"A Long way to go"
That's the feeling we had when we joined college. We met (the promoters of our company) in college and soon enough, we planned to start our own production house. The same feeling became our guiding force and also inspired the name "Longway Productions".
We made our first short film "Nadaan" that became the start of our long journey. We submitted Our first film in a competition by IIT Bombay where we were shortlisted in the finals and had to submit another film in a month.
With a team of like-minded friends and supporting seniors from college, we made "Letter from Telegram" which raced into the final top three by the end of the competition. We submitted the movie at different film festivals across the globe and it was screened in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. That was a BIG achievement for us.
In 2014, when the heinous attack on school children at Peshawar happened, it just shattered my heart. The news that the Teacher’s child was also in the school, stayed on my mind and prodded me to give birth to our 1st music video cum short film ‘Sahar’. It was our most planned and loved project. We had planned to release it on 16th Dec, the 1st memorial of the attack, and our shoots were scheduled for 22-23 Nov. More than ideas and execution, such film making projects require funds and lots of them. We didn't have even a single sponsor 3 days before the shoot. But if you are doing something selfless with pure intentions, things work out and they truly did. The shoots were done and the release was fabulous. The video was loved, not only in India but more so in Pakistan. The fact that it dissolved all boundaries made it even more special. Yet a long way to go.
The team crew members have been the greatest support in all our projects and have made our zero-budget projects possible and successful. As years passed, we started working on a limited budget feature film. Again, a big challenge but the team managed to get it done. The results were good but by the time we started post-production, we ran out of funds. We needed sound correction and there were no funds. We also ran out of sources. We then decided to start crowdfunding the project. Apart from funds, we received so much love and motivation that it made us much stronger and self-confident (of the team)
We are lucky that we have a team of such creative and passionate members and we continue to expand it. We do have creative differences but we always stand by each other. Lately, we have started taking up commercial work as well so that we can learn more and more about the industry.
With Longway, I have learned that “you might be a one-man army in terms of delivery and output but when it comes to filmmaking, a good team can always create wonders”.
Yet again, a long way to go...
- Anuj Pandey | Longway Productions
