More Film Festival Screenings - Egypt, Goa . . .

Earlier I mentioned that the movie got selected for Shanghai International Film Festival. After the Shanghai Film Festival, AA was screened on 2 other film festivals. Recently many controversies and court stays were involved in 40th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) held by Government of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. This is one of the best events in India. So getting selected to be screened in this event is very prestigious for AA. Originally there were some issues with some Malayalam movies that were selected for this event and so Kerala High Court stayed the publication of results of films selected for the Indian Panorama.

At that point 2 Tamil movies - Achchamundu Achchamundu and Pasanga were in the selection list. No one was clear on what is going to happen to the results of films selected after the Kerala High Court stay. But finally the movie did get selected and screened. Director, Arun Vaidyanathan attended the event and confirms that the movie was well received.

Earlier, AA was selected for screening at the 33rd Cairo International film festival in Egypt (Nov 10, 2009). One of the producer who was at the event confirms that movie was well received. AA was also selected and screened at Digital Cinema Film Festival in Japan. Telugu audience can enjoy the movie soon as Bhayam. Yes, the movie is getting dubbed for the Telugu audience.

The moment everyone is waiting for is here. Our movie is getting released this weekend. Everyone should be seeing all the marketing works on Sun TV and other media. The whole crew is waiting for the movie to hit the theaters. Even though there are many recognitions from film festivals all across the globe the theatrical success of a movie is very important. Financial success for the movie gives a real boost to the film makers and the whole crew.

If you had missed the "Coffee With Anu" interview by Arun, Prassana, Sneha see here. It is nice to see the artists and the director talk about the movie under the same roof.

Right now I am in India on vocation and I will get a chance to see the movie with the real audience here in India. Even though it is fun watching the movie at theater at States, Indian theaters are even better ;-)

I shall let you know the response from the audience first hand until then read this interesting article about the movie.

Audio Launch & The Trailer

The audio launch was held at Chennai and many film personalities were there. I wish I could attend these functions to see all those great people. It is not always possible to see many great people on one stage. Balu Mahendra, Resul Pookutty, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Karthik Raja, Bavatharini, Venkat Prabhu, Nasser were the main guests. You can view the video of the function and listen to all the guests talk here - http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/gallery/Events/18286.html. I am yet to listen to all the songs. Hopefully I will share my experiences with the audio later.


Right after the audio launch the long awaiting trailer for our movie got released. Watch it here - http://www.behindwoods.com/features/tamil-movie-trailers-2/achchamundu.html.

While things are moving faster, hopefully the movie will get released during June/July time frame. I will be in India by the end of June for a month to attend a couple of family events. So I will get a chance to see the movie in theaters with real theater experience. Here in USA not all the theaters are great especially the one where they release Indian movies. Hopefully AA will get released in regular theaters like Lowes, Regal etc.

East Or West Achchamundu Achchamundu Is The Best!

From NJ to Shanghai. Yes, our movie is now going to be shown in 12th annual Shanghai International Film Festival. I am waiting to hear more from our director regarding SIFF and role of AA in it. I shall update folks as soon as I hear any gossip!

GSFF Award for Achchamundu Achchamundu

Things were really slow for a while because of the economic slowdown all over the globe. Movie industry is no exception when it comes to global economic issues. Many people and lots of money are involved in this industry. The latest news until last week was that the movie is ready and the producers are in the process of looking for distributors. But things changed last week when our movie bagged an award at the 7th Annual Garden State Film Festival. You can find this year's winners here. This award really brought everyone's morale to high grounds. Hopefully with few more awards the movie will be on the silver screen soon.

Our director is yet to write on his blog about his experiences and take on this. I shall soon update with the link. For now read the news from Adhikalai website and watch some nice pictures.

Post Production Updates

The latest news is that the movie post-production works are coming along well and the movie should be ready approximately in another month or so. One of the question most people ask me is when will the movie get released. I guess if everything goes well around January the movie should be ready for release. But remember there is always an "IF".

Recently Snehas was awarded with Nandhi award for her Telugu film "Gopalam". Hope this movie will be another milestone for her career.

Right from the beginning I was highlighting a lot of information about this film that will be trend setters. Notably the live audio is another key factor in this movie as all the scenes were shot with live audio and no dubbing except for couple of scenes. Prasanna and Sneha were asked to dub a couple of scene that needed some dubbing. When I spoke with the directory he told me that he was even thinking to dub one of the dialogue that I spoke in the film as it was not audible. I am a fast talker and I usually gulp some letters in words and that was caught by our directory during the post production. But they left it at that as it was natural and a very small dialogue in the movie. Another tit bit is - Since this movies involved artists and technology that span multiple countries the post production works are also being done both in Hollywood and in Kollywood.

Hollywood Hails Achchamundu!

I am little lagging on updating this blog as my job is demanding more time these days. But I wanted to update with a few news that I came across the movies.

- Our director had an opportunity to show the movie to some Hollywood big shots and here is the news from Behindwoods

- Sneha's interview about her experience in working with the film can be found here

In the meantime I realized that our director's blog was bombarded with spam comments from internet bots. It is sad to see some of the genuine comments going away from his blog because of this hassle. I believe now he is moderating his comments and back on track - Arun's Blog

Post Production Update

It has been a while I did give any update on the movie. My work is demanding more than before as our company go acquired by the software giant Oracle. Anywayz, our director Arun was in India for the post production works. Karthik Raja who is scoring the music for the film started to add more life to the movie through his Re-recording and music. See here for the videos taken during the post production work in Chennai here - http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/gallery/events/16302.html

After the completion of the post production work in Chennai, our director return back to USA. Now he is off to Hollywood to complete more work. I shall update more on that in my next entry.

Wrapppppppppppp!

This is the buzz word most of us are hearing lately. Even though it makes many of us happy that our work is done, this is when the next phase in film making starts - Post Production. The AA team completed their shoot for the most part especially the cast and crew's work is pretty much done. Everyone is now anxiously expecting the most crucial part of the film making - Editing.

Editing is where all the footages will come in a nice shape. N.P.Satish is the editor for this film. His experienced touch will shape this movie in the coming days. His profile includes movies like Devar Magan, Magalir Mattum, Mahanadhi, Chach 420 etc. It is to be noted that one of the producer for this film is also a close associate of Kamal Hasan in addition to Satish who worked with Kamal Hasan in many movies. From a recent announcement it is an interesting news that Kamal Hasan will be making his next movie using Red One camera that the AA team used for this film.

Director Arun when talking after the movie wrap said, '... now it feels like I had delivered the baby ...'. Thats right he delivered the baby and now its time to take care of the baby so that it can grow up to the next stage. The team is passing off their work to the next group so that re-recording, editing, visual effect etc. can be done. Most of these will be done here in USA.

Red, Red, Red and More Red

It is an old news that 'Achchamundu Achchamundu' is being shot using the Red One Camera. Also I mentioned earlier that this is the first Tamil and especially Indian movie to be shot in Red One Camera. But the interesting fact is that - not just one but 4 Red One Cameras are involved in filming (Can I even say this word?! I guess I can) this movie. At some point of time they used 3 Red One Cameras at the same time.



[Image Courtesy : http://www.arunhere.com]

Red One Camera is capable of recording at resolutions up to 4096 horizontal by 2304 vertical pixels, directly to flash or hard disk based digital storage. It features a single Super 35-sized CMOS sensor and a cinematography industry standard PL mount.



[Image Courtesy : http://www.red.com/]

Director of this film, Arun mentioned in his blog - 'I am sure this camera is going to be a boon for Indie film makers with lot of dreams and a decent budget.'