ABOUT

RAHANA 1984 the short movie prequel released 22/05/2022 on YouTube, it's connected to the full-length feature film RAHANA which is still currently in production.

This is the 15 minute prequel RAHANA 1984 which is set 30 years before RAHANA and gives some insight into the characters you’ll later see in the full length feature film.

The story of a billionaire Willard Shephard who is on a mission to save his friend Mandy who is suffering from a rare cell disorder. The story is set in a troubled Delhi of 1984 in India.

The historical context requires great respect as the murderers of thousands of innocent Sikhs need to be brought to justice, and the atrocities took place in Delhi and many parts of India on 31st October 1984 and later at further places and dates following that. Our fictional movie only touches on those real historical events.

The production of RAHANA 1984 short movie also had some difficult drama - it began a 3 day filming schedule in late January 2019 during a holiday break from the production of another feature-length movie we are making. We filmed RAHANA 1984 in 4k and used a Lumix GH5S camera and lots of Lumix lenses and various other adapted modern lenses and vintage lenses.

While we chose the upsetting subject of Delhi 1984 during the writing stage, as a background for this fictional story involving the Vietnam War hero Willard Shephard. The filming was smooth but there were soon going to be issues with the post-production of RAHANA 1984 itself, because of numerous green-screen sequences and gun scenes, also the problems that COVID-19 lockdowns soon brought into the world caused further delays to post-production.

We also required further budget and costs for RAHANA 1984 to complete the then complex special effects and green-screen compositing sequences for the movie. It was a slow process during editing, VFX and sound production, that only became faster and more possible when Apple computers created their powerful M1 MAX MACBOOK PRO systems. Which we then took advantage of and used for the post-production to complete RAHANA 1984 in MAY 2022.

I started creating the soundtrack 4 years ago. It didn't take 4 years to create, it was just that I started creating the soundtrack at the writing stage of full length feature film RