Karan

I completed 'Recording & Audio Engineering' program! Enter to learn for free: bit.ly/2GLtGLN #MusicProduction via @SoundGym

How to be more emotionally intelligent (without trying so hard) 🧵 for @threadapalooza

An Open Letter to fellow culture vultures Culture Vulture (n): A person who is very interested in the arts. So here’s from one culture vulture to another. After having been a journalist and film critic for around two decades and a part-time independent filmmaker, I, Sudhish Kamath, made the jump to full time filmmaking eight years ago to focus on telling more mainstream stories - a journey that led me to write for Luv Ranjan and more recently, for Raj & DK - an opportunity to be in the writing team of The Family Man Season 3. I wouldn’t want to presume you know about the kind of films I have made, so let me start with a quick introduction. I used to be a journalist and film critic with The Hindu (1999-2015) and produced all my films from savings I had as a journalist and money I borrowed - through personal loans, debt and a little help from friends. Now, most of you know how much journalists and critics get paid - an average of 10 rupees a word. In comparison, a mainstream screenwriter gets paid an average of 50 rupees a word. While I have done both and earned over a crore since doing this full time, it costs us independent filmmakers at least a HUNDRED rupees a word from our pockets to make a film we believe in. And those are the only kinds I have made - self-funded. Good Night | Good Morning, made on a budget of 35 lakhs, released by PVR Director’s Rare made its way to Netflix - and the licensing fee helped me make the second film in my Retro Love trilogy Side A Side B. X-Past is Present, which I co-produced with Drishyam Films, was a one-of-its-kind serialised anthology feature film - one man’s haunting love life directed by 11 filmmakers. The collaborative experiment X was on Netflix for six years and on Amazon Prime for a couple years. My last film Side A | Side B was released by Luv Films in association with T-Series on the biggest YouTube channel in the world after the market for independent films shrunk in 2019 and most OTTs had stopped acquiring indie content. So when the pandemic hit, I practically knew there was no market or showcase space for independent films. In fact, when Side A Side B finally dropped in 2022, our publicists could not get journalists and film critics to review the film because “It’s on YouTube na, we’ll watch it soon.” But it’s a film that got me to write a mainstream feature film for Luv Films/Luv Ranjan. The Side A Side B experience had already taught me that if a film is on YouTube, that’s no reason for a critic to review or preview it. YouTube, at some level, is seen and treated as the lowest class for film distribution. It’s discriminated against because we believe that if it’s on YouTube, it’s probably not that good. After all, there are thousands of videos on YouTube, how could we reasonably expect to be given any space in the media. Yet, I knew I would go crazy if I did nothing when the pandemic hit. I had to make the film I had started, the third and the final part of my Retro Romance trilogy after Good Night Good Morning and Side A Side B, Culture Vulture - a modern day stoner retelling of Casablanca - when two exes meet after years - but set in the middle of the pandemic chaos and the media circus around Bollywood allegedly doing drugs. Since it was the pandemic when most people who work as crew left for home unable to afford rent in Mumbai, I knew I had to do it myself. So I invested in DIY gear - camera lenses, gimbals, sound recording gear, lights and shot the film myself with no crew, no assistants - just a terrific ensemble of actors. The film features comedian Shaurya Tyagi @notsoshaurya, Rashi Mal @Rashi_Mal, Suchitra Pillai @suchitrapillai, Katie Iqbal @Khatija_Iqbal, Akshay Anand Kohli, Ivan Rodrigues @IvanRodOfficial @allVishal @samirbharadwaj @iabhishekdshah @nishanthievani among others and my mentors filmmakers Nagesh Kukunoor and Cameron Crowe @CameronCrowe in special extended cameos. Shooting a 140 page script in the pandemic wouldn’t have been possible if not for the commitment of my terrific cast towards workshops and rehearsals for weeks but still, it was always going to be a challenge to shoot it myself with a two camera set up, recording live sync sound, doing production design and costumes via orders on Amazon and finally editing it myself with an assistant initially and later by myself, until I found the tech support in Ivan Avakian, a Russian sound designer who spent months cleaning up Bombay live sound and chipped in with additional score and grade while my Side A Side B lead Rahul Rajkhowa @RajkhowaRahul got together with Augustus Henry to compose the songs - an