City filmmaker’s big Hollywood dream

City-based engineer and amateur filmmaker Pankaj Rai is another step closer to co-directing a movie with Hollywood directors Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald.

City-based engineer and amateur filmmaker Pankaj Rai is another step closer to co-directing a movie with Hollywood directors Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald.

HT Image

Rai’s (22) video clip for the

Life In A Day

(LIAD) campaign organised by YouTube has made it to the top 100 hours of footage selected by the site. His eight-minute short film will now be considered for the final print of a longer movie to be directed by MacDonald and Ridley, which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011.

The news reached Rai last week in an email whose subject line read — ‘We love your clip!’ It was from first assistant director Gwillym Hewetson of the LIAD team, and said that the clip had been chosen because they ‘liked what they saw’.

“Ever since I submitted the videos, all I’ve done is dream about the Sundance festival. And their reply couldn’t have come in a better way than for the subject line to read ‘We love your clip!’” says Rai.

Out of the five clips Rai had entered, the fifth one, which features him having dinner at a restaurant with his friend, got selected. “It is on July 24, the shooting day, when I captured my life on film, that I realised what I actually go through every day. It had a purpose,” Rai had said.

Now, Rai is praying that the clip makes it to the top 20 entries that are selected for the premiere: “My entry would be among 80,000 others sent in from 197 countries. It’s great to know that.”

The LIAD campaign closed its registrations on July 31. “We got about 1,500 hundred entries from India, and we’re pleased with it. Now we’re going through the selected clips, verifying the identities of filmmakers and getting the permissions in place,” said a Google India spokesperson.