Filmmaker Profile: The Creatively Talented Sharath Chandra

Behind the lens with Sharath Chandra

It makes one wonder, since India makes more films than the United States does, why someone like Sharath Chandra, would leave his home and family ands fly thousands of miles to work in the California movie business. According to the American Enterprise Institute, Bollywood, located in Mumbai, India, makes about 1,000 films per year while Hollywood produces around 500. Well, we can’t answer that question specifically, but we can certainly take an educated guess as to why he and others travel so far for work.

 

Perhaps Hollywood movies are more revered and have established a world-wide presence and a great deal of fame over the last hundred years, while Bollywood films may have only adapted to a more narrow, regional, yet heavily populated audience. Whatever the reason, the fact exists that talented filmmakers from the sub-continent do, in fact, make their way to Southern California on their quest to be a part of the American film industry.

 

Sharath is a filmmaker with exceptional talent and even more abundant drive and persistence. After getting a degree in film in India he worked in the industry there for a brief period and then he jumped on a plane and headed for Los Angeles to earn another degree in filmmaking from the famed New York Film Academy. With that bona fide certificate in his back pocket along with tons of actual working experience under his belt, he began working steadily as a camera operator, sound person, editor, producer, director and all around knowledgeable person who could dive into any position at any time and do the job extremely competently.

 

Besides camera operations and the physical tasks that filmmaking entails, Sharath also learned how to be a real film producer. He learned to make budgets and schedules, which ensured that films got made on time and within the financial parameters that were agreed upon before the shooting began. He was a natural at negotiating with vendors and equipment rental houses along with setting up necessary production team meetings to co-ordinate the achievement of all goals that were set. His producer title also comprised the planning and confirming of travel arrangements, including flight and hotel reservations and car and truck rentals so that the crew and equipment would all arrive at the same time with no delays. As a producer, he wouldn’t have a lot of hands on physical work to do on the movie set, but he would have all the awareness, expertise and insight to enable him to see potential problems before they arose and allow him to guide his team in a new direction that could save the production an enormous amount of money and time.