Suk(h)oon - coming soon!

Ola everyone! It's been quite some time now since we last posted on the 9tanki blog. So here's a quick update on all the happenings.

We are now a movie old. Yayyy!!! Thanks a lot for all the love and support you gave us. We received our share of fame in whatever minimum quantity possible, but it feels amazing. And therefore, we would like to thank each and every follower of our blog and movies. You can email us on 9tankientertainment@gmail.com and let us know what you think about it? You can also watch Ek Choti Si Aasha on YouTube: Ek Choti Si Aasha

In the meanwhile, we have started working on our next project. The short movie is titled Suk(h)oon. We would like to thank Varsha Kini for her contribution towards the script. Varsha Kini is a friend of ours. She's an aspiring author who loves writing and plans to publish her book some day. Here's wishing you all the luck Varsha!

Getting back to Suk(h)oon, we have shot 75% of the scenes and plan to wrap up shoot by end of February and move to the post-production work. Come April and Suk(h)oon will be ready for viewing! Till then, please like our Facebook page: 9tanki Entertainment and continue showering us with your blessings.

Further details of the project:

Title
Suk(h)oon

Cast

Asmita - Pooja Hegde
Sharda - Priyanka Pandit

Shyam - Mehul Shetty

Patrick: Prashant Shetty
Anna - Nikhil Shetty

Script

Varsha Kini

Screenplay
Mehul Shetty

Director

Mehul Shetty

Asst Director

Rohit Shetty
Harshal Patil
Rhea Shetty

Editor
Ankit Halai

Sets and Locations
Sonali Shetty
Gia Shetty

Lyrics

Aanchal Kumar

Music
Nijaat - the band

So stay tuned for further updates from us on Suk(h)oon!

Cheers,

The entire team of 9tanki Entertainment!

Ek Choti Si Aasha

The wait is over! Ek Choti Si Aasha is now available for viewing. Hope you like it!



Thanks a lot for watching our movie, from the whole team of 9tanki Entertainment.

Ek Choti Si Aasha - The foundation has been laid

Finally we are here! 9tanki Entertainment is now 1 movie old!

Ek Choti Si Aasha premiered on July 23, 2011. The entire cast and crew was present. It was an amazing feeling watching ourselves perform on screen. Everybody present at the premier had contributed to the project in someway or the other. The movie did turn out to be as expected. All of us, but obviously, loved it. But the real test was to show it to the people who are real movie-buffs and enjoy playing critics.

The best part was that the movie was liked by others as well. You can read the reviews on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=130335967026585&topic=113

We made some of our friends/friends' friends review our movie. And these are people who really butcher movies if they are bad and are not afraid to call spades, spades! Fortunately for us, they loved it! One reason could, as well, be that they did not want to disappoint us with bad reviews on our very first film. But all that matters to us is that they liked it. We are currently working on the audio of the movie before trying our luck at Short Film Festivals.

Our aim was to lay a foundation stone and build up on it. And Ek Choti Si Aasha has definitely worked as the best we could start off with. The feedback we are getting for the movie is tremendous, which makes us want to make many more films. The positive feedbacks have given us a lot of encouragement - yes, we can do it! Of course, there has been some criticism as well. But we need our critics. Criticism helps you improve and work better. This goes out to all our critics - Thanks a lot people, we appreciate your criticism and promise to work on them and perform better next time.

We plan to make many more movies and give people more things to think about. Because there are a lot of movies these days that do not make a lot of sense. Rather than making a Meri Brother Ki Dulhan we would prefer making a lower-budget Peepli Live. We at 9tanki Entertainment are Bollywood fanatics too. But it's not just giving the audience what they have already seen. It's about giving the audience what they are looking for; something they can connect to - something more real and natural. I know we sound a little too ambitious at such an early stage. However, our motive is to make movies we believe in. Some things we know about and somethings we would like to know about. It doesn't matter if we upset the audience who come looking for masala in our movie. Maaf karna boss! We don't make films for you!

Let's explore some new areas; some untouched sides of cinema. Let's bring about a change and try something different. You guys support us and we'll do the rest. Because, no matter how hard we strive, we are nothing without your support. We need our audience to watch us, support us, love us, and above all believe in us! More coming up soon!

