Shortbusters Bangalore

Shortbusters, 2013 is Bangalore's first ever film festival celebrating the humble beginnings of emerging filmmakers. Powered by TheFishtank Entertainment Company and organized by and Indian IndependentFilmmakers Alliance (Bangalore), this short film festival provides us a platform to interact with the prospective audience of our film. If you are in Bangalore, be there at the Tinga Tinga Bar & Café on M.G.Road on 24^th November, 2013, Sunday at around 2 P.M to experience some good cinema and to know more about the 0ne Rupee Film Project. One of our honorary associate producers, Mr. Abhilash Warrier is going to be present there to speak about the journey and the hurdles we faced along the road.

Team Shortbusters, we think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

Really, we couldn't thank you enough. 

All the best for the success of your maiden endeavour!

In Kolkata and Kicking!

The Final Cut is ready, the film is not.
During shoot we captured sound on location with low-end instruments. That's what we could afford for a 132 minute film to be shot not only in the suburbs of Bengal but also in Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Goa within a budget of 3,00,000 INR. Even songs were recorded that way. The tracks by Urban Saint; they recorded and mixed those on their laptops. So, no wonder that we are now unhappy with the audio! We want to go through the whole sound designing process now, and again, we don't have a penny left for that. Dubbing, ambiance, songs --- it's just not possible. But of course, if we can arrange the funds, the film's impact would get multiplied to four-five times at least.

It's watchable, but not hear-able, so to speak. Even if we call it hear-able, it's just not bearable! We are missing the good audio this time. Let's see what we can do. By the way, there's a probability of a good news. We are not going to reveal it yet. There is something, you'll have to wait till 2014. And if it happens, we must be financially ready for it.

Finance, finance finance! Why can't we just take wind and water and soil and make a film out of it? The need is much higher this time. Don't be afraid, we won't be coming to you again asking for your hard earned precious money unless you step forward yourself. Revolution is for facebook! Revolution is a popular stance! Ultimately the wine party and eating out during the weekends are more important than any social revolution. So, left for the marginal filmmaker is nothing but pennies.
Of course there are still good people on earth who usually do what they say, most importantly they act instead of just talking like the rest 90%. But 10% just can't make it happen. They can always inspire and encourage us by sending in their token of love and support. Able to save us now, is either gap finance or co-production! Let's see

By the way, there's an extended promo live on youtube now. It's still unwatched by most of the people who follow us on different social networks. Have a look, share if you think it's worthy. The video is embedded below.
Thanks

(This post is written on the 614th day of The 0ne Rupee Film Project)

The Test Tube Baby!

A lot of people might like a good news, but only a few step forward and make them!

Yes! 

The fundraising campaign is successful.
We have finally raised every penny we needed.
Probably this was the biggest fundraising campaign ever for a film in terms of duration.
474 Days! 25th February, 2012 - 15th June, 2013
3 online platforms! Wishberry, Indiegogo, Funduzz!
INR 2,01,171.51 collected offline!
Total amount INR 2,86,535.35 raised from more than 200 people!

Now, you won't look at it the same way you used to. Would you?
You, who kept watching silently
You, who never thought it's really going to happen
You, who never thought a film can be produced this way for real
You, who never stepped forward to join hands
Yesterday you were somebody
We kept on appealing to your deaf ears
From now on, you are dead

You
whom this blogpost addresses
don't even exist for this writer or this blog from today

This is the last time we mentioned You!


Adieu!

Why Do You Think People Should Give You Money To Complete Your Film?

Important question!

Critical in other words!

In this short blogpost, we'll try an old method to solve this riddle; negation of the negation. We'll state why people should not give us money and whatever is left shall be the reason for them to give us money. 

Let's start

1. We don't assure any return. So, people should not give us money expecting some sort of financial gain

2. We don't serve to any political party. So, people should not give us money expecting we would promote their propaganda

3. We haven't won any big award. Our films have never been screened at any renowned international film festival. So, people should not give us money thinking we'll make them proud by bringing glory to the nation

4. Our film is not produced/co-produced by some retired Bollywood actor/ working Bollywood director (without or with a revolutionary image). So, people should not give us money thinking they'd be participating in something "BIG"

5. We are not casting Tolly/ Bolly/ Holly - wood stars in our film. So, people should not give us money expecting a dinner date with Karina Kapoor in return

6. We are not making a film on how the Indian revolution can be successful. So, people should not give us money thinking we are a gang of messiahs of the proletariat