eclectic jazz and blues album and a bonus Bollywood banger called Dil Hai Chillum. The post production took longer than the shoot, given the limited resources and pandemic induced financial crunch. And we had no luck with film festivals given the anti establishment political content in the film and the rather light hearted fun tone of the film. Maybe the film doesn’t work, I thought. Last November, I decided to give the cast and crew some closure by organising a preview. But something magical happened at the preview. Not only did we have a full house, it was an overwhelming experience to see so much love and laughs at the screening. We finally knew we had a good film that entertained those who had given it a chance. Culture Vulture is the film that gave me a shot to be in the writers room of The Family Man 3, thanks to DK who had come for the preview. While fortune favours the brave and miracles do happen, it has become increasingly difficult today to be given that fair chance - of being watched as a whole and not sampled for ten minutes or less - in the clutter we find in our lives, on the phones with many distractions and options. After deciding to drop it on YouTube, we were warned by content managers to not release the film until we had a base of 5000 subscribers. It would be suicidal, they said. Now, it takes 20,000 impressions on socials to get 100 clicks on any link. What’s worse is that for every hundred 100 views, the watch hours would indicate barely 2-3 people watch the whole movie because there are so many options to choose from today than some link you clicked on by chance that’s demanding 108 minutes of your time. A fellow independent filmmaker had dropped his last feature last year and ended up with 7000 views in a whole year. I feel terrible that after all that effort, we would end up with barely 60 to a hundred people if we are lucky, watching the whole film on Youtube in an algorithm controlled world that supports short form videos and channels. Once the media was increasingly owned by political players, a lot of journalists had to turn to the same YouTube for viewership and eyeballs. YouTube thus became the voice of the independent journalists and critics. We need the same to happen for indie filmmakers and only people like you can make that happen. My idol Oscar winner Cameron Crowe, who has written and performed the closing monologue of the film, once told me how the studio had almost given up on his debut Say Anything and had skipped the press tour. But luckily for him, Roger Ebert loved it. If there was no Ebert, there would have been no Crowe. Small films need critics a lot more than the big ones. Yet it’s the big ones that get all the attention. Today, our audience is all online, plugged into phones, with the attention span of Ten Second Tom from 50 First Dates. So how do we get them to give us a chance? This long old school letter is to ask you for that chance. Please give our little film Culture Vulture a chance. For 108 whole minutes since the preview audience did indicate that ours is a film that takes a while to get into given the unique grammar that makes sense by the end. Please give it the same kind of attention you would in a movie hall for the best experience. I am aware that asking for two hours of your time to watch it and then to write about it is a LOT but as an independent filmmaker, all one can do is ask and hope that our films get seen, our work is evaluated as an equal to any other stories told, in bigger mediums and platforms. Stories should not ideally be discriminated against on the basis of budgets and platforms but the reality and data paints a very bleak picture. Culture Vulture is now all yours for a limited period on an experimental basis since it’s most relevant during the election season, fully aware that we might jeopardise its future chances of monetisation. But as an artist, I would have failed in my job if I don’t speak when it matters the most. In these times where even OTT content is subject to guidelines, the proposed Broadcast Bill and Telecom Bill will make it all the more difficult for independent filmmakers after June 4. So help us when you can, by previewing and/or reviewing the film over the next couple of weeks. Do give us a chance, a voice and some space in your socials, schedule and hopefully, heart. Join the conversation. The film is now out on youtu.be/O_dJFphcXok and be available all weekend. Based on demand and increase in subscriptions, we might continue its run till June 4 but this limited window release experiment hopes to drive appointment viewing on the channel. Thank you for your time and reading this letter. Looking forward to hearing from you here on X and continuing the #CultureVulture conversation during this #CultureVulturePreviewWeekend. Have a nice trip.

