The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project

Synopsis

In a bustling office in Mumbai, Kartik Krishnan (Kartik Krishnan) sits behind his desk coding HTML websites when he chances upon a blog on cinema featuring Independent filmmakers. This sparks his intentions to make his own short film, thus leading him to contact Srinivas Sunderrajan (Vishwesh K), an independent filmmaker who had met Kartik's idol and famed director Quentin Tarantino at an international film festival, who in turn agrees to guide Kartik through the process.

As Kartik begins piecing the story, cast and screenplay together, several inexplicable phenomena start emerging in his life including a sinister stalker (D Santosh) dressed in official government clothing; and the sudden appearance of a strange future-telling antique toy.

Troubled with these bizarre developments and the unresolved feelings that he harbours for Swara Bhaskar (Swara Bhaskar), his colleague, Kartik embarks on an extraordinary journey that transcends love, life and logic itself.

Cast

Production

The film was shot on weekends over nearly a year since most of the actors had day jobs and they could only afford to spare the weekend. Also, since there were no location permits, the cast and crew used to sometimes end up without a location for a week, which meant the shoot had to be shifted to the next week. Since the cast were all good friends of Sunderrajan, they agreed to work for free. A lot of the 'time stretch' happened because of location unavailability. And when the location was ready, the actors would be unavailable due to other commitments. True to guerrilla filmmaking, many times the extras and the crowd in the frames did not even know that shooting was being done.

At any given point of time, only the director, the cinematographer and the lead actor, and depending on which location was being filmed - the secondary character was present on the sets. Mid-way through shooting the original script, the main location (the protagonist's house) collapsed. One day the building was there, and the next day the third floor caved in on the second. And so the location was cordoned off, even though 60 percent of shooting was still left to be done at that location.

The script was outlined, yet completely improvised by the actors with the director often giving the actors a free hand. In keeping with its meta fiction genre, the film's characters were named after the actors who played them and many instances in the film have been based on real events which transpired between the cast and crew.

The initial edit was done on a borrowed Macbook (in-between shooting days) and later the post production, VFX & Sound Design (Vijesh Rajan) of the film was done in a one-month time-span on a home computer so that it could be sent out within several film festivals' deadlines. After seeing an initial screening, director Anurag Kashyap helped to promote the film.

Festivals