7. We are not descendants of Heeralal Sen/ Dadasaheb Phalke/ Devaki Basu/ Ritwik Ghatak / Satyajit Ray/ Mrinal Sen/ Mani Kaul/ Shyam Benegal/ John Abraham or any living or dead person having any relation to any regional or national or International film industry or business. Not Even Jean-Luc Godard or Jon Jost. So, people should not give us money thinking we have it in our blood

8. We don't have a long time PR policy. In fact we have no PR policy or marketing plan at all. So, people should not give us money thinking we are making history in the 21st century

9. We have never done this before i.e making a film gathering funds from the crowd. So, people should not give us money thinking we are experienced enough to come up with an Indian Kickstarter some day

10. We certify that everything stated above is true and correct to the best of our knowledge and belief. So, people should not give us money considering this blogpost a cool marketing stance that comes under the "just kidding" category

Is there anything left, any reason that should make people give us their hard earned money? 

Guess not! Then why the hell are people giving "Us" money to complete "Our" film? 

Confusing, no?

1. S N Nanda

2. Rajiv Sinha

3. Carole

4. Kanungo

5. Swagat Sen

6. D.K Sornam

7. Dev Daruka

8. Surya Shankar Dash

9. Maharatna Banerjee

10. Dhrubaa Ghosh

11. Bagula Bhagat

12. Hemant Kumar Gaba

13. Samarendra Das

14. Gurpal Singh

15. Whose handwritings are not readable (3)

16. People who forgot to drop a mail (12-15)

17. Riddhiman Basu [Associate Producer]

18. Ritam Bhaumik

19. Two Unknown Foreigners

20. Avishek Thakur

21. Ginnetta Correlli

22. Jason Marsh

23. Kanchan Sengupta

24. Sayan Chakraborty

25. Shamayita Banerjee

26. Apratim Ganguly

27. Ajasra Das

28. Manju Chakraborty

29. Kamal Kumar Roy

30. Monomita Roy

31. Shubhankar Mazumdar (24fps.in)

32. Debdut Sadhu

33. Supratim Sanyal (Washington Bangla Radio INC.)

34. Tushar Sarkar

35. Anirban Roychowdhury

36. Gairik Roy

37. Sunando Patra

38. Nishan Chatterjee

39. Kumar Chitrang

40. Tuhin Mallik

41. Soumyaditya Nanda

42. Moumita Chakraborty Goswami

43. Sushanta Kar

44. Sonali Sengupta

45. Suddha Prasad Bagchi

46. Gangotryi Sorcar

47. Achintyarup Ray

48. Caesar Mandal

49. Soumya Maity

50. Atish Baul [Associate Producer]

51. Justin Andrews

52. Joydeep Thakur

53. Avijit Ghosal

54. Debajyoti Guha

55. Mrinal Mazumdar 

56. Anirban Dashgupta

57. Debajyoti Mukherjee

58. Sanjoy Sinharoy

59. Saptarshi Dey

60. Sreemanti Sengupta

61. A. Dasgupta

62. Siddhartha Nath

63. Anindya Bose

64. Mukherjee Twish

65. Amiya Kumar

66. Bipad Bhanjan Behera

67. Antara Kundu

68. Avishek Nag

69. Indranil Ghosh

70. Somak Dutta

71. Saswata Chakraborty

72. Rupa Debnath

73. Soumya Bhattacharya [Associate Producer]

74. Snigdha Sheel

75. Mr. Dasgupta

76. Maifuz Ali

77. Sabyasachi Das 

78. Koustav Bhattacharya

79. Mrinmoy Chatterjee

80. Ugen Bhutia

81. Adheesh Verma

82. Neeti Tandon

83. Aroonav Das

84. Ankush Hore

85. Neha Bhat

86. Koushik Bagchi

87. Tarang Desai

88. Shre Kumar Chatterjee

89. Gautam Kar 

90. Rijabrata Chakraborty

91. Samyamoy Sen Gupta

92. Somnath Roy

93. Sounak Kar

94. Rammohan

95. Manas Tarai

96. Aniket Mukherjee

97. Nabanita Bhattacharya [Associate Producer]

98. Shounak Ghoshal

99. Supriyo Das

100. Soham Pal

101. Nilabhra Banerjee

102. Ankan Paul

103. Bikramjit Chakraborty

104. Atma Prakash Mishra

105. Amik Das

106. Amir Motlagh

107. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

108. Varsha Chakraborty

109. Argha Sen

110. Tuhin Subhra Sinha

111. Ugenther Kumar

112. K V Krishna Rao

113. Arnab Ganguly

114. Rohosen Bandyopadhyay

115. Riccardo Bella

116. K V Srinivasan

117. Kannaiah C H

118. Sanhita Modak

119. Ushnish

120. Ipsita Palbhowmick [Associate Producer]

121. Maj Gaurav Garg

122. Two old LFEBF members 

123. Salil Biswas

124. Soumen Atta

