The young gen movie buff’s in town are keen to get admission in ‘Vineeth’s School of media studies.’ The course curriculum is something every upcoming director looks forward to. Thus goes the story of Ganesh Raj, whose launch into the movie world started as assistant director to Vineeth Sreenivasan. Ganesh’s first movie Aanandam is releasing this year. The movie also marks Vineeth Sreenivasan’s foray as a producer.
Ganesh’s journey was no cakewalk. After making up his mind that engineering was not his cup of tea, Ganesh ventured into writing and making short films during his third year in college. “I was trying to get into the field and I approached Vineeth ettan through Facebook showing a couple of my short films and he liked them and called me for an interview. After the interview he told me I can assist him,” says Ganesh, who is based in Kochi.
The 27 year old, Kochi-based director is excited about his first movie, which is about a group of college students and their short vacation. All the cast in the movie are first-timers. Ganesh, who has worked as assistant director in movies like Thatathin Marayathu, Thira, Bangalore Days and Jacobinte Swargarajyam, got the idea of the story in 2012. “I got the idea from a movie called Take Me Home Tonight, which is about a series of events that happen in a short period of time. Over the next nine months I worked on the idea and approached Vineeth ettan with the story. He liked it and told me to go ahead. That gave me confidence,” says Ganesh. He stopped working for movies after Bangalore Days to write the script. “It was the 9th draft of the script that was approved by Vineeth and he gave me this piece of advice not to approach any producer or artiste before I was convinced about the script, because it might destroy my creativity. But back then I didn’t even know, it would be Vineeth who would be producing themovie. We are hoping to release the movie in a month’s time,” says Ganesh.
