The director-duo behind the first-Indian web series shot in the US worked hard to make theirdreams come alive

Every week, around 30 Indians from the ‘Art Street Creations’ group — all film enthusiasts residing at Bay Area, San Francisco come together at a coffee shop to discuss films, scripts and beyond. And at one such meet, Anurag Kautoori and Ashok Varma planned and conceived their Telugu web-series, Let’s Go San Francisco. This happens to be the first Indian web-series to be shot in the US.

Let’s Go San Francisco was in fact a product of the director-duo’s post-work efforts every night and their free time on weekends. Anurag and Ashok had already proved their filmmaking mettle in the past; their short films titled Foreign Sambandham and Exam Fever earned considerable acclaim online. “One of our earliest worries was to decide the medium of the story, whether it would be a feature film or a short film or a web series. When we first came up with the idea , web series as a concept was fairly new,” says Anurag, who has now shifted base to Hyderabad to pursue films as a career.

The sensibilities of two filmmakers matched, both had always enjoyed American TV shows and not a day would pass without the two watching a movie or a series episode. They considered several languages for the web series — Hindi, Tamil and Telugu — the latter was the choice they opted for practical reasons. They had many roadblocks to cross; limited financial resources, a small crew and the problems in obtaining shoot permissions in US. Incidentally, they shot the airport scene in the film with a huge crowd on the day when Narendra Modi was in town.

Roles of the crew on sets weren’t clearly underlined, but people chipped in whenever necessary, from arranging spaces to bringing meals to the makeup sessions. “Making the final result crisp, the length, the dialogues and keeping the atmosphere real were no easy tasks.

For instance, there’s a scene where two friends in the series keep talking and another person butts in to make a point. That’s something we don’t see in feature films. Handling on-screen histrionics of multiple characters in each frame was a challenge indeed,” reveals Ashok, who shifted to filmmaking from photography.

They wanted to imbibe the sensibilities of the likes of Sekhar Kammula, Mani Ratnam and Gautham Menon to the final result. ‘No punch dialogues’ was a rule we followed; we believe that the lines hit hard when they are natural.” Rakesh, one of the central protagonists in the series (a former roommate of Anurag) and a known name in the short-film circles was critical in bringing them to life.

Joint directors also meant a certain amount of creative differences that the both consciously worked on. The two say, they wouldn’t have taken so much time to make it, had they spent more time on the pre-production aspects. Even after making the series, post-production took time, they’d worked with the DI team of Annapurna Studios, which they say was crucial to bring a cutting-edge quality to the visuals. “We have a full-fledged script to shoot future episodes in the series and even have the thought of making it a feature film,” the duo states. While Anurag felt the need to break free from his monotonic job and pursue his filmmaking passion, Ashok (who works at Google) finds it better balancing it with his profession. “We are happy to be among the firsts in this place, setting up a path for many,” they sign off.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Metroplus / by Srivathsan Nadadhur / October 14th, 2016