125. Arpan Chowdhury

126. Tushnik Chaudhuri

127. Nabendu Bhattacharya

128. Ranjan Roy

129. Subrata Mukherjee

130. Ramakrishna Bhattacharya

131. Anirban Bandopadhyay 

132. Debanjan Das

133. Anirban Chattopadhyay

134. Parambrata Chatterjee

135. Abhinandan Ghose

136. Anisha Das

137. Anonymous

138. Indrani Datta

139. Subir Kumar Sengupta

140. Mrs. Sengupta

141. Mr. Sengupta (Junior)

142. Samran Huda

143. Deva Agarwal

144. Dinu Bandopadhyay

145. Abhinesh Warrier

146. Deep Shome

147. Sriparna Chatterjee

148. Pratim Ray

149. Pinaki Sen

150. R P Das

151. Biswajit Das

152. Samik Mukherjee

153. Yashowardhan Kauns

154. Sayonto Kundu

155. Dwaipayan Basu

156. Lohit Grover

157. Sharmila Roy

158. Atin Dutta

159. Suranjan Ghosh

160. Dewan Rameez

161. Debjit Bagchi

162. Suman Manna

163. Anonymous 2 [Associate Producer]

164. Krishanu Majumdar

165. Indranil Ghosh Dastidaar

All these people have actually spent money to make this film a reality. 

Not on this list, there are those 16 patrons too who contributed via Funduzz.com! 

What do you think, why did they do that? 

Now don't call them all insane since there are more than 180 of them!

And there'll be more, even if you don't find an answer...

Last Week of Fundraising

At the same time, it's good and it's bad. The positive thing is that once this campaign ends we will be free to go and shoot and complete our film and we won't have to do the tremendous job of convincing people to chip in their hard earned money to support our project. Sometimes it becomes even tougher than stealing the ring from Gollum. The terrible pressure...oh... finally it'll be over in a week.

And the negative thing is... no, it's not something to express in two or three lines. Allow this copy + paste from our website ---

"It was completely unplanned. The campaign initially started at the 9th Bring Your Own Film Festival, Puri. On the last day of of the festival, 25th February, 2012, we started approaching people to crowd-fund our film and raised INR 2,444. After returning, we kept on letting people know about our venture. The response was good. We collected INR 60,000 altogether till we launched the campaign on Wishberry in the last week of May, 2012. Wishberry has been a good partner till our partnership ended on Sptember 1. We raised INR 54,017 through this online platform. After September 1 we launched our campaign on Indiegogo just to keep the ways of receiving online contributions open, but it did not run well as we could raise only 48 USD there. Now in the last leg of production, we have launched another online fundraising campaign with Funduzz.com.
Check out http://bit.ly/fundonerupee

Till today (6th June, 2013) we have raised

INR 1,68,921.51 (Offline)
INR 54,017 (via Wishberry)
INR 2, 595.84 (via Indiegogo)

Total INR 2,25,534.35 of which INR 12, 482.05 has been spent on commissions of our partners.


So, the actual sum collected is
INR 2,13,052.30 only
and we still need to raise another
57,000 rupees till
June 15, 2013

We have raised around 24,000 rupees already on Funduzz.com
So that leaves us 33,000 INR away from our target



We expect you to do your bit! Thanks"


So, that's the situation. It's not impossible, as a matter of fact, we have never been this close, but, it's tough, undoubtedly, especially considering the fact that though most of you don't like traditional film producers of our country but you do behave like them sometimes when someone comes to you asking for your support in the form of even as minimum as one rupee.

Now, you have a clear view of the negative side, we hope.
We still expect you to do your bit if you haven't yet.


Together, if not history, we can at least make a film!

Idiots' Creations

Although we are not really sure whether it helps to post on this blog, we keep on posting and sharing things here whenever "what's next? how to reach more people" or a similar question comes to our mind.

