[Entrepreneur At Heart] When movie making passion overpowers everything else, the result is 'Mere Haule Dost'

The times we live in currently is interesting for a number of reasons. Technology and resources have enriched our lives a great deal and empowered many of us to follow our heart. We all know the struggles Dadasaheb Phalke -- the father of Indian cinema -- had to endure when he decided to make his first feature film. But our Entrepreneur At Heart story today had it comparatively easy. This gutsy couple decided to follow their passion and take the plunge to fulfill their dream, while still working in the corporate world.

Nitin Raghunath & Pramida Posanipalli are expats who have been living in the States for over eight years. Nitin has worked with AT&T and few startups in the Bay Area in the past, while Pramida still works for Cisco. Nitin loves making movies and has made a couple of short films in the past that were showcased at San Francisco film festival and a recent one which was screened at the 2011 Cannes film festival. Despite these short films, Nitin always had the desire to do something bigger. He decided to do give it his all in early 2012, when he quit his job and started working fulltime on the script and research of Mere Haule Dost – his second full length feature film. Nitin had made one with his friends right after college. Mere Haule Dost is a fun and quirky ride set against the backdrop of lives of five laid-back friends in the city of Hyderabad. A film for young adults, it is a journey of friendship, girls, parties, bikes, madness and their thrill for the Himalayan bike rally. ‘Haule’ is a popular Hyderabadi word that loosely translates to ‘silly’, ‘crazy’, ‘mad’ etc. depending on the context.

Making of the movie

The hiring research for the film started in April 2011. Seeing her husband rough it out alone, Pramida decided to help him in the journey and took a long leave from Cisco. “There are many things that goes into making of a film, and I decided to help Nitin so that he can concentrate of the actual movie making,” says Pramida. They put together the cast and crew of the movie with the help of couple of websites that list the services of freelance technical experts.

The result was -- Ankur Raina, a young cinematographer born in Srinagar, Kashmir, who studied his craft at Whistling Woods International in Mumbai. Their creative director, Asheesh Saini is a road trip expert and besides his role of creative director in the movie, he also lend support in idea generation for the movie. Divyang Arora, the music director for the movie has been drumming since he was eight years old and has assisted mainstream Bollywood directors in the past. Dev Verma and Munish Chopra are the associate directors for the movie and have both graduated from NIFT Delhi.

To identify the cast they advertised through fliers in newspapers and conducted proper auditions to get their actors.

Releasing the movie

Completing the movie was an easier task, compared to releasing the film. “You can say ours is a micro budget film and we didn’t have big money to release the movie. If you go to production houses with your movie, some of them will buy it and release it – then they can invest big money to market and advertise the film. But we didn’t want to sell our movie,” explains Pramida. So they met a lot of people who could help them release their movie, and even approached production houses to help them with the release.

While the couple didn’t have as much trouble as Dadasaheb Phalke faced with his first full-length movie, they had their own share of struggles. They found their savior in PVR Cinemas, which has a vertical, called PVR Director’s Rare -- that distributes independent movies. “With PVR, we are now getting a proper release,” says Pramida. The movie is being taken to 7 cities in India, including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. “PVR is a big help, because if we were to try and do our own release we would have to pay a big sum to the theatre owners and we may still end up with some early morning slots which may not be the best time to showcase the movie,” explains Pramida.

Marketing the movie

Since the advent of multiplexs and the decline of single screen theatres, movie marketing has become equally, if not more important than the making of the movie. And this creative duo is doing it in whatever cost effective ways as possible. “We did approach a few TV and radio channels, but the cost of association was quite high,” says Pramida. They are now tying up with retail brands, telecom brands to give away vouchers to the movie wherever possible. The movie was also showcased at the London Asian film festival, where the movie was screened. They are also conducting contests with partners to publicize the movie.

Once the movie is released in the theatres, they will also start discussing the satellite rights, DVD rights and foreign rights for the film. However all eyes and hearts are now set on the release date of the movie, which is scheduled for June 7.

The experience of a lifetime

Looking back at the entire experience, Pramida is quite happy they made the film. “We have been watching and writing about films since a long time and then when the thought to make a feature film came by, we thought it was probably a good idea to do it now, lest we regret later on in life about not doing what we wanted or following our hearts,” says Pramida. Once done with Mere Haule Dost, Pramida will go back to her job at Cisco, while Nitin will take a break before he decides his next move. “We invested all our savings in the movie are completely broke now. We will have to wait for sometime before we can get back to making movies again,” laughs Pramida.

So if you have been wanting to do something that you strongly feel about, then follow your entrepreneurial heart and write to us – [email protected] – to tell us your story.

And don’t forget to be at Gokulam Park Hotel & Convention Center, Kochi for the first round of TechSparks 2013 and stayed tuned to our site for all live updates from the event.