“Writing is a full-time job; not everyone takes to it with the intention of becoming a director,” says Vasanth Maringanti. Vasanth is the screenwriter of Telugu indie movies Cinema Bandi and Subham. His subsequent work, Uppu Kapurambu directed by Ani IV Sasi and starring Keerthy Suresh and Suhas, will stream on Amazon Prime Video from July 4.
Cinema Bandi was a captivating story of villagers attempting their hand at filmmaking after they probability upon a high-end digicam. A one-line concept from director Praveen Kandregula and Vasanth, together with Praveen and co-writer Krishna Pratyusha, turned it into an uplifting comedy drama.
The recently-released horror comedy Subham, produced by Samantha Ruth Prabhu, was written by Vasanth in collaboration with filmmaker Raj Nidimoru, and explored the opportunity of girls being possessed whereas watching tv soaps. In between all of the laughter, the narrative labored as a commentary on gender dynamics. “I would observe how my grandmother and others were emotionally drawn towards serials. I exaggerated that situation in a work of fiction,” Vasanth explains.
Graveyard woes
Suhas and Keerthy Suresh in ‘Uppu Kapurambu’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Uppu Kapurambu emerged when Vasanth learn a information article in regards to the lack of graveyard house in a area. “I lead a boring life, so I try to make my stories far more interesting,” Vasanth says with fun, throughout this interview in Hyderabad. “I wrote Uppu… in a month and a half, my fastest yet. More than just a story, how people react to a situation interests me.”
Screenwriting was a pure development of Vasanth’s curiosity in writing. He wrote brief tales at school and remembers discovering a diary from 1997 by which he had penned a two-page story titled ‘Dracula’.
Growing up in Kakinada, like many children within the Telugu states, he too studied engineering. While in school, he wrote, ‘The Day After My Death,’ on a whim. “It was a bad book,” he says with a chuckle. “I approached a store that prints wedding cards and asked if they would publish it if I paid them. Nearly 150 copies were printed and I circulated them among my family and friends.”
Vasanth labored as a software engineer for 14 years with 5 main MNCs. Simultaneously, he started running a blog. “All through that time, I wanted to quit,” he says. “Writing was my escape and during that period, I wanted to assess if people enjoyed reading what I wrote. The feedback I received for my blogs helped me understand that.”
He additionally labored on a ebook which was rejected by a number of publishing homes. An opportunity dialog with actor-director Anish Kuruvilla via Facebook served as a turning level. “Anish showed interest and said the story could be an interesting film. He was kind enough to talk to me about the basics of screenwriting,” he remembers.
The first step
A nonetheless from ‘Subham’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Vasanth started studying books on screenwriting and watched films to perceive screenplays. In 2017, Praveen Kandregula, then an aspiring filmmaker, made an enquiry for screenwriters in Bengaluru through social media. “A friend suggested my name. Incidentally, Praveen and I were working in the same city and lived two kilometres apart. He narrated the one-line story of Cinema Bandi and I sensed it would not only be entertaining, but also garner critical acclaim. That is how my journey in cinema began.”
Cinema Bandi streamed straight on Netflix in the course of the pandemic. Six months later, Vasanth stop his job. “I began getting calls from industry folks for screenwriting, but my full-time job was a limitation.” The choice to stop a well-paying job was not straightforward. He credit his spouse for holding the fort till he discovered his footing in cinema. “She is a mobile phone app developer; we have two children and it was not easy for me to let go of an assured monthly salary.”
Test of persistence
Vasanth had grown up admiring the works of writers Mullapudi Venkataramana and Yandamuri Veerendranath, in addition to writer-directors Bapu and Jandhyala. Now engaged on the screenplays of two new movies, Vasanth says essentially the most difficult side of being a screenwriter is to have the religion and persistence till a screenplay is accepted and a movie goes on the flooring.
The recognition for Subham motivated him to discover writing additional. “Samantha’s name being associated with the film and a theatrical release has meant instant recognition for all of us. The other day at a store, the owner introduced me to his wife and daughter as ‘Subham writer’, and they told me how much they enjoyed the film. It made my day.”
As to the pertinent query of whether or not screenwriting pays payments, Vasanth pauses and solutions, “Initially it is not easy, but after one or two projects, it definitely gets better.” He additionally provides that path just isn’t in his scheme of issues, at the least for now. “Many writers turn directors either for monetary reasons or when they think their stories are not being transformed accurately on screen.” Writing is what he set out to do and he’s blissful in that pursuit.
