Starring: Raman Lamba, Jesse Randhawa, Sohrab Adheshir, Nilesh Desai, Althea Delmas, Mukesh Ahuja Graphix: Anand Kannan & Suvarna Pednekar Editing: Anand Subaya Music: Ashutosh Phatak & Dhruv Ghanekar Directors of Photography: Vishnu Rao & Shankar Raman Production Company: on the edge films Produced By: Sunil Bhatia & Zakir Chinde Directed By: Zakir Chinde & Sunil Bhatia

Synopsis

The viewer is privy to the realism of Raman juxtaposed with the surrealistic translations of his imagination.

The film opens with the viewer getting connected - hacking into the net - entering the colorful world of fibre optics and erupting into the life of Raman who is in the throes of a distraught restless sleep - night phases into day - he awakes, showers changes and steps out of his cocoon into the carousel that is Bombay. We follow him through breakfast and his travels to his destination on the bustling streets. His pace is somewhat incongruous with the excessive buzz around him. Prevalent are the elements that are so indigenous to the city - the boot polisher - the street savvy beggar whose physical disabilities mutate constantly - swarming office goers - the saffron garbed sadhus - the incessant trains and buses all embossed against the city skyline - "memories of the British Raj" heritage buildings like the Gateway of India, but in chaos there is still order. He arrives at a model agency with his pictures and meets the director (Sohrab Ardeshir) - while the guy is on the phone, his imagination takes flight as he starts to visualize the different faces of the man in front of him, including that of a homosexual. He calls his girlfriend (Jesse) We are visually transported into his reverie of the good times they had, all depicted through black and white images. He continues to meander through a city that simply will not support a dreamer. We track him through his desolation as he is tracked by time through the film. The fast paced day slows down into late evening where the city gets off the adrenaline trip and mechanically heads home to rest - recoup - rejuvenate for another day. Evening morphs into night and the pace speeds up and the city explodes into neon as the nocturnal animals emerge to stake their claim - fast cars - loud music - discos - alcoholic stupors.A taxi ride home later. Raman arrives home to collapse in an easy chair and watch television. The frame freezes and minimizes where the director (Shorab Ardeshir) is using the site to hack into Raman's day to see of course Raman in the morning taking a shower.a piece of satisfaction for the director!! This frame freezes to minimize on the site & we see his secretary watching him watch Raman.!! Frame freezes once again and minimizes and now the girlfriend (Jesse) is watching everybody watching everybody.!!! ....is someone watching you???

The seedling of Connected started when I was at that Juncture looking for an independent path to express myself in, without any constraints. Both Sunil Bhatia, my co-director and I were working with advertising production houses at that time. The frustration, lack of opportunities to express oneself reached a crescendo, and finally,the two of us decided to join hands to make a short film. The result was Connected.

Sunil fell in love with the idea of a guy getting lost in the mad fast paced city, Mumbai. And a personalized film is what we wanted to make - a dark satire about everyone hacking into everyone else's life. The script draws from our experiences in the city. Our presence in the film is also representative of the personal aspect, intrinsic during the entire pre-production and post-production process.

This being our debut and a low budget film, we had to get the perfect face to play the character sketched out in the script. Raman Lamba was offered the part. He accepted immediately and agreed to work for free. Now for the shoot,we wanted to project Mumbai in a new light, so we consciously removed all prior shots of the city from our heads.Time lapse photography is a fascinating technique. This means you shoot for a stretch of 5 hours at the same spot and roll every 30 seconds, of course the technique is extremely time consuming. We required a device known as Intervalometer and the only one country had, belonged to Sanjay Gupta. Luck, it seemed, was not on our side as it was discovered that his house had been robbed some days ago. The larcenist had taken away the Intervalometer along with the rest of the goodies. So, shooting the time lapse sequence had to be conducted manually. A difficult process I can assure you.

The film has no dialogues. It is an inspiration from films that had been prior to the entry of sound in cinema. Also a great challenge to try to relate to your audience without sound. But there was a musical score composed by Ashutosh and Dhruv ( I had worked earlier with them) which played a crucial role in conveying feelings and reflecting one's state of mind. This was however only composed towards the end of the entire project when the rough-cut was screened for the musicians.

In the end a proposed and 11 days shoot took us a good 8 months. Once the work began we seem to have been hit by a stroke of bad luck. First we were suppose to shoot at a friends place but his family refused at the last moment. Then the cinematographer quit. A protest was out of the question as most of the crew were working for free. We managed to shoot at every possible location from Madh Island to Colaba.

The nightmare was not over. We had shot the film on 35mm, for that we started corresponding with Sai Prasad and he agreed to get the prints done for free.

We intend to now send the film of 15 minutes running length to various film festivals abroad. There are also plans to put the film on the Internet.

Sunil Bhatia began as an intern with CMM Studios, India's largest post-production studios. He then worked with with Wadia Movietone Pvt. Ltd. as an Assistant Director. He has also worked with one of India's foremost production house - Whitelight Moving Picture Company being involved in the making of hundreds of TV commercials.

Zakir Chinde first worked with Kuttu Chaterjee's Klass Communications which was one of the leading advertising production houses in India. Thereafter, to sharpen other aspects of tools required for filmmaking, he got involved as a camera assistant to some of the leading Indian Cameramen getting his hands on various projects which also involved feature films. Finally in 1999, he shifted back to making of TV commercials when he began working with A Shot In The Dark Films.

Connected is their maiden venture into independent filmmaking.