Paws and play: An animated short about seniors, with a twist
Rahul Razdan knew he wanted to make films in his final year at architecture school. At 51, his first movie is now out and winning awards.
Through decades of studying architecture, acquiring a Master’s degree in business management and working at technology companies such as Satyam Computers and Tencent, Rahul Razdan hoped to make a film someday.
At 51, his first movie is now out. It is an animated short titled Old Age Home, and has been winning awards on the festival circuit. The two-minute-forty-second movie won an audience award at the Boundless short-film festival in London and was a finalist in multiple categories including Best Super Short Film and Best Indian Film at last year’s Cannes World Film Festival.
It is an unusual film, in plot and execution. It is set, for one thing, at a home for the elderly. Through the course of it, different characters talk about their lives and adventures. The twist emerges at the end: the newcomers aren’t people, they are dogs at a shelter.
“I discovered a love for filmmaking during my final project in architecture school,” Razdan says. “By then, I knew I didn’t want to be an architect. There is too long a gap between ideation and final product in that field.” He applied to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) but couldn’t take the entrance exam because a postal strike delayed paperwork. “It’s fate...” he adds. “What I wanted to do at age 25 has happened now.”
Razdan first wrote this tale as a short story for his blog, in 2019; it was meant to explore ideas of memory, ageing and loneliness. It was the concluding line that gave him the idea for a film: “All of them are just teenagers. At the fag-end of their lives.”
Though he has never had a pet dog, he was intrigued by the idea of how much life dogs pack into their relatively short time, he says.
As with so many people, the anxiety and stillness of the pandemic pushed Razdan to pick up the threads on a long-incubated project. He began by reaching out to Ed Scar, a comic-book artist from Buenos Aires whose work he followed online. Scar turned his short story into a comic panel, which was also posted on Razdan’s blog.
“Around this time, a friend suggested that I reach out to Bakarmax [a comic and animation studio in Delhi] to explore a possible film. Though this was my first time directing, the team was very supportive. They would do the animation, they said, but the vision would be all mine.”
One of Razdan’s primary concerns was that the audience shouldn’t know, until the end, that the story was about dogs. “Every time they’d come back to me with the drawing, we’d look at them minutely to make sure that there were no hints about the twist, and if there were any, we’d redo the drawings,” he says.
The process, which he self-funded, took a little less than a year. This time, Razdan wanted to take his work further than a blogpost. “While this was an exercise in fulfilling a creative calling, I wanted some kind of validation from people who work in this medium. That’s where the idea of sending it to festivals came from,” he says.
The project is a good reminder than animation isn’t only about the craft, says Sumit Kumar, founder of Bakarmax. “Many animators tend to forget about the story because they are focused on the technique. Technique drives budgets up. Old Age Home is a great example of a good story told on a really low budget.”
Watch the full film here: https://youtu.be/Plz6smC-Mhk
Meanwhile, as Razdan continues in his day job at Reliance Jio Messaging Services, the Gurugram resident is thinking about the stories he will tell next. “I really enjoyed the process of bringing an idea to screen,” he says. “I’ve discovered just how effectively anthropomorphism can make complex ideas more accessible. Though animation is time-consuming and resource-intensive, I like it as a medium. I already have an idea for a wholesome story with a twist, one that will be longer than my debut effort.”
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