Dream unlimited!

His maiden feature, ‘The End’, a horror thriller, might not have set the box office on fire, but it did enough to get Rahul Sankrityan noticed. Realising the potential of the Kurnool lad, G Sreenivasa Kumar (SKN) of Geetha Arts heard a couple of ideas from him (of which one was ‘Taxiwaala’) before introducing him to Bunny Vas, who is the chief of GA2 (A division of Geetha Arts).

“He was particularly impressed by ‘Taxiwaala’ script and asked me to develop it further. However, after a certain point of time, I had to stop it because Geetha Arts was into multiple film productions. By then director Maruthi was aware of the script and he ensured that I get an audience from Vamsi and Pramod of UV Creations. They liked it and felt Vijay Deverakonda was tailor-made for the titular role,” he flashbacks fondly. “The actor too gave his consent and after some time it was decided that the film will be a joint venture between GA and UV Creations.”

Not a trained filmmaker, Rahul, who directed multiple short films before making the switch to feature films, reckons that filmmaking is not technical as many feel, but has more to do with common sense and intuition. “Once you know the structure of a film, which now you can easily access to courtesy videos online, it is easy to make a film. About 70-80 per cent of the problems you encounter on a feature film set are similar to that of a short film, so in a way short films help you hone your craft.

The only difference would be that in a feature set-up, the canvass is big, you are working with established faces and the risk factor is more,” he shares, going on to add that when he made his first short film whilst in engineering, he had no idea about script, pre-production and post-production. “I just thought I could make a film with a camera. That was dumb from my end (laughs).

It was an atrocious product and had no worthy stuff for editing. Later, I began to study film and the due process involved. I corrected some things with my second short film and corrected more with my third. They were still bad, but then there was a significant progress on the filmmaking side and with the next short, I was able to narrate a story.”

As far as the Hyderabad-set ‘Taxiwaala’, also featuring Malavika Nair and Priyanka Jawalkar, is concerned, he isn’t ready to disclose the logline yet, saying, “It’s a scientific-thriller told in a comic and dramatic way. It transpires in a single day but then there are multiple layers to the story.”

Smiling he continues, “Since we shot mostly during night time, double call sheets were the order of the day and there were instances where I noticed my crew cursing me, but then after seeing the footage they understood that we were up to something special.”

Next up, Rahul, who left a well-paying job at Infosys, Hyderabad to pursue his filmmaking goal, wants to continue with his genre-hopping routine. “I have decided on the next film, but then you never know whether it will be your immediate next or will have to wait.

I wanted to make some other script as my second film, but ended up making ‘Taxiwaala’,” he muses, adding that he is a dreamer and has 30 stories with him right now. “It’s different that some of them can’t be translated on to screen as they haven’t aged well.”