Loads of love from the entire team of 9tanki Entertainment. Thank you all for being a part of our dream - Ek Choti Si Aasha!

How it all started..

A beautiful narration, on how it all started, by Dilip Merala - the lead actor of "Ek Choti Si Aasha":

When friends becam co-actors! - by Dilip Merala
(please click on the link)

A small update on the movie front. The movie has been edited and the final print is ready. There's just a small delay in the sound recordings (dubbing, story narration by the Sutradhar, and so on). We really apologize to our viewers for the delay, but promise to be out with the movie in July. Please bear with us.

It's official, "Ek Choti Si Aasha" will be out in July!


Till then keep showering us with your blessings and love. Dream on!

The wait is finally over!

Wow! Our dream is finally going to come alive. Looks like the day has arrived for which we all have been waiting for, presenting to you our sweet little dream - Ek Choti Si Aasha. We are both, excited and nervous at the same time.

It's been a really long time since we have posted you'll with any updates. We are extremely sorry! The delay was a result of some actors getting busy with other stuff. But we were a team and are still a team. We have decided against the idea of dubbing, as it was going to cost us a lot more time. Moreover, this will give the scenes a touch of reality. Therefore, we are planing to go with the original sound recording. The shoot is finally over and so is the post-production work. Just a few final touch-ups, here and there. It gives us immense pleasure to announce that the project is nearing it's finish, or may be a beginning for all of us. Irrespective of the outcome, we will always be proud of our first baby, like any other possessive parent!

This movie is our first attempt to what we assume will be a really long and a wonderful journey. The best part about this movie is that we expect the least out of it. Our goal is to make you'll happy - as it's just the support and love of our viewers which will drive us to make many more such movies. However, the viewers have expectations! Living up to your expectations is the biggest challenge we will be facing. We have given it our best (given the limitations we've worked under - zero budget!!!).

This is our first step - the most difficult one. No matter how much efforts we put in, no matter how much money and time we spend on the project, nothing works like the viewer's appreciation. We are here for you and we shall continue making movies for you (even if you'll don't want us to), because we know there's only one way to go from here - UP (read up, not Uttar Pradesh)!

Ankit, our editor, has done a fine job with joining the bits and pieces and adding life to the scenes. He's a pro, we expect nothing less from him! We shall be announcing a special screening for the friends and relatives soon. So if your not a our friend or relative and want to taste what we have cooked, start working towards it ;)

Wish us all the luck and please wait for an invitation call!

~ Loads and loads and love from the entire team of Ek Choti Si Aasha. Dream onnnnn!!!!

The official soundtrack of Ek Choti Si Aasha - Goonj

The soundtrack of Ek Choti Si Aasha, titled Goonj is all set to be released along with the promos of the movie. The song has been written by Aanchal Kumar and composed by Nijaat (the band). 85% of the movie has been shot already, just a few more scenes remain to be shot. The movie is all set to enter the various short film festivals. About the song, it has a very Indian feel to it. The entire cast and crew have fallen in love with the song already and we hope that the audience loves it too.


With the shooting on 3 more scenes, we shall be done with the pre-production stage. However, there will still be a lot of work left. Post-production includes, offline and online editing (by which you you grab all the "ok" takes of various angles and combine them together in such a way that the scene looks more realistic and portrays what needs to be portrayed, successfully. This is called offline edit, online edit is an even more difficult job, where the color, contrast, brightness, temperature and disturbances are taken care of. As we plan to submit our movie at some Internation film festivals as well, we need to add English subtitles - as our movie is in Hindi.

After the editing stage, we also plan to have a few critics watch the entire movie and point out various mistakes, so that we can work on them and add/delete some portions in/from the movie, for it to make sense. As this is our first attempt at movie making, our expectations are not very high. However, this movie was, is and will always be very close to our hearts. Because, when we planned to make a short film, we all knew that even the slightest of reason could get our enthusiasm about making this movie go down - as we all have other things to do in life. However, things did work out for us and we are standing close to the completion of our first project. Not just the story of the film relates to the title Ek Choti Si Aasha, but it also relates to our dream of getting into movie making. This is our ek choti si aasha to make movies which are close to our hearts and explore the lesser-explored territories in film-making - just the way everyone else out there is trying to make movies which are different ;)

All we need is your support, our friends, our relatives, our well-wishers. please keep following our blog and our Facebook page. Our movie will be out shortly, hope you all love it - as that would be worth all the efforts we have put in into the making of this movie. Till then, from the entire cast and crew of Ek Choti Si Aasha, wish you all a very happy new year - keep dreaming!

Ek Choti Si Aasha - Loading... 50%

This weekend turned out to be a hectic one. The entire cast and crew of "Ek Choti Si Aasha" spent the entire weekend working hard and shooting the maximum scenes possible. We shot around five scenes in two days. For all those who did not know (just like we didn't), shooting each scene is a really long process. Firstly, the actors work on the dialogues while the team comes up  with the best possible location for the scene to be shot. Once the location has been finalized and the actors are ready to perform, we stage a rehearsal of the scene. Here, the actors try  to get into the character and the mood that the scene demands and practice their expressions and dialogues. After one rehearsal, we have the camera rolling. Each scene needs to be shot from five to six different angles. Nikhil (guy behind the camera) installs the camera at the best possible location for every angle. Finally, a note is made of all the "okay" takes from different angles which helps the editor edit the scenes later.

We shot some of the best scenes this weekend and the actors surprised us with their performance - especially Rohit, Daya and Saalim (excluding Dilip here because he was expected to do well and he's doing brilliant and acting as a mentor to all his co-stars). Things went of really well during the weekend as the scenes were shot the way we had imagined. We shot scenes of different genres, which was the fun part! As you can see in the adjoining image, we shot an action scene on the railway tracks. We shot this scene from different angles and wrapped things up ASAP as it wasn't safe shooting on the tracks and we had to return to the tracks after a short lunch break for another scene!

We shot another important scene during lunch as the scene demanded to be shot at a restaurant or dhaaba! We somehow managed to shoot the scene without grabbing much attention of the crow. It's after the edits that we will come to know whether the scene looks convincing enough. Post-lunch, we got back to the railway tracks and shot a chase sequence between the characters Baban and Raghu Bhai. It gets really difficult shooting aggressive and intense scenes with the co-stars, as all of us have been friends for over 2 years now and have worked at the same IT firm. The leg-pulling sessions and fun times we all have shared has made us the thickest of pals. Therefore, there have been a lot of instances when we just break out laughing during the shoot and such moments make the making of our movie even more FUN!



On Sunday, we were scheduled to shoot a couple of more scenes. On of the two scenes were to be shot in one of the huts - which was the most challenging part. The people in the slum were very courteous and provided us an empty hut to shoot our scene. The scene was a small one and starred Daya and Dilip - this was Daya's first scene in the movie and her first attempt at acting! However, this scene demanded huge amount of dedication and concentration by the actors as there were around 50 odd people behind the camera watching the scene being shot (unfortunately, we do not have pictures of this scene). But Daya and Dilip did their part so well that the scene was shot in real quick time. The best part of the scene was where Daya beats Dilip and wakes him up and she did it with so much intensity that the sound of her hitting Dilip echoed around the place. And the best part was that these two actors had fans cheering and clapping for them after each take. A few kids came up to them and requested for an autograph - this was a very special moment not just for these two actors but the entire cast and crew of Ek Choti Si Aasha.

The next scene had Saalim playing an NGO worker and giving Baban gyaan about life and it's opportunities- we trusted Saalim to fit the bill as that's what he does best in real life as well! Saalim wrote the dialogues for this scene with a mixture of Hindi and Urdu words (great work Saalim!) and the scene was shot successfully. Saalim lived up to our expectations and performed really well and Dilip had very less to do in the scene but did his part with great perfection. By afternoon we were done shooting the scenes we had planned to shoot through the weekend and it was "Pack up" time!

Our next shoot is scheduled for Friday, 17th of December - keep showering us with your love and support! And don't forget to like our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/9tanki-Entertainment/130335967026585

Till then, keep dreaming!!!