We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Niraj Pancholi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Niraj below.
Hi Niraj, thanks for joining us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?
Innovation is THE most important thing for me. It’s what drives me. It’s what keeps me up at night. It’s what gives me satisfaction at the end of the day. It’s my pleasure and my pain. The people I’ve looked up to have always been people who have innovated. Innovation can be atomic. Innovation can be a big bang. The size of it doesn’t matter. What drove me to filmmaking and storytelling is the innovation itself. Seeing images and ideas on screen that I had never seen before. That’s what stayed with me long after, everything else blew away with the dust of time. So when the time came to make my own movie, to make my own mark, I had to come up with something innovative. But innovation is elusive. When you think consciously about innovating, it slips away from your grasp. So I focus on something that excites me, and invariably, it turns out to be something innovative. And I feel we all are like that. It excites all of us to see a man take a small step on the moon or see a giant leap in mobile innovation. I still remember the night that changed my life.
I was alone in the room, trying to come up with an idea for a short film, but all the ideas that were bouncing in my head were all the things I had seen before. Nothing new. Nothing fresh. The pain of life, as I said. So I took off. Went out for a late-night drive on Anza Blvd in Torrance. People had gone to sleep. It was just me, the car, and the lonely street. I decided not to think about the movie and let my mind drift, but not the car, of course. That’s when the lightning buzzed in my head — An old man, his son, and his grandson. On top of the mountain. With a light before them, hovering above the ground. What’s this light? Where did it come from? Perhaps, a light from outer space? Of course! It must be a light from outer space. An alien light. A… a… cosmic light. A light that’s actually a cosmic user interface. A light that blooms into this massive light-based user interface that can be used to communicate with the aliens in another world.– That was the birth of my short film Cosmic Light. Innovation comes in random bursts like that when you’re not trying to innovate, but you still want to. Of course, the story and the characters took various shapes after that point, but that was my initial idea.
But the idea is not where the innovation ends, it’s where it begins. At every step of the way, you’ve to continually innovate. For example, I asked my Sound Designer Bernardo to give musicality to footsteps. Footsteps? Who cares about footsteps? Well… I do. I did when making Cosmic Light. I said if the people are listening to the sound, and the sound doesn’t have musicality, then it is just noise. Footsteps are part of sound. It must have musicality. A rhythm that people can follow as the characters walk around. The audience is not going to think of footsteps consciously, just like they’re not going to think of camera angles consciously. But it is what guides their experience.
To innovate on a project like Cosmic Light, you have to bring people on board who are looking to do the same. I was fortunate that Bernardo and my other collaborators on the project were also looking to innovate.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a writer and a director. My expertise is in sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure, and thriller genres and subgenres.
I have made Cosmic Light, which is a Sci-Fi Drama, and written a feature-length project for Cosmic Light which is a Sci-Fi Action Romance. Even though the feature project has the same name, it is a new storyline with new characters and you get to see the world where Cosmic Light comes from. It’s a very innovative project. I’ve also developed some film projects set in India to pitch them in the future. Currently, I’m authoring my first novel, which is a middle-grade fantasy adventure story. It’s a new world that I’m inventing with its own history, magic system, economy, and flora and fauna.
My core skills are visual and emotional storytelling. I’m both a technical and character-based director. I’m very good a putting more on screen than money can buy. I am good at camera angles, lens choices, and blocking with actors. Visual creation comes very easily to me. When I work with a cinematographer, I bring paintings that represent the light design and mood I’m looking for in each scene, and we go over it and figure out the entire visual palette of the film. When I work with a VFX team, I bring Concept Art that I had created with the help of a professional concept artist. I hand draw all the artwork and have pages of notes on what they mean and what type of mood, details, and colors I’m looking for. So when the VFX team looks at the film footage and the concept art, they have a much clearer understanding of my vision.
But with visuals, it is also very important for me to anchor the project with characters and a story that moves the audience emotionally. Once the camera starts rolling, I’m only focused on the actors and capturing the emotional truth of the scene. Everything else goes out of focus for me at that point. At that point, I’m like an audience reacting to what the character is saying and feeling. If I’m moved at that moment on the set, I feel my audience would be moved in the theater.
I had been wanting to get into films ever since I was a child. But didn’t have guidance or support to figure out how to go about doing it. I don’t come from a film family background, nor did anyone I knew growing up know anything about filmmaking. I’m an outsider. So I felt that the film world was this far distant land where only the people with sheer charisma and capability could go to and work. It was not realistic. It was not meant for normal people. So I did Computer Engineering, instead of going to a film school. But the passion for storytelling was still burning deep within me. The light had not extinguished. So I decided to put logic into achieving my dream. To make a movie, you need a script. So I wrote one. And then, I started building my team one person at a time. As more people joined in, they brought in or suggested other people they had worked with previously, and that helped me a lot. My cinematographer Haige Zhou suggested the 1st AC, Gaffer, etc. All the crew he needed in his team came through his suggestion. And what an amazing crew he brought in. They had a shorthand between them. It was beautiful to see them all work together. I also knew I would need a location to shoot. So I spent two months driving around all over LA County, Orange County, and Riverside County, searching for locations that would give authenticity to the world I was creating. One step at a time, I walked towards my goal. And that’s how I fell into filmmaking. I took a leap of faith.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
On my way to making my film Cosmic Light, every step of the way, at every juncture, at every turn, I met naysayers.
Shooting at studio-owned locations was expensive. I was suggested by many to reduce the total number of locations and make them simple and indoors. But I wanted to make a grand film. I wanted to have a visual variety. I wanted to create a spectacle. For that I needed exterior locations that were authentic. So, I found private owners who lent me their property at a reasonable rate to shoot my film. For authenticity, I focused on locations that were naturally suitable for the film and didn’t need expensive dress-ups. It took two months to find these locations, but I wouldn’t give up.
VFX for my film had never been done in another film before. So, looking at other films or tutorials online was not possible. It required a lot of research and development before we started compositing shots. I spoke to a lot of VFX artists and companies. The main challenge was that they didn’t already know how to do it, which meant they would have to take a leap of faith with me to get it right. Not everyone wanted to spend time in R&D. So it took me months and months to find the right team. The right team for me was a blend of technical expertise and a drive to innovate. A team that would see my film as a work of art and not as a gig. That wasn’t easy to find. But I wouldn’t give up. I would rather spend time finding the right team than get the project finished with badly designed VFX. And that’s exactly what I did. It took me close to four months to find the right team, but I found one. The only problem was they were based in India, and I was in Los Angeles. There’s about a 12-hour time difference. So I would work all day, sleep during lunchtime and early evening, and then stay up all night with the VFX team over a Zoom call working on the project. Finally, after over two months of R&D, we had our first shot composited. Two months of work and only one shot. It was hard. But it was worth it. We were seeing something we had never seen before. That excited us. It was an unbelievable moment. From that point on, we spent about four months doing the remaining shots. Each shot was harder than the previous one. It came with its own unique challenge. But through R&D, we had developed our base, our tools, our north star. We now knew we could get there. It was only a matter of time.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The two most rewarding aspects of being creative are the art and the audience.
The process of creating art in itself is a sheer joy. You get to create various aspects of the world that you’re building. You can develop a deep history of your world, or you can develop the economic and political landscape of your world, or you can do both. You can create magical, mythical creatures that defy science, or you can develop an entire phylogenetic tree for the species in your world. You can create goofy characters, or you can create characters that are flawed. There’s no limit. You’re in control. You’re in charge. Do what you want. You have the power to put all your hopes and dreams into this world and make it the way you wish things to be.
But I don’t create art just for myself. I create it to share it with the audience. I would be most happy if anyone liked my work. But my main goal is to have my art seen first. Even if someone dislikes it, I feel happy that it was seen. I’m most appreciative of anyone who gives their time to look at my work. It was created for them. It was meant to be seen. If they give me constructive feedback, it’s a learning experience for me. If they like it, it feels like all the tension and tears I went through while making the film were worth it. When Cosmic Light played in theaters, I would sit in the front and turn around and watch the audience watch my film. I would study how they reacted. It helped me learn what worked and what didn’t work in the film. An invaluable lesson for next time. I did Q&A rounds during the festival run of the film, and it was such a great experience to get questions asked by the audience after they had just watched the film. Every audience member brings their unique experience and perspective to the film. No question was the same as the other. I particularly remember that I had just come out of the Bow Tie theater in Greenwich, Connecticut, after a screening of my film and two ladies with their kids stopped me and told me it was a special film. I asked them why they felt that way. They said it because their kids had stopped talking during my film. They said their kids stared at the screen, mesmerized by what they were seeing. They said if the kids stop talking, you know you have something special. No one can reward an artist more than the audience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nirajpancholi.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nirajpancholifilms
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nirajpancholifilms
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niraj-pancholi
- Twitter: https://x.com/niraj_pancholi
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nirajpancholi9197
