MUMBAI:How long does an ad man have to say whatever he wants? Thirty seconds, at the most 60 seconds. Ex-advertising man and currently B4U chief marketing officer Rajnish Lall and O&M creative director Sudip Bandhopadhyay have taken ten full minutes. The surprising thing is they won't even say anything in it. It is a silent film!

Actors Rahul Bose and Nauheed Cyrusi at the shooting of The Fall
Meant for the short film festival circuit in India and abroad, The Fall is a slickly shot love tale. "Usually, films have a lot of bombardment of dialogue. Our film's story is effective even without dialogue," explains producer Lall. "As for the duration, for someone who has put in ten years in advertising, even 30 seconds is a lot of time. I feel ten minutes are more than enough to make a complete feature film. The important thing is that the idea of our film could have been stretched to two full hours. We could have added songs, unnecessary dialogues like everyone else does. But I wanted to make a crisp short film," he stresses.
"Language is not a barrier in our film. I have tried to speak through my camera or sound effects instead of normal dialogues," explains director Sudip Bandhopadhyay.

So ahead they went, dramatisng the concept, writing screenplay, making shot divisions and finalising the actors and crew, all on a shoestring budget. Sudip contributed a salary advance while Rajnish Lall managed to collect the rest of the funds from somewhere.
"Believe me, no one in our team, right from Rahul Bose, Nauheed Cyrusi, cinematographer Vishal Sinha (who shot Bhoot), composer Sandeep Chowta, was paid. We had cans of film but no money to process it, so Adlabs helped us there. The whole film was made in Rs 70,000 and shot in a single day on 25 November. We canned all 74 shots of the film in an eleven hour shift," remembers Lall. "We achieved something considered almost impossible. Since the budget was less, we had to do our homework, decide on all the frames beforehand. That was the challenge of our film," says Bandhopadhyay.
The crew of The Fall, producer Rajnish Lall, cinematographer Vishal Sinha, actors Nauheed Cyrusi and Rahul Bose and director Sudip Bandhyopadhyay take a bow
Currently, The Fall is under post-production and will take another 15-20 days to finish. Sandeep Chowta is finalizing the score. Bandhopadhyay and Lall soon hope to send it to some short film festivals in India and abroad. The film is also a stepping stone to a future in filmmaking. "It is positive step in that direction. It could have happened that with our advertising and marketing background people could have taken our efforts with a pinch of salt. Fortunately the response has been very good. We have some long format ideas that should go on the floors in April next year," informs Lall.