‘Make short films to find your voice’: Director RS Prasanna at Screen Academy Masterclass

Last week, Screen Academy hosted a Masterclass with Prasanna at The Indian Express office in Mumbai. The session was moderated by Priyanka Sinha Jha, COO, Screen Academy. The Academy is an initiative to nurture and showcase new voices in Indian cinema and has, as its patrons, the Lodha Foundation and Tafe Foundation.

Speaking to students from Film & Television Institute of India, Pune, Atharva Film & Television Institute and Usha Pravin Gandhi College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Prasanna spoke of his film school days at LV Prasad Film & TV Academy, Chennai, and his fears and learnings over the years. Among the FTII students were also Screen Academy Fellows, representing different disciplines like film editing, screenwriting, sound, art direction and production, who have won the Screen Academy Fellowship 2025. They were all eager to learn about finding and retaining their creative voice in mainstream cinema. “The library was my space and the screening hall my horror chamber,” said Prasanna. He recalled being an “abject failure” in the first year. “I had severe performance anxiety,” he recalled. It was Hariharan who gave him the much-needed perspective. “‘Intuition doesn’t scream. It whispers,’ he said. People want to make you feel like you’re everybody else. Train yourself to listen to the voice within,” said Prasanna.

If watching cult classics is a given in film school, it is easy to fall prey to the shame that comes with the lack of exposure to a (Federico) Fellini or a (Andrei) Tarkovsky. “Instead, write the films you love watching and associate yourselves with those who make similar cinema. Make as many short films as you can. They will help you find your voice,” said Prasanna.

He spoke about his love for cinema as he watched films by K Balachander, Kamal Haasan, Gulzar and Sanjeev Kumar in his growing up years. It would help him organically find producing partners in Aanand L Rai and Aamir Khan. He called Khan an ideal collaborator because he views the director as an equal. “The best way to check if I want to work with a person is if they say ‘sorry.’ They should be able to say, ‘Your idea is better than mine.’ I don’t want to work with divas or be their therapist,” said Prasanna, underlining how filmmaking is all about collaboration. “Don’t make films only for yourselves,” said the director.

While he advised future filmmakers to not follow “frivolous markers” like attending countless film festivals, he recalled what Sri Lankan cinematographer and director Balu Mahendra told him years ago: “Good filmmakers copy from other films. Great filmmakers copy from life.”
Prasanna shared that even greats like Steven Spielberg borrowed from their lives, consciously or subconsciously. “Spielberg says all his films have a family because he has never been able to recover from his broken family. Even the dinosaurs come in a pack in Jurassic Park,” he said.

Another filmmaking lesson he imparted was to be mindful of budget when making a debut film. Kalyana Samayal Saadham was made on a budget of Rs 1.5 crore. He got a salary of Rs 3 lakh, which was the “best Rs 3 lakh of my life. But when only five people showed up to watch the first day first show, I thought I should have done IIT only. I’m from a conservative family, why did I make a film on erectile dysfunction? But thankfully, my producer told me the film is a ‘Saturday-Sunday’ movie,” he shared. The film picked up pace and subsequently Rai approached him to remake it as Shubh Mangal Saavdhan.

Talking about the initial idea, Prasanna revealed that Shubh Mangal Saavdhan was never about erectile dysfunction but arranged marriages. “My brother was getting married in an arranged setup then. It was like Tinder with family,” he said. That’s how, observing from life, Prasanna came up with the idea of two virgins navigating the arranged marriage process, and the conflict in this innocent, family-approved courtship, emerges when the man “can’t get it up.”

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Prasanna, the neurodivergent actors from Sitaare Zameen Par and the film’s producers Aamir Khan and Aparna Purohit, were awarded the Cinema of Courage honour at the recent Chetak Screen Awards.