@narayananh Hv been visiting thrippunithura for last 18months almost every month (thru vaikom), and for past couple of months my route takes me right thru the front of this temple . Guess ur posts are a reminder for me to make the actual temple visits happen

Swami padam of the day. Our very own Poornathrayeesan 🙏. This padam is also at least 50 years old, if not 75. Appa belonged to Tripunithura, so by default, he became ours. Could call him our ishta devata.

Time for another giveaway! We are going to send a t-shirt and a few goodies to one person who follows @PentesterLab and retweets this tweet!! And we are going to give a 12-month voucher to someone who follows @PentesterLab and likes this tweet!!

@jiljilramamani @GunduHuDuGa So here, each of the naga/sarpa sanketham or kaavu as we call, ( sacred grove), belongs to a family or a bunch of families held together as a single unit on the higher level as per ancestory of the Naga deivams in that grove. So kalamezhuthu is held by that family in that grove

@KkaranU @GunduHuDuGa I've heard such in KA as well. Very similar to Ashlesha Bali I suppose. A friend's family did it. The whole family came together for that

#NagaYakshiKalam Preparations underway for Nagayakshi Kalam under the wonderful canopy of rains 🙏🏼🙏🏼

@jiljilramamani @GunduHuDuGa In many parts of Kerala, it can be a 'venduthal' or pariharam or at times Nagaraja or nagayakshi demand it from particular individuals when they visit

@GunduHuDuGa Wow. Can you please share more details? Is this a parihara pooja?

@narayananh Apdiye Siva shasranamam-um add pannidunga

I discovered the Vishnu Sahasranamam thanks to this version of Lalitha Sahasranamam, which is also the version I listen to now - youtu.be/JQPK3zHoMPk

Here's my current favourite version of Vishnu Sahasranamam youtu.be/YvxS1pXM97M

@narayananh @subiksharaman Chocolaty-ah bhayangarama iruntha chocolate milk.. Athuve bhayangara chocolaty-ah iruntha Hot chocolate 🏃🏻‍♂️

@subiksharaman Still don't understand. Both are the same only no?

@jiljilramamani Thanks .. just ordered the malayalam version. 👍

Real insights into solving murders based on forensic evidence. If you like criminology, this book is a great read. Simple language, detailed notes and explanations. #BooksWorthReading #BookRecommendations #BookTwitter. Not for the faint hearted though!

"The 12 Laws of Karma Everyone Should Know" | Thread

@jiljilramamani It felt more like a monologue by gvm in both male and female voices ..

Did she really say - let's have a go at each other? Dei!

@narayananh Otp vanthruchu, but below 45 booking thaan innum illa

@narayananh Otp innum varala 🤷🏽‍♂️

COWIN = Anna University website on result days

@narayananh Wondering how long it will take to reach the 1$ point..

@KkaranU DOGE is like that pharma stock that you will never have in your portfolio.

Stock market is going down. Cryptos are going down. DOGE =

@narayananh @KotakBankLtd @Citibank I'm wondering if I hv to foreclose EMIs on my Citi card 🤔

My guess on Citi's India exit: @KotakBankLtd will buy @Citibank's India business. What do you think?

@jiljilramamani Kaaya vecha ela-chedi potlam 🌱

Bwahahahaha! What would you keep in there? Loose change? No, it's lakshmi, can't put in kaal. Food - no no it's annalakshmi. Tissues? Paper is saraswati. May be a Swiss knife?

@narayananh I know a case where the transmission may have been due to counting cash., Can't say that absolutely sure though.

Does that mean all the sanitizer use for a year has been of no use?

@narayananh First Alleppey to Chengalpet vanthudren.. apram will msg 😁

@KkaranU Sure. Ping before you start from home.

Anyone around Mylapore has a Mussaenda plant in their garden? Would like to borrow a stem.