Had to be creative as we lacked lights and basic equipment: Lollipop director Devalya Holey

Devalya Holey's short film Lollipop recently won the Best Film and Best Screenplay Awards at the Goa Short Film Festival. The 23-year-old independent filmmaker, who hails from the small town of Morshi in Maharashtra's Amravati district, was working as a VFX artist at the Anibrain studio when he came up with the concept behind the short.

"So I quit my job and started working on my own short film. Actually, I came up with the climax first and then began building up the whole story and screenplay," Holey told Cinestaan.com.

The story revolves around a small child whose mother works as a maid in a village. "I had seen that many such maids bringing their child with them because there was no one at home to take care of them. But our big concern was whether we could find a child who could act. So we decided to search for a real mother and child, as it will look much more authentic on the screen and be easier to shoot because the kid would be much more comfortable with his real mother," he said.

"After spending a lot of days searching, a friend introduced me to one such pair. They live in a slum. The thing that worked in my favour was that the mother had heard of me, so it was not difficult to convince her."

Holey had a budget of Rs2,000 and most of it was spent on lollipops. "Of the entire sum, Rs700 were spent on the lollipops and the remaining amount was spent on basic equipment like wires and stuff. We had told our actors that we might not be able to pay them, but thankfully they agreed."

Because of lack of budget, Holey had to do almost everything himself, including cinematography, art direction, lighting, editing, sound editing, Foley work, and make-up. Holey even composed the background score.

"I don't have any knowledge about music and all its intricacies but frankly I didn't have any other option. We didn't have any money to pay for a music director so I decided to compose the music. I had music production software. So even before writing the screenplay, I composed the theme music and shared it with some of my friends and colleagues. They liked it," he said.

The filmmaker also had to improvise when it came to equipment. "I only had a mike and steady cam; that's it. I had to borrow a friend's camera, which had many issues. Because of the lack of budget, we couldn't afford to buy even basic equipment like lights. So we had to get a little creative. We used silicone paper and regular 60-watt bulbs for lighting and used PVC pipes instead of boom mikes. 

The camera posed challenges of its own for the filmmaker. "We couldn't shoot in bright light. Sometimes it would get overexposed. Also, as we had only a single camera we had to shoot the same scene multiple times from various angles. And it became quite frustrating for the actors, because, as I told you earlier, they were not professionals, and they were doing us a huge favour by acting for free. So we couldn't force them to do the same scenes again and again," he said.

Despite facing issues on a daily basis, Holey managed to complete 90% of the shoot. But then the lockdown was announced. "After a year we decided to resume shooting, but the mother and son were nowhere to be found. Finally, when we found them somehow, we faced another issue. That kid had grown a few inches. So we had to resort to close-ups while shooting the remaining scenes."

The young filmmaker is elated about his film bagging the Best Film Award at the Goa Short Film Festival. "It was a very tough race because I was competing with renowned filmmakers like Vineet Sharma Supriya Pathak. After this, we were declared the runner-up at up at the recently concluded Lake City International Film Festival," he said.

Holey is currently writing a web-series. "Once I'm done, we will take the script to various OTT platforms and hopefully someone will agree to produce it," he said.