Sandeep Raj, the Telugu filmmaker who made his directorial debut in 2020 with the romantic drama Colour Photo, will create and write an upcoming Telugu comedy-drama web series, makers of the series announced in a video posted on social media on Monday.
The series is written and created by Sandeep Raj. It will have members from Colour Photo as part of the project. While Kannada filmmaker Sai Krishna Enreddy, who played a principal in Colour Photo, will direct the series, the cinematography and editing will be done by Venkat R Shakamuri and Kodati Pavan Kalyan respectively. They were also the cinematographer and editor of Colour Photo. The music is composed by Mani Sharma.
Talking about how the series came to be created, Sandeep said to Silverscreen India, “It began in 2020. The series’ script was worked on during the lockdown but the plan to execute was postponed because we were not in a proper mind space then. Some works of Colour Photo were also pending so we didn’t want to get deviated. Hence, only the script of the series was completed by then. After Colour Photo was released in October [2020], I got together with a few of my friends and made this series.”
He added that the shooting started in December 2020 and completed in January 2021. The team is ready with the final copy, the filmmaker mentioned.
While the series’ title is yet to be announced, in the video featuring its team members, they said that it will have “humour, drama and emotions” along with fantasy elements.
“Just like classmates, batchmates, and roommates, we also have story mates too. There will be one person in the world whom we may not know, who would be sharing our story. In the same way, what if god writes one fate for three different women? That is the story,” Raj said.
Became an habit for this team to entertain you ppl in these uncertain times…details soon 🙂 #ColourPhoto@sandeepraaaj @Pradeep40644684 pic.twitter.com/FBY2nwLcF5
— Sai Krishna Enreddy (@Sai_Eveready) May 17, 2021
Raj revealed that Sunil will be playing “Lord Brahma”. “There is a line where he says, ‘I don’t write fate for everyone and I don’t spend my time in doing so, I just send copies randomly’. That is what the series is about. The whole series happens in one day and shows how minds and perspectives of people change in one day,” Raj said. The filmmaker said that the “beauty” of the series is that it will show “how three caterpillars will change into butterflies in one day”.
Divya Sripada, Vidya Maharshi, Chandini Rao, and Arun Kumar Pulavarthi, who played supporting roles in Colour Photo, have been cast in the series. The series will comprise five episodes that will run for 20 minutes each.
Asked why he retained the cast and crew of Colour Photo, Raj said, “There is no particular reason. My Colour Photo team are my friends who are specialised on different technicalities. So, I repeated the team, because we basically live together. We all started out as a YouTube channel team as Chai Bisket and we made a film, now we wanted to make a series.”
Raj revealed that he had written the second season of the series initially and was about 45 minutes each with six episodes. “The budget and time take to shoot were big, so we thought to make a small series before it, by introducing the characters in 2021 setup. We then thought to make the second series in 2022 setup,” he said.
— Sandeep Raj (@SandeepRaaaj) May 17, 2021
After the web series, he is planning to create the second season. “My plan is to make one feature film and one season on an alternative basis,” he said.
The series is set in the Covid-19 pandemic era where actors will be sporting face masks and there will be references to vaccines, the filmmaker said.
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“The series will be produced by the banner that I created with my friends, Pocket Money Pictures. We named it because we invested all from our pockets and this is the first venture. We are planning to produce many more projects like this in the future keeping our technical team. I will be producing the films that I write,” said Raj.
Raj concluded that the series title and announcement on the release date and streaming platform it can be viewed will be revealed in a couple of weeks. “We are in talks with a couple of OTT platforms this week. We made the announcement so that people would know about it and the OTT platforms can approach us, to say that the Colour Photo team made something for the audience,” Raj said.