Field day: Point and scoot
When Srinivas Sunderrajan isn’t shooting undercover, he is shopping for vintage cameras in Fort.
When indie filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan, 30, was working on his film, The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project, he picked up moments from his life that could feature in the 74-minute film.
Made on a near-nothing budget, shot without permissions in the wee hours of the morning, it was filmed in his cameraman’s grandmother’s home in Bhendi Bazaar.
“The job of an independent filmmaker doesn’t stop at direction. He must scout for locations, carry props, approach distributors and collect funds, all by himself,” says the Navi Mumbai resident.
Currently working on a sci-fi film, he is in between work and finds himself dabbling in selfpreservation projects that are never to be seen by the public.
Here, he chats about his surreal hobbies.
Vintage camera shopping
The film I’m working on got me thinking about the future. I wanted to capture the memory of my life as it is today, and make a time capsule. I started to click portraits of my family and friends as they are. I’d ask dad a question, and as he mulled over it, I’d catch an expression I have seen so often. It was a conversation with a photographer friend that led me to invest in a vintage film camera that I bought in Camera gully, Fort. There is a snake-long line of stores that sell them between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000. This is where I found my Asahi Pentax 35mm Film SLR. Made in 1964, most of its parts have not been produced since the ’70s. The store owner was desperate to get rid of it as junk.
But, when you go looking for anything retro, there’s a catch. For instance, in my camera, the metering doesn’t work. I adjust all settings manually and still get a lot of blurry images.
Paying a bass price
I play bass for Scribe, a Mumbai metal band. I have been playing lead since in college but later realised that bands find it difficult to find a bass player, so I switched for their convenience. Gradually, I grew to enjoy it and continued. Scribe was formed in 2005 and more than performing live over the years, it’s the jamming every weekend that I enjoy. There isn’t a lot of fame for a bassist. When fans come up and want a picture with the band, I’m usually the guy taking the picture.
Robot buddy
When I was working on Karthik Krishnan..., we needed a robot, who in the film, predicted the future. My dad stepped in to construct it using scrap metal. That inspired me to take up a DIY project of sorts, like Georges Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon made in 1902. Instead of VFX, which everyone seems to be using. I’m experimenting with pulleys and oil paints in water or milk. After making blotchy stains on canvas, I try to shoot it in a macro format to create a surreal supernova explosion.
It may never be used for anything that I plan to exhibit but it’s a way to go analog in a digital world.
When indie filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan, 30, was working on his film, The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project, he picked up moments from his life that could feature in the 74-minute film.
Made on a near-nothing budget, shot without permissions in the wee hours of the morning, it was filmed in his cameraman’s grandmother’s home in Bhendi Bazaar.
The old edifice couldn’t take all the excitement, and the roof caved in. Sunderrajan went ahead and worked the catastrophe into the plot, before travelling with it to film fests across the world.
“The job of an independent filmmaker doesn’t stop at direction. He must scout for locations, carry props, approach distributors and collect funds, all by himself,” says the Navi Mumbai resident.
Currently working on a sci-fi film, he is in between work and finds himself dabbling in selfpreservation projects that are never to be seen by the public.
Here, he chats about his surreal hobbies.
Vintage camera shopping
The film I’m working on got me thinking about the future. I wanted to capture the memory of my life as it is today, and make a time capsule. I started to click portraits of my family and friends as they are. I’d ask dad a question, and as he mulled over it, I’d catch an expression I have seen so often. It was a conversation with a photographer friend that led me to invest in a vintage film camera that I bought in Camera gully, Fort. There is a snake-long line of stores that sell them between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000. This is where I found my Asahi Pentax 35mm Film SLR. Made in 1964, most of its parts have not been produced since the ’70s. The store owner was desperate to get rid of it as junk.
But, when you go looking for anything retro, there’s a catch. For instance, in my camera, the metering doesn’t work. I adjust all settings manually and still get a lot of blurry images.
Paying a bass price
I play bass for Scribe, a Mumbai metal band. I have been playing lead since in college but later realised that bands find it difficult to find a bass player, so I switched for their convenience. Gradually, I grew to enjoy it and continued. Scribe was formed in 2005 and more than performing live over the years, it’s the jamming every weekend that I enjoy. There isn’t a lot of fame for a bassist. When fans come up and want a picture with the band, I’m usually the guy taking the picture.
Robot buddy
When I was working on Karthik Krishnan..., we needed a robot, who in the film, predicted the future. My dad stepped in to construct it using scrap metal. That inspired me to take up a DIY project of sorts, like Georges Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon made in 1902. Instead of VFX, which everyone seems to be using. I’m experimenting with pulleys and oil paints in water or milk. After making blotchy stains on canvas, I try to shoot it in a macro format to create a surreal supernova explosion.
It may never be used for anything that I plan to exhibit but it’s a way to go analog in a digital world.
