By the time we finished writing the screenplay we were very confident about the story however we were equally getting nervous about the budget. So far the short films I made were self-funded and within a limited budget, but pulling off a feature in such budget was almost next to impossible. Thinking and rethinking, frantically searching online, talking to people to find out different options that might work out, I had nothing viable. And that’s when it happened, the stroke of inspiration. It was a Friday night, i had just returned home from work, eagerly looking forward for a weekend, when I found Ruban sitting in front of his laptop , his face beaming with a glow which he later he accredited to Hunt for Gollum, a fan made prequel to Lord Of The Rings. A group of passionate amateurs created most astonishing prequel to LOTR almost at par with the world Peter Jackson created, in a shoestring budget. The question was could we pull something like this off?
My dream has always been to gather a team of people who would want to experiment with ideas and would do whatever it takes to learn and gain expertise in the domain they are passionate about and Hunt For Gollum rekindled that dream once again. I immediately called Girish, who was in Mumbai at that time shooting for another film ,with the hope of bringing him on board as DOP for the project. Half way through the exciting conversation (as i would like to believe it), i hadn't sensed any reaction from the otherside. It was almost twenty minutes of me continuously talking and the guy had not said a single word apart from initial greetings. I was almost losing hope of this working out, before i heard him say "I will do it" . Many days later when i asked him about the initial cold response he politely said "It was April fools day, and I had to make sure that this wasn’t a prank." . Oh well !
I was finally making a decision of self-funding the film. i couldn't agree more with Bret Stern,the author of "How to Shoot a feature film for under $10,000*" , that when it comes to filmmaking there is hardly a difference between being broke or saving up some money to fund it yourself. I knew it was a big challenge and accepting this challenge would mean being part of the big, fat ever growing JUGAAD movement. The fun was just a beginning.
My dream has always been to gather a team of people who would want to experiment with ideas and would do whatever it takes to learn and gain expertise in the domain they are passionate about and Hunt For Gollum rekindled that dream once again. I immediately called Girish, who was in Mumbai at that time shooting for another film ,with the hope of bringing him on board as DOP for the project. Half way through the exciting conversation (as i would like to believe it), i hadn't sensed any reaction from the otherside. It was almost twenty minutes of me continuously talking and the guy had not said a single word apart from initial greetings. I was almost losing hope of this working out, before i heard him say "I will do it" . Many days later when i asked him about the initial cold response he politely said "It was April fools day, and I had to make sure that this wasn’t a prank." . Oh well !
I was finally making a decision of self-funding the film. i couldn't agree more with Bret Stern,the author of "How to Shoot a feature film for under $10,000*" , that when it comes to filmmaking there is hardly a difference between being broke or saving up some money to fund it yourself. I knew it was a big challenge and accepting this challenge would mean being part of the big, fat ever growing JUGAAD movement. The fun was just a beginning.
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