When Ramesh Sharma shot into prominence with his first feature film New Delhi Times (1985) as the director, he was expected to come up with more promising projects in the future. But he chose to stay away from the limelight and kept a low profile. Recently, he’s been in the news for setting a 26000 sq.feet high tech studio in NOIDA. But before he opened his studio ‘Moving Picture’, his ‘Moving Picture Company’ produced 2000 hours of software.

Starting with his first national award documentary RUMTEK (1979), Ramesh Sharma made hundreds of films for national and international channels. In this interview, he talks about his studio, his future plans, television scenario in India and also about his future film projects:

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Your first feature film New Delhi Times got you the National Award. But you did not make any film after that. Was it mainly because you insisted on being in Delhi and not shifting your base to Mumbai where the real action is?
Yes, that was one of the reasons. Mumbai is a lovely city. But somehow I don’t like the lifestyle of the city. It’s like a rat race there, it looks like a city full of neurosis. I can’t think of adjusting in that kind of environment. But this is just one reason.

I made New Delhi Times with a lot of passion. After that raising money for the kind of film I wanted to make became difficult. There was no budget for a different kind of film. My interest as a filmmaker was wholistic communication. And I can communicate with writing, research, making documentaries on different issues, doing programmes for Doordarshan and so many things. Film was and still remains, one of the medium for communication for me. With New Delhi Times, I wanted to say something to the world. It was almost a critique on the media, and also on the existing social norms, political system. After New Delhi Times I did so many documentaries for national and international channels. In fact, for a documentary titled Rumtek, I got the National award and also an award in Commonwealth Film Festivals.

And people thought that Ramesh Sharma was doing nothing!
Feature film has such a vast canvas and impact on the minds of people that if you are doing no feature film after your first successful project, they will believe that you are sitting at home idle.
I did the first ever investigative series titled Kasauti for Doordarshan. Portrait of The Director on DD1 was another series in which film personalities like Raj Kapoor, Manmohan Desai and Ritwik Ghatak were featured. The Best of Indian Cinema on Indian film industry was telecast on DD-3. India This Week was started in 1993 to promote a healthy image of India abroad and is still on DD Metro channel. We also produced programmes like The India Travel Show, The Great Indian Yatra which were the first travel shows that came about.

All these programmes were produced under the banner of our company ‘Moving Picture Company’ which was started during the late eighties. When my wife Uma Gajpati Raju joined the company in 1989 as one of its directors, it emerged as the leading production house of the company. Our company has ever since produced 2000 hours of software for different channels like DD, Star, Zee, TVI, Sony Max, National Geography and Channel News Asia of Singapore among others.

I must say, I could have done another feature film after New Delhi Times but NFDC did not give me enough budget to make good movies. You can’t ever think of making a good saleable movie in just Rs.30-40 lakhs.

Today, the scenario is changing. A new generation of producers, directors are coming up. The government is taking an initiative to fund good commercial cinema too. And that is the reason, I am taking up direction once again.

What was the main idea behind starting a 3D Studio? How will you survive when most of the studios in Delhi and NOIDA do not have much work?
The idea was to provide state-of-art multimedia studio which would churn animation graphic, documentaries, music-videos ad films etc of international standards with special emphasis on 3D animation and special effects. Another reason was to break the myth that there is no professionalism in Delhi as far as television medium is concerned. I want to prove that we here in our studio can do work of international standard at much cheaper costs.

As far as generating revenues for our studio is concerned, I don’t see any problem at all. There will be three main avenues. First is television business. We, the moving picture company is one of the leading software production house in India. We produced Subah Savere, a breakfast show telecast on DD-1. It is perhaps the largest single programme ever done in India.

The show is off the air now. But we are in the process of producing programmes on for different channels. Biographies - Ek Kalakaar Ki Kahani Showbizz Tonite on DD-2 and Current Bollywood on SET Max are the film based programmes of our company. For the international channel we are producing films like The Taliban Years And Beyond, Islam in South Asia etc.

We have also lined up a daily soap Suhaag Ek Prem Kahani for a satellite channel. A suspense thriller called Andhakaar is coming up on DD-1 from May 21. We recently produced a mega film on Maha Kumbh to be telecast on international channels. A three-part series on Indian space is under production. So we have enough television work to sustain. The second avenue is 3D animation.

Your studio specialises in 3D animation!
Right. A full fledged 3D animation division with cutting edge technology has been commissioned simultaneously in the studio. The studio has 26000 square feet space with multiple shooting floors, linear and non linear edit system, multiple cameras and this facility is manned by some of the best professionals in the business.

We are the first studio in Delhi to have acquired such modern facility especially in 3D. Today, the entire Europe is heavily dependent on countries like Korea, Phillipines and Taiwan for out sourcing and back end support in animation.

I strongly feel that India in 3D animation is where IT was 10 years back in India. It has so much potential. 3D animation requires three main points (a) IT skill, (b) Manpower, (c) English speaking workforce. We fulfill all three criteria. So there is no doubt about our success in this field.
Since you are the first, you should be getting the advantage of being the first player in Delhi.
nWe are the first in North India. No doubt about that. But there is scope for another 20-25 studios like our company. There is no dearth of quality work. My main aim is to start a high tech 3D animation division which will prove that you don’t have to go to USA or Australia to acquire quality work. We can do that here in NOIDA and that too, at one third of the cost.

Companies like Crest and Penta media are doing 3D animation in India. UTV is mainly in 2D animation. But we need atleast 30-40 companies like US, for the world to take us seriously. Total revenue of 3D animation in the world today is 37 billion US dollars. We in India are doing less than 100 million dollars works.

To give you an example PVR cinema used to get their promos done from Australia. We told them we would give you a world class result here. After watching our work, they have became our client. We did the same to Rossellini Films. In Dil Chhahta Hai all the special effects are done by an Australian company. We at our studio could have done at almost one third of the cost. So, there is so much scope for quality work here in India. Our aim is to provide back end support to international animation majors, as well as producing animation films of international standard. The company will also assist in feature film animations and provide graphics, animation and composing support to ad films.

We are also producing a 26 part 3D animation series based on the tales of ‘Panchtantra’.
What about feature films? Do you have any plans to start your own feature film production company?
Yes. Definetely. We are producing three big budget feature films. One is an Indo-Hungarian Co-production titled Journey Before Time. It is a US $3 million film and is being co-produced with MA films of Hungary. The film has a backdrop of Tibetan Buddhism and is set in 1820 Ladakh. It is a story of a Hungarian scholar who has come to look for his roots in Ladakh. It is also about his love story with an English girl and about his obsession with Tibetian Buddhism and clash of civilisation. I will be directing the film.

Another co-production with MA films is called Amrita and is based on the story of famous Painter Amrita Shergill who was the daughter of a Hungarian mother and Indian father. This film will be directed by leading director of Hungary named Sandor Sara.

Our company is also producing a commercial Hindi film. This is a psycho thriller and is about a mother-daughter and son-in-law. The cast is not finalised yet nor is the director. I may direct this film too.

Are you taking institutional finance for the film?
Yes. I am also in the Select Committee of IDBI which selects the films to be funded by IDBI. Infact, I was one of them who approved the IDBI funded first project Kaante.

We have heard that you are starting a channel of your own. Is it true?
Yes, we are planning to start a city specific channel. But funding of the channel will be done by others. We won’t invest any amount in the channel. Moving Picture Company will supply the content to the channel.

See, Television is breaking up. Viewership of the channel is breaking up. There is a need for a city oriented channel. In Delhi, for example, if you want to talk about a problem of a mohalla, where will you discuss it? Can DD or a satellite channel like Aaj Tak or Zee News do it? No, mainly because they have a larger and national viewership.

So we want to start a People’s channel. This channel would be a participatory channel, a platform for people to speak. The channel will have an activisit edge. Programmes like Crime Watch, Neighbour’s Diaries, Lok Adalat etc. will be telecast. It will be a Infotainment channel. But details of these are yet to be finalised.

—Amitabh Parashar