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Born to cinema: Vikramaditya Motwane

To the cinema born is a good way to describe writer, director and newly-minted producer Vikramaditya Motwane. The filmmaker in a conversation with After Hrs

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Casual, forthright and informative, a conversation with director Vikramaditya Motwane is a lot like talking to a cool college professor. The director of Udaan and Lootera was in the city recently to judge the Jameson’s Done in Sixty Seconds short film competition. “I hope I never get complacent and continue to give my 100% to every film I make,” is his response to our question of what he hopes to preserve no matter how successful he gets. And then he gets down to discussing facets of a topic close to his heart: filmmaking.

Start short...
A moviemaker who began his career as assistant director to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Motwane espouses that making short films is an ideal way to kickstart a career in filmmaking. “It is the only way,” he states adding, “You can assist another director and learn the ropes of the craft over the years, but becoming a director is about finding your own voice, so you’ve got to experiment.” “Make bad short films, make mistakes now — you don’t want to make a mistake with your first movie now, do you?” he quips. “Discover yourself through the process, find your strength, your voice...” he advises.


Story is everything...
As someone who enjoys watching all kinds of films, Motwane’s criterion for what makes a good film is quite simple. “Story, story, story, everything else is pure technicality” he reiterates before elaborating,
“You can be technically strong, and focus all your efforts on elements like casting, music, cinematography and sets, but they are all just add ons. End of the day, filmmaking is really about how well you tell a story.”

Writer at work...
While on the importance of a good story, there’s another component that Motwane, as a writer-director, considers quite crucial — the film’s script. No wonder then that he shuts himself up, literally, while drafting it. Elaborating more on the process he undertakes to generate beautiful scripts like Dev D, Udaan or Lootera, Motwane says, “I lock myself up in the apartment when I am writing a script. There’s no phone, no Wi-Fi, no distractions whatsoever. Writing for me is like a work out for the mind, but I find that I need to get into the zone. So, unlike some people who can do disciplined writing, I need to set deadlines for myself where I get the whole story out within that time frame,” Motwane reveals.  

Give credit where it’s due...
Continuing on the aspect of writing, a fact that leaves Motwane rueful is the cold treatment lent to writers in the Hindi film industry today. “It is unfair that writers seldom get recognised here, which is ironical considering this is the industry that gave us Salim- Javed,” Motwane notes adding, “Don, directed by Chandra Barot, was sold on the weight of their name. Sholay, which they wrote, was the formula that was adopted in most of the Hindi movies in the ’80s. Today, the writer’s name is mentioned way down in the order of credits. Unlike in the West where the writer of an original screenplay gets precedence over the producer in the credits. Things are changing slowly with Writer’s associations getting back, but the other aspect is that most writers want to direct their own movies because they want their work to be acknowledged.” 

Wearing a new hat...
Besides playing director, Motwane’s also busy these days in a new role — that of a producer. A co-founder of Phantom Films with Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl and Madhu Mantena, Motwane chooses to describe his new turn as that of an ‘enabler’. “As a producer, I see my role as just enabling the director — getting him the studio, raising the money, giving him a crew, helping with the script, and then telling him, ‘go shoot the movie’.” The new venture, by the looks of it seems to have gotten on to a good start. Besides the success of Hasee Toh Phasee, there’s a slew of films waiting to be launched from the stable including Queen, Bombay Velvet, NH10, Ugly, Dhoomketu and Bhavesh Joshi. “It took us two years to take off but all the movies we are producing are different from each other,” he notes contentedly.

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