspire other indie film-makers to showcase their talent globally
When US-based independent film-maker tried to release her first film Walkaway in some select theatres in the USA,she had to push back the plan week after week because the release dates of big Hindi films kept on changing,skewing her plans. Finally,she was given a date which no film-maker would have taken – a pre diwali one. When she got nowhere with the conventional distribution method,she took an alternate route to eliminate the ordeal of chasing the US and Indian distributors . Finally Gupta released her film Walkaway globally on the official website of the film using the in-video pay-wall technology,through which a user can go straight to the movie website,pay for the video and watch it.
Walkaway,an Indian-American film,primarily in English,is a light romantic comedy that revolves around four couples living in New York and talks about their lives,families,careers and friendships. It was inspired by my friends from all over the world. Their life is constantly affected by their parents living thousands of miles away,not because they are over bearing but because we are so used to having them in their lives. I just found this template-driven life intriguing,” she says. The film stars all US-based actors Manu Narayan,Samrat Chakrabarti,Manish Dayal,Sanjiv Jhaveri,Deepti Gupta,Carrie Anne James,Pallavi Sharda and Ami Sheth.
Having performed multiple tasks for Walkaway,from conception,fund raising,production,post-production,marketing and release,Gupta says that the film has helped her evolve professionally. While the two year journey has not been easy,the whole-hearted support from Bollywood has been very encouraging, says Gupta. Vishal & Shekhar and Ram Sampath gave music without charging a penny,Sagar Desai created the background score. In fact when Shah Rukh Khan learnt that I was struggling with post production,he called me to India and was kind enough to take care of post-production expenses under his production company Red Chillies Entertainment. He also donated some amount to finish the rest of the film. The biggest surprise was when Oscar winner Resul Pookutty agreed to do the sound-mixing . Walkaway has eight songs across languages as they track the cross cultural stories in English,French,Hindi,Marwari and Tamil.
Releasing Walkaway on her film’s website ensures that she gets up to 75 per cent of the revenue. She explains,This is unlike the regular on-demand entertainment which online channels provide. It is a technology where a user doesn’t need to go away from the video to pay for it. Even a non- technical person who is not a web designer or programmer can use this system to charge for their video content. Gupta hopes that her unique method of launching her film might inspire more independent film makers to release their movies online as a more viable option to showcase their art.
