Poornima University Students Win Award at Toon-i-esta Film Festival

Poornima Students Win Award at Toon-i-esta Film Festival

It is a stirring moment when one sees their imagination and hard work come alive on screen. What’s more joyous is perhaps knowing that many others connect with the visual imagery and story, too. Such were the feelings of Rahul Sharma, Sudhanshu Tiwari, and Abhishek Sharma of Poornima College of Engineering when their short film, titled ‘Joy of Sharing’, won the ‘Best Short Film’ award at the Toon-i-esta Film Festival in Mumbai on 28 November 2015.

Toon-i-esta is a two-day college fest organized by Thakur-ToonSkool Advanced Animation Academy in Thakur College of Science and Commerce. Various events and contests take place in different categories such as animation, film making, fine arts, and performing arts. This year, the short film contest drew entries from over 20 colleges across the country.

The trio’s winning entry shed light on how society treats poor people. “We have tried to capture the rude or ignorant behavior of people towards the poor. Many a times, in our happiness, we tend to forget that there are people who cannot have anything and who deserve happiness. That happiness is best experienced when shared. Hence, we have kept the title of the movie as ‘Joy of sharing’,” said Abhishek in an interview published in the popular daily, DNA.

Talking of the hurdles they faced when making the film, they pointed out the lack of good places to shoot due to lack of funds. However, their hard work paid off when they finally found a good café in Mansarovar for the shoot.

Rahul, the writer and narrator of the film, believes that the USP of the film is its special effects. “We have used slow motion and black and white effects to emphasize a certain situation and mood,” he said.

Sudhanshu, the lead actor in the film, added that the biggest advantage of the film is that the special effects complement the emotions emphasized in the film. “We knew that the most important things that stand out, apart from technology, is how feelings are conveyed. We were lucky to work with good dialogues, script, and message.”

“There is no doubt that technology plays a big role in film making, but the direction and vision of the director is most important. The three of us had a very good understanding of what and how we wanted to convey things in the movie. This has led to our victory,” he said.

The trio are students of Poornima College of Engineering, which is part of Poornima University. The university is ranked No.1 among the first-tier universities in India launched in session 2012-13 by an ICMR survey published in The Human Factor.