Hyderabad: These Hyderabadis were given 48 hours to make a short film but they wrapped it up in half-a-day. Now, their film, The Conspiracy, has won the Hyderabad chapter of the “48 Hour Film Project”. It also picked up the best direction award, will be screened at Filmapalooza film fest in the US and stands a chance to go to the Cannes next year.
In this contest, filmmakers have to come up with an idea and then execute and submit it in two days. Participants get to know the prop, characters and genre on the spot.
The plot of The Conspiracy, made by Sriram Adittya, Soumeet Lanka, Ankur Jha, Prasad Kalepalli, Gautham Anirudh, Rao Gaaru Kasarelli and Avinash Matta of Twenty Pixel Pictures, is about a novel, which conspires to kill a cellphone in true Godfather style.
“We got ‘film noir’ as our genre and a box as our prop. For more than 12 hours, we did not have a concrete idea,” says director Sriram, who has made eight short films so far. He adds, “One of us was sitting near a book rack and suddenly a book fell from the shelf. We then thought ‘what could be a book’s greatest enemy?’ A phone. Since people started using smart phones, they rarely pick up a book to read. Then that became our idea.”
The group, however, had decided to give up, as they were not happy with the way things were shaping up. Co-founder of Twenty Pixel Pictures, Soumeet says, “We actually made the movie in the last 12 hours. We had given up. But we decided to push ourselves.”
Fresh from the success of The Conspiracy, Sriram is now gearing up for his next project. “The script for our feature film is ready, we are looking for a producer who would give us a break.”