Last night was a great night. The greatest thing about the night is that nothing really happened, except that we completed chopping the first look of our film and uploaded it on youtube. After 15 hours or so, now we got 200 hits, which is nothing. So, nothing really happened and that's the greatest part of it. You know, when nothing happens, absolutely nothing, "what's next? how to reach more people", this kind of a question comes to our mind and we open up this blog to post something here. We know it's not really going to help us though.

And when nothing happens, we get obsessed and keep on working more and more. That's the best part of it and that's why last night was a great night. If everything went alright AASHMANI JAWAHARAT (2013) would have released on the 1st day of this month. But nothing like that happened. So, you can guess that everything is not alright at all. We still need 99,000 rupees, and, needless to say, nothing is happening, no, really! So, we have made up our minds to release it on the 1st day of July. But, 99,000 rupees, it's a big amount for beggar-filmmakers (forget bakchodis like crowdfunding and all) like us! So, if nothing happens in the meantime, nothing is really going to happen!

Nine Nine, Zero Zero Zero = Ninety Nine Thousand = 99,000
So, please don't ask us when is it going to release. Remember, you get back the love you give and there are no exceptions in case of rules made by God! We are probably going to make it a contributors' only release in July! So, if you are not a contributor, you'll be left with nothing. Nothing is great, but nothing is still nothing!

You can, if you wish, MakeItHappen
or
You can just do Nothing

Idiots' Confessions

A whole year has passed, 382 days to be exact. We could raise only 1,69,587 rupees of which 12,482 rupees had been spent on commissions of our online fundraising partners. So, we were left with 1,57,105 rupees to spend for the film. Our pledge was not much. All we needed was 2,50,000 rupees for the film to materialize. After 382 days of work, we have 1324 people on our FB page but only around 160 of them are contributors. Even among these 160, there are people who could easily chip in 500 rupees at least but being led by misunderstanding all they contributed was just 1 rupee. Of course not to forget people who forgot the promises they made (you know, next month when I get the paycheck, I will... types). Some of our friends sent us 500 and said they would be happy to send in another 5000 if they get the assurance that the film is really going to happen. Well, 40% of the shooting part is over, but this trivial fact could not win over their doubtful minds. Some of our beloved friends often show up on social networks (and even in real life) asking, "hey, how's the project going"(?). Dear friend, if you are so concerned about this project what stopped you from contributing 1000, 100, 10 or even as minimum as 1 rupee? Do you really care? When you tell us you believe that we are doing something path-breaking and it will inspire a lot of others, we sincerely doubt your honesty.

In the month of May, 2012, we stopped posting frequently on this blog because we got the feeling that it's not working. The heap of words are not convincing enough. The realization was true, now we are assured as Google shows us that we have 6,993 page views since the creation of this blog and that does not change the fact that we have only around 160 people who have contributed to the film financially. Here's how we got them. The amount of individual contributions are not mentioned just for the sake of privacy. 

OFFLINE COLLECTION

[1,12,974.51 INR Raised]

