Y.Sunita Chowdhary
Sailesh Kolanu is all set to announce the sequel of HIT. The first part was a dream debut for him. The young, talented and articulate optometrist turned filmmaker showed the world that he is here to stay. Despite having a father who works in the industry, he got a foothold with his determination, resilience and vision. He says no degree is ever wasted and with his optometrist wife, he plans to do something someday soon in the city. He is a multi tasker and reveals that his passion for films drives him to many things; right now he is facilitating the best of minds in film making, so that the rest of it falls in its place accordingly. In a chat with Klapboardpost.com, Sailesh Kolanu shares his insight and experience of his first film and a lot more.
My dad has been a production manager for forty years and then a manager at Prasad Labs. He is now employed as an office manager at Dil Raju’s Company. Movies were always an integral part of our lives and will always be. I have vivid memories of all those discussions that happened during childhood and my adolescence and after becoming a film-maker, I realised that was where my learning of cinema came from. After school, I would go straight to Prasad Labs and wait for dad. I would spend time at the editing suite, talk to technicians inside the lab, the dubbing engineers and even get to see raw footage of films. Like I said, the core learning emanated from there but didn’t know back then it had a purpose. All the technicians at that time were predominantly working on film, so saw the transition from film to digital. It is obvious when you watch so many films and discuss movies all the time, relatives do comment that I would get into films some day and it turned out to be a prophecy. My stay in Australia was fulfilling, I loved teaching. Students would like my sense of narrative and they would never miss my class. As a child too I loved narrating stories and would dramatise it for my friends. Even while I was doing Phd and teaching, I picked up photography and screen writing as a hobby.
I wanted to know what screenplay was all about and began reading screenwriting books for 3 years when I was in Hyderabad. Later when I went to Australia for higher studies and work, I had sufficient time during weekends reading screenwriting books and understanding its mechanism and attended seminars and workshops. At one point of time, I wrote one full-fledged screenplay and called my friends over to narrate the synopsis. It went on this way for six to seven years and only when I wrapped up a particular script which was worthy enough, I decided to take the plunge. I write my stories, dialogues, screenplay and have never so far collaborated with any writer. It’s a personal thing to me. However big the project is, every word comes from me. While it is mandatory for you to possess that knowledge, it is important to have those soft skills to extract work from a team.
You should see the film in your head, you should have every single shot in your mind. As of now I did one film HIT and I personally believe that my signature was there on it. At the end of the day it is an art form. When you create something, everything that comes from you is different, I don’t say other’s process is wrong. I am up for constructive criticism, if a producer feels the script needs some correction, I would incorporate that only if it made sense. It all depends if the person is making sense or not. While writing a script and at the pre-production stage is where you have the luxury of correcting things and once you get to set it, it can’t happen later. I just insist that it should happen by someone who cares for the project and understands the soul. Even if it means my producer, I’m willing to incorporate that and fix that thing. I write stuff in an editing pattern and don’t believe in wasting footage. What u saw in HIT was what I had written, there was only five percent wastage.
I was very confident about the film’s outcome, right from the time I conceived the idea, I knew the script was pacy, intriguing. All I needed to do was extract good performances and everything would be sorted. When money came on board I was even more confident and so also when the DoP stepped in. With every single technician being added I was getting more confident. I knew that even if I shoot fifty percent of what I conceived, I would deliver high quality stuff; when the crew came on board, it was a job well done on my mind. I have written six or seven bound scripts, all of them are from different genres. My second will be a sequel to H.I.T and a different kind of thriller. The third in Telugu will be a musical. It has 11 or 12 songs in it and the majority of the script will be narrated in music and it is a breezy story. I even got a few mythological stuff but as of now, don’t know which will come first. I also have template format kind of scripts. My dad is averse to me using his name in film circles. I met Nani without his knowledge. I was sure he would raise umpteen obvious questions like why I had to come back from Oz, quit my job etc but he was super thrilled later. He is predominantly a pessimistic person, having been in the industry for so long and having seen projects take off and getting shelved. He was worried that I might be another case like that. Now that he has seen me collaborating with good people, he is happy.
I know that people would think I am well connected because of dad but I made my efforts and pulled this one off. I felt that the universe would work for me. I was confident the content would do the talking and now everyone supports me. They now take me seriously, not earlier when I was writing stories. The film released three weeks before lockdown and had a good run, could have stayed for some more time had the lockdown not happened. The distributors did make money, a couple of them called and said that this last film before lockdown helped them make money. It feels good when someone says the money we made from your film helped us see difficult times. When I see people working for the film at shoot, working and eating tiffin, it feels so good that the story I had written could generate employment. It is an amazing art form.
The biggest learning was I learnt to manage people, learnt to deal with egos and manage people. There were so many kinds of people all around me, right from those who I collaborated, had to step in different shoes to pamper egos. I am not talking of bad egos here. I am talking about good egos. A right amount of ego is good for human beings but we need to know how to pamper it and extract work, it helps the film. I succeeded in shuffling between ten different departments to bring out the product nicely and observed the value of time. There is a race against time when the release date is set and we have to keep in mind that around 300 people are relying on your product. In my 34 years of life, the time I spent on HIT was very responsible. By nature, I’m a guy who doesn’t take things seriously and I believe in living in the movement but when I started doing HIT, Nani had trusted me and invested 6 or 7 crores on me. I don’t have any experience and Nani, Prashanti were trusting me with my talent. The whole sense of responsibility kicked in. I am just the regular guy and at the end of the day, everyone is a human being. If you know what you are doing, it is fine. On the set, we lose patience and we can’t claim to be a saint when there is pressure. Ultimately, it is work that needs to be done.
Working on HIT was a pleasant and healthy experience, I would like to repeat what I did in my first film and I just improve my skills. The perspective of watching content has changed ten years back. People have changed, we should know that and cater to that and producers should take the initiative, invest. They are doing that in the last few years. In the industry, the narrative is changing and what we see is a cinema of a new age. I wanted to be at this time and I see so many new age directors. I am here at the right time. We have a group on the phone and we interact. I know 7 or 8 directors who will make great content in the next few years and I am glad to be a part of this evolution. The entertainment industry has evolved all around the world. The audience is very clear about what they want and know what sort of a film to see in a certain theatre or on the OTT. Down the lane we shall have a nice demarcation between them. There will be very good projects for both sections and we are travelling towards that direction only. Hit 2 is definitely happening and I will give details in a few days.
