Moving into a digital age

In 2014, after Jennifer Alphonse returned to the city from Cannes, where her film Strangers was screened, little did she know that she would be working on a documentary that would get her the Royal Reel Award at the Canada International Film Festival 2016.

The documentary, The Take Over, was shot after meeting hundreds of people from across the country, and months of editing followed. “The one-hour documentary is about how the digital medium has changed the way films are made these days and how this affects people,” she says. For the film Jennifer interviewed close to 80 technicians from various film industries from across the country.

“We got to shoot with some of the best technicians. We had Mani Ratnam, Kamal Haasan, Vikram Bhatt, Trivikram and many others giving us inputs on the way filmmaking has evolved over the years because of  digitalisation,” she explains.
The film is produced by K. Basi Reddy and has actress Revathi as the narrator.
“We are very happy with the kind of help we received for the documentary. This is a study documentary and will help students get an idea of filmmaking, it is very informative,” she says.

The film — that took close to six months of editing — had its fair share of challenges. “For one, getting many of the top technicians to talk about the shift from film reel to digital was difficult. Most of them didn’t want to talk about it because they weren’t too pleased with it,” she says, adding, “And yes, the editing took up most of our time. We spent hours and hours editing.”

After the film was shot and finally  completed, Jennifer stumbled upon the Canada International Film Festival and decided to send it across. She says, “I was excited when I sent the entry, but I didn’t expect much. So when I got an email from the organisers I was more than excited. The last time someone from Hyderabad won the award was in 2012, it was won by Rajendra Prasad for his film Dream. So it feels really nice.”