Konkani film K Sera Sera- Ghodpachem Ghoddtelem recently won the best regional film at the national film awards. This is a matter of great pride for actor-turned producer Rajesh R Pednekar as this is his first production. The Goan Everyday talks to Pednekar to understand the nuts and the bolts of the rnfilm business
The Goan: It’s always difficult to make a regional language movie. How did you go about it?
Rajesh R. Pednekar: We finished the shooting of ‘K Sera Sera- Ghodpachem Ghoddtelem’ in just 16 days and if you look at the movie, you wouldn’t believe that the shooting was done so quickly. In fact, this is the first film my company ‘De Goan Studio’ has produced.
When we thought of doing a movie, the first thing I decided was to do proper planning before going to the floor. Good planning helped us in making the movie in 16 days. In movie business, costs like lights, camera, food, generator and stay are on per day basis. You end up saving a lot of money, if you take few days to make a movie.
Even with the actors, we had done rehearsals before we started shooting. It not only made shooting easier, but also helped in controlling the cost, as everyone was on the same page. We kept a tight check on the cost, but we didn’t sacrifice the quality of our film.
Our director of photography (DOP) Hari Nair, our sound engineer Bishwadeep Chatterjee and our editor Neeraj Voralia are all from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. Bishwadeep Chatterjee has won the national award twice; in fact, last year, he won for his work in the film ‘Bajirao Mastani’. Hari Nair too is a national award winner. Neeraj Voralia was the editor for a Marathi movie called ‘Shwaas’, which was India’s entry for Oscars sometime back.
I told all these people that we had
a limited budget. They all said that they would work for me at whatever budget because they believed in my movie and they knew it was a good product.
Q: It takes at least a crore to make a film. How do you recover the cost because from ticket sales you don’t even make a fraction of it?
RP: A number of people start making a movie thinking that the state government will give them subsidy. But, we didn’t plan our film considering the government subsidy because the last time some disbursements took place under film finance scheme was in 2011 and later it stopped.
We had hopes that government will look after us and that’s all and we started making the movie. On the cost front, we have already crossed a crore on our film. But, we have won a national award, which makes us entitled to getting Rs 20 lakhs from Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG). The central government gave us Rs 1 lakh with the national award. Put together, this amounts to Rs 21 lakhs, which is still a long way to recover our cost…
Q: At the most, you will make a few lakhs from ticket sales. Where will rest of the money come from?
RP: One has to understand that regional cinema is not like commercial cinema. We can’t take Bollywood stars, which will help us in marketing our movie. Regional cinema will survive on benefits like subsidy from the government or prize money. You said ticket sales…even for that, we need to reach out to people aggressively, which needs money. Assuming we do all that, the question still remains that how much will we recover even if we are running houseful for several days.
But then, it’s also true that we made this movie for the love of our Konkani language. It’s a matter of great pride for us that ‘K Sera Sera- Ghodpachem Ghoddtelem’ was selected for several film festivals like Boston International Film Festival and Houston International Film Festival. In fact, our film won Special Jury Remi Award for the best film at Houston International Film Festival. Now, our movie has been selected for several film festivals abroad.
Q: But, how will that distributor make money?
RP: A business deal can be worked out for that. Important thing is the distributor will keep on promoting Konkani films. There are shows abroad, where they like showing our films. We have already got offers from Australia, Canada and Singapore saying that they would like to show our film, wherein they will pay us on per-show basis.
Q: You mean money can be made by selling rights to show your movie?
RP: There are distribution companies, which buy your movie, if they like it. For instance, Netflix.
There are other ways too. Like, ‘K Sera Sera- Ghodpachem Ghoddtelem’ will be screened on May 25 at ‘Cannes Film Festival – Market’. At the ‘Market’, there are a lot of trade-people from film business. Our distributor will keep on pitching the movie to them.
In India, Maharashtra is the only state, where the state government has selected three Marathi films, which they will take to the ‘Market’. It will be great if Goa government can do something on these lines, like take three best Konkani movies to film festivals like ‘Market’.
Q: So, you think Goa government can play a role here?
RP: It will be nice if the government helps. If Konkani films do well, people will be able to have some entertainment in local language. Culturally, dramas and films in own language enhances the language of soil. Local language entertainment is very important for people or else we will go away from our culture.
