THE THIRD ONE

It had happened!

Resul had achieved the rare honour of bringing the THIRD OSCAR to India! His acceptance speech at the Oscar ceremony was truly great and bespoke his humility as well as his large heartedness!


All of us from the "BEYOND THE SOUL " team Congratulate him on this rarest of rare achievement!

Ajay ( Editor), R. Babu, Rajeev Anchal (Director) and Oscar Hero Resul

Meeting an Old Friend - G.S.Panikkar

While I was in Ottapalam recently for the shooting of the film YUGAPURUSHAN, I rang up an old friend from my Institute days, my Senior, G.Sadasiva Panikkar ( G.S.Panikkar – 1970 – Direction Batch ). For the past few years he had been away from Trivandrum as he had settled at Cheruthruthy on the banks of the picturesque Bharathapuzha river, a popular location for many Malayalam films.

He had graciously come down to my hotel along with his son and we spent a few hours together reminiscing about our friends, films of the past and the present trends in the Film Industry.


I was the cinematographer for his maiden venture as Producer and Director of the Black and White Malayalam film AEKAKINI ( 1978) It was a tiny budgeted film made by a bunch of Film Institute graduates – Ravi Menon ( actor) , Suresh Babu and Raman Nair ( Editors), Panikkar and myself.


It was based on a short story by eminent Malayalam writer M.T.Vasudevan Nair. The film was well appreciated and acclaimed when it was released.

Myself and G.S.Panikkar

An OSCAR for the INSTITUTE ?

The countdown has begun for the Oscar Awards and Millions of Indians are hopefully waiting for the final announcement for the sake of Two Indian Nominees A.R.Rahman and Resul Pookutty who are slated to win the coveted Award! Already they have won the BAFATA Awards - the British equivalant of the Oscar for Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire.


Our prayers and well wishes are for both of them and especially to Resul who is our own boy - an Institutewallah!

Though he was my junior we met for the first time during the filming of the English film "BEYOND THE SOUL" Directed by Rajeev Anchal. It seems that as Resul is also from the Anchal neighbourhood he was picked up for the job. Any how it was our first meeting and instantly we became friends. I was really amazed at his patience and dedication to his craft as he minutely analyzed the various sounds into its components and recorded them effectively. After a long time I was shooting a Sync sound on location film ( far from the confines of the Studio floors!) and it was really nice to know the intricacies of live recording in such a noisy atmosphere of our country. The trolleys, cranes, HMI ballasts, paper frames, gels, generators all create their own levels of noises.

The first thing he did was to order out the catering unit to a far off place. He had an assortment of sound proofing rugs carpets etc to dampen the noises at source. He used various types of mikes placed at strategic places and also had an expert boom man to follow the actors. After the shot was taken it was his turn to call for silence on the sets and to record the ambience sounds both in mono and stereo. Altogether we had a nice time working at Trivandrum for that film.

We still keep in touch with each other through e-mails and I just missed meeting him last month while he was in Trivandrum for a felicitation function as I was away on a location shooting.

Listening Resul's Recordings at "BEYOND THE SOUL" Location !

I, along with Millions of Indians wish him and Rahman
Good Luck at The OSCARS!