Journalism of Courage
Three years ago,in the first year of mass media school Aniket Khabde (24,a student of advertisement),Akash Gursale (21,studying film editing) and Prasad Chawdhari (20,from the journalism department) looked at each other and saw a mini film crew. The plan was simple: Khabde would direct,Gursale would edit and Chawdhari would write scripts. The boys persevered,and a few months before graduating from the college,they were to make a commercial film,titled Aatli Batli Phutli.
The first audio-visual assignment we worked on was a music video as part of our curriculum in first year college, recalls Khabde,the eldest of the trio,adding,The video was called Nariman Point,which was made to compliment the song Ae zindagi gale laga le. It was good and we never really stopped after that.
The boys made about 20 short films while in college despite a lack of avenues to showcase their works. Although we kept making movies,we could not take our films to the next level due to a lack of resources, says Khabde. But things changed. Before receiving their graduation degrees,the boys got an offer to work in a commercial film.
Aatli Batli Phutli was conceptualised by Akash and co-written by Prasad and me. The story deals with six children four boys and two girls,who try to get their common friend educated. Aatli Batli Phutli is a phrase one shouts out to the defaulter while playing hide-and-seek. This is all I can reveal about the plot. To find out about the correlation between the name and the plot,one must watch the movie,which releases in January 2014, says Khabde.
Their struggle was made easy by veterans in the industry. We received immense support from award-winning cinematographer Aniket Karanjkar and art director Prashant Rane. Bhushan Ghadi motivated us and was the one to initiate us into the industry. The support is overwhelming and has been provided to us right from the script stage, says Khabde.
He adds that cine-goers have already begun showing interest in their project. We created the Facebook page in June this year and our photos had no prominent faces,yet we got about 1,200 likes in 24 hours, he says.