1.      S N Nanda

2.      Rajiv Sinha

3.      Carole

4.      Kanungo

5.      Swagat Sen

6.      D.K Sornam

7.      Dev Daruka

8.      Surya Shankar Dash

9.      Maharatna Banerjee

10.  Dhrubaa Ghosh

11.  Bagula Bhagat

12.  Hemant Kumar Gaba

13.  Samarendra Das

14.  Gurpal Singh

15.  Whose handwritings are not readable (3)

16.  People who forgot to drop a mail (12-15)

17.  Riddhiman Basu

18.  Ritam Bhaumik

19.  Two Unknown Foreigners

20.  Avishek Thakur

21.  Ginnetta Correlli

22.  Jason Marsh

23.  Kanchan Sengupta

24.  Sayan Chakraborty

25.  Shamayita Banerjee

26.  Apratim Ganguly

27.  Ajasra Das

28.  Manju Chakraborty

29.  Kamal Kumar Roy

30.  Monomita Roy

31.  Shubhankar Mazumdar

32.  Debdut Sadhu

33.  Supratim Sanyal

34.  Tushar Sarkar

35.  Anirban Roychowdhury

36.  Gairik Roy

37.  Sunando Patra

38.  Nishan Chatterjee

39.  Kumar Chitrang

40.  Tuhin Mallik

41.  Soumyaditya Nanda

42.  Moumita Chakraborty Goswami

43.  Sushanta Kar

44.  Sonali Sengupta

45.  Suddha Prasad Bagchi

46.  Gangotryi Sorcar

47.  Achintyarup Ray

48.  Ceaser Mandal

49.  Soumya Maiti

50.  Atish Baul

51.  Justin Andrews

52.  Joydeep Thakur

53.  Avijit Ghoshal

54.  Debajyoti Guha

55.  Mrinal Mazumdar

56.  Anirban Dashgupta

57.  Debajyoti Mukherjee

58.  Sanjoy Sinharoy

59.  Saptarshi Dey

60.  Mr. Dasgupta

61.  Maifuz Ali

62.  Koustav Bhattacharya

63.  Mrinmoy Chatterjee

64.  Ugen Bhutia

65.  Shre Kumar Chatterjee

66.  Gautam Kar

67.  Sumit Bhattacharya

68.  Nilabhra Banerjee

69.  Amik Das

70.  Argha Sen

71.  Ipsita Palbhowmick

72.  Maj Gaurav Garg

73.  Two old LFEBF members

74.  Arpan Chowdhury

75.  Nabendu Bhattacharya

76.  Ranjan Roy

77.  Subrata Mukherjee

78.  Ramakrishna Bhattacharya

79.  Anirban Bandopadhyay

80.  Debanjan Das

81.  Anirban Chattopadhyay

82.  Parambrata Chatterjee

83.  Abhinandan Ghose

84.  Anisha Das

85.  Anonymous

86.  Indrani Datta

87.  Subir Kumar Sengupta

88.  Soma Sengupta

89.  Abhijay Sengupta

90.  Samran Huda

91.  Deva Agarwal

92.  Dinu Bandopadhyay

Via Wishberry.in

[54, 017 INR Raised | 43, 601.77 INR Received]

1.   Sreemanti Sengupta

2.   Ms Dasgupta

3.   Siddhartha Nath

4.   Anindya Bose

5.   Mukherjee Twish

6.   Amiya Kumar

7.   Bipad Bhanjan Behera

8.   Antara Kundu

9.   Avishek Nag

10. Indranil Ghosh

11. Somak Dutta

12. Saswata Chakraborty

13. Rupa Debnath

14. Soumya Bhattacharya

15. Snigdha Sheel

16. Sabyasachi Das

17. Adheesh Verma

18. Neeti Tandon

19. Aroonav Das

20. Ankush Hore

21. Neha Bhat

22. Koushik Bagchi

23. Tarang Desai

24. Rijabrata Chakraborty

25. Samyamoy Sen Gupta

26. Somnath Roy

27. Sounak Kar

28. Rammohan

29. Manas Tarai

30. Aniket Mukherjee

31. Shounak Ghoshal

32. Supriyo Das

33. Soham Pal

34. Ankan Paul

35. Bikramjit Chakraborty

36. Atma Prakash Mishra

37. Amir Motlagh

38. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

39. Varsha Chakraborty

40. Tuhin Subhra Sinha

41. Ugenther Kumar

42. K V Krishna Rao

43. Arnab Ganguly

44. Rohosen Bandopadhyay

45. Riccardo Bella

46. K V Srinivasan

47. Kannaiah C H

48. Sanhita Modak

49. Ushnish

Via IndieGoGo

[2, 595.84 INR Raised | 529.02 INR Received]

1. Salil Biswas
2. Tushnik Chowdhury
3. Soumen Atta

TOTAL

1,69,587.35 INR Raised | 1,57,105.30 INR Received

Commissions and Set-up fees: INR 12, 482.05

So, "hey, how's the project going", "how and when are you planning to release this film", "when is it going to happen" --- to all these questions we have only one answer. It's not going to happen automatically. We never said that we would make it happen. What we said was "Share, Donate, Make it Happen". So, it depends on you actually --- how shall it happen, how shall it reach the people or whether it shall happen at all. 

If you really care, if you really feel for it, make us include your name in the list posted above. We still need another 80,000 rupees. It's a 90 minute long film divided into 20 sequences with 16 characters and around 15 extras, shot in 4 different places. Just consider the cost of food and transport and tell us, are we asking too much (2.5 lacs)?

We had to stop the campaign in October, 2012 because the team is small. We can't keep on asking or trying to convince one person the Nth time for contributing 100 rupees. No, we cannot go and meet you for collecting 500 rupees. We have a whole film to make. You don't have the time to volunteer, we know that, you have your own life and you cannot really spend much time on spreading the word in favour of us. But you have our bank a/c details, you have our Paypal details. You can at least do your bit and add some value to your support, a value that counts.

Regards