An idea for a short film struck Saravana Subramani after he walked out from a bar. No, after a night show at Sathyam theater. No, after a DVD watch of a foreign film by Flickard Flinklater. He is a bored techie with a broken love life and currently dealing with a quarter life crisis. He reads lots of film reviews online in Tamilpadamglitz.com and an active participant of Sajith vs. Sijay fan rants in twitter. Thanks to his roommate’s 500 GB Seagate HDD, he delved into the films of Darantino, Zcorsese, Hong Kar Woi and of course, Guy Mirchi. One fine day, he realized he can direct a film now.
He called his friend Camerapal, proud owner of the Facebook page Santo Fotography with 172 likes and 220 HD pictures that includes flowing tap water, metro train crossing Tambaram, the broken bridge near Puzhal, Royal Enfield headlight, Mahabalipuram rocks etc.. Camerapal owns an ₹22700 Canon autofocus DSLR, which already qualified him to be the cinematographer of this untitled short film project. They discussed this project over a beer and prepared to make an award winning, romantic, cult comedy, Tamil short film.
He called his childhood buddy, the charmer, Arjun Arvind who is still friends with him in WhatsApp & messenger. Arjun, a big fan of Sheath Sledger & Sajith, is highly passionate about acting and stardom. Right from his 8th standard annual day dance event, Arjun knew that he always wanted to be a star, a performer, a method actor and all at once. His rugged beard traits and the ability to do the chest press with 125 kg load showed his commitment and passion for his acting craft. Arjun instantly agreed to do the lead.
Subramani was always afraid to make the first move with his yesteryear, super hot, first year, college crush Aishwarya Nandhini Iyer. He took a bold move and dropped a text to Aishwarya and asked if she is interested in starring as the female lead in his award winning short film. Aishwarya was already busy with her GRE classes but spared some time to do the role, without her father’s knowledge, after our Camerapal made an offer for shooting her 27 profile pictures in a beach backdrop
Subramani’s friend from 'Sunday Rockerz' cricket team Aaron Paul is good in piano and had taken lessons in his Sacred Hearts school. He was appointed as the composer and his junior Vimal Anand, who had made a couple of Macromedia flash video presentation for college symposium has been appointed as the editor.
Subramani told about this short film project to his friends from work and convinced them to help him. They planned to do this short film with a shoestring budget of 3 lakh rupees. The colleagues chipped in a couple of thousand bucks each with a hope of getting cast in the film as extras.
Subramani had to sell his Royal Enfield and settle for a TVS Star. He also convinced his parents for burning his father's savings a little bit. Camerapal managed to rent an EOS 5D camera for a steal deal price of ₹12000 a day. They rented an ECR beach house for 7 days and shot the film mostly in the same spot and the street used in the tamil horror, slasher film Thinnaiyathaandi Tharuvaaya. They shot the film mostly on the weekend for 4 months. They edited it in 3 weeks, followed by a ten days dubbing session. They spent 4 days in a post production lab and finally cut a 27 min short film in a 41.7GB output size.
Thanks to the power cut and Internet speeds of Chennai, Subramani took a flight to Bangalore to upload the film on YouTube, from his uncle’s apartment at Whitefields. He shared the YouTube link of the film in an email, facebook, twitter, google talk, google maps, Quora, Pornhub, reddit and what not.
‘Kaadhal Koffee', the fantasy love story short film directed by Saravana Subramani, milked ₹9.2 lakhs in total to be made. It broke the internet with 1012 views on YouTube, counting 301 likes, 278 dislikes and 42 shares. Praises flowed from everywhere with lot of polarized comments like ‘Machan kalakkita... sir, super love story.. mams gethu pannita da you are the next Gotham Basudev Meghan.. boring film not worth the time.. timepass short film all the best do well.., the heroine is sexy plz share her phone number.. free Airtel recharge 4G click here.. camera angles good but stupid romance story... what is ur next film bro.. click here to download hot sunny leone pictures' etc...
Subramani sent it to 25-30 short film festivals spending one more lakh. With a million INR mark, the Tamil short won the prestigious ‘Best romantic short film of the month’ award, finally, ending up as a real award winning short film, in an online poll event conducted by visual communication department of Zapollo arts college.
A year later..
Saravana Subramani flew to Australia for a long term onsite project. He is currently engaged to his cousin.
Camerapal is still passionate about photography. He frequently shoots and uploads HD pics online. His recent project is ‘My unforgettable honeymoon in Maldives – 34 pictures’.
Arjun Arvind recently ran a 10k TZS Marathon. He dedicatedly shares diet related posts & movie quotes in WhatsApp. He still supports Haam Haadmi party Hejiriwal.
Aishwarya Nandhini Iyer moved to Dallas for her master’s degree and often checks into Chipotle for a Vegan Burrito. Now a budding feminist, she enjoys Gossip Girl and a big fan Game of Thrones.
The colleagues & friends who helped to chip in money for the film are still paying back their ICICI, HDFC, and Canara Bank personal loans.
Reflecting on this process and talking about it over Skype, Subramani once told me, ‘Maybe, I should’ve written the idea as a script first’.
