In The Picture - Pradeep Katasani
Contributed By - Babu Raman
Screenwriter-director Pradeep Katasani who has a delightful filmography and many cinematic feathers in his cap is now launching his new movie “Silk Road.” To have a tete-a-tete with this young director, Shri Babu Raman met with the Production Manager of TV show Ray Donovan to give AZIndiatimes a candid interview.
Did you study in film line or did you finish your Software engineering and then jumped into film line?
I was an undergraduate in Computer Science, then I worked for a while after that I came here in Los Angeles and did my Masters inTelevision Studies. It is the passion in movies that I followed and shifted to the US to fulfil my dreams.
You’ve been working in the film industry here in LA for some time, what are the projects you’ve worked on?
I’ve worked on a few feature films here in LA. The biggest one was The Black Prince that came out about three years back I think. I believe you have heard about the movie too. It’s the story of Raja Ranjit Singh’s son who was exiled from his country and could never return back to India. The movie also stars Shabana Azmi.
Is your debut movie Silk Road a full-fledged feature movie of the mainstream cinema or a short film? What will be the duration of the movie? Tell our readers a bit about your movie. Is the story by any chance connected to a real life event or its a fiction?
Silk Road a full length feature film. It is a suspense thriller. The story is actually about two Indian Americans. The story follows the two people’s points of view. One is a graduate immigrant who comes to America for studies and then gets involved in selling drugs online and how he falls prey to the underbelly of Cyber crime forms the plot for the rest of the story. The other point of view is of another Indian immigrant who works at the DEA at the Cyber Crime Department. The story tells her POV about how these investigations are going on.
As you know there is a genre called Historical Fiction and we've actually set this story based on real events that happened in 2012; the characters by themselves are obviously fictional. Just that we used a little bit of real events that happened in 2012.
Is it your story - as in written by you or based on your story idea, or a story you picked up from somewhere? Does the movie have any Indian elements to it like song sequences. etc?
Well, the screenplay itself is based on a novel published earlier and me and three other writers, we worked together to publish the novel. As for Bollywood kind of song sequences, no there aren’t any. The story by itself is about Americans. So we are trying to make a movie, something that looks like a Hollywood movie where the characters are authentic.
As you know a lot of people are doing the mini-series or the web series as these are becoming a craze these days plus there are benefits like lesser regulatory licensing with minimal censorship involved. Not that full-fledged movies don’t have any benefits but did it never strike you to make a web series?.
Actually we started out with the idea of making the story a web series. The original idea was to have a seasonal anthology series where each series will have a different story and we thought this novel would be Season 1 but later on when we were pitching it to different networks and analyzing the feedback we realized that this novel is a different stuff and it works better as a movie.
What do you generally think makes or breaks a movie? What are the criteria of a movie, that you believe, make it click - is it the actors, the plot, or is it that it should match with the current trend. What is it?
I believe it’s a mixture of a lot of things that must come together to make a movie work. And of course actors and the story are like the two main pillars of a good movie. But I would say for a movie to click the director’s and the writer’s voice should be authentic where he has to try to say things that he truly believes in.
How relevant is your movie to the current state of affairs in the US?
There have been different kinds of immigration stories that have been told. There have been much bigger makers who have been telling more political stories about immigration. But at the same time I felt there is also a need of movies where they do not make a great deal about immigrants as these two people (in my movie) could be any persons - even Americans.
So, you are matter-of-factly trying to say that it is not about immigrants or nonimmigrants but about the situation. What about the location of the movie? Was it totally done in one place or did you shoot at different locations?
Suspense and thrillers charm me. Silk Road explores the themes of deep web, crime, drugs, student experience, the immigrant experience, and loneliness. I would say most of the movie was done in one place, San Diego without a lot of manpower involved. One more thing is, compared to a standard American movie it is not even a big budget movie.
Do, you plan to show your movie all over the US and also to India or do you have any other locations planned where you wish to release your movie? The production of your movie is already over or still going on?
The production is still in the process and yes, of course we wish to spread our movie as wide as possible and I want everybody to watch this movie. We are planning to go everywhere to promote the movie.
Thank you very much for this conversation and allowing our readers to know about your new venture. All of us from AZIndiatimes wish you good luck with your movie.