A designated part of the sprawling campus of the country's premiere institute was converted into the scripted location to recreate the monastery and shoot the film titled
"Melong" (Mirror) as part of the stipulated handling of a "global" subject in the curriculum for students of Arts direction and Production Design.
"In order to recreate an authentic Buddhist monastery around which the film revolves connoting the Tibetan freedom struggle, we had to do a lot of research.
"We built the structure of the set (monastery) in just four days using plywood, Plaster of Paris, thermocol sheets and fibre and procured costumes for the monks from Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Hubli in North Karnataka where many Tibetan exiles stay," said Diego Jacob, one of the six students involved in the project.
A 20-foot gate was raised on the campus location of the monastery by the students who carried on the entire shooting of the seven-minute-long film for which they had set a budget of Rs 21,000.
"We thought of the theme of Tibetan freedom struggle as we are required to handle a global issue for film making exercise", he added.
According to Ashutosh Kavishwar, Head of Department, Art Direction and Production Design, FTII, the batch of the students who selected the theme went to Mysore to research on Tibetan monastery and despite the restriction of shooting the film at a recreated location within the campus."It was a job well done with the ambitious sets getting an ambience of authenticity."
The seven-minute film depicting the Tibetan freedom struggle in the backdrop of a Buddhist monastery is currently at a post-production stage and is expected to be completed by September first week.
The six students team comprises Bhaskar Gupta, Preetish K, J Manasi, Krishna Mulkapally, Krishna Thakur and Diego Jacob.
"We would love to screen the film at Dharmashala, headquarters of the Tibetan state in exile to highlight the issue of their freedom struggle", said Jacob and his team excited over their first film production project.
Kavishwar noted that though FTII films which are students' projects are not commercially released it is hoped that they could be screened at film festivals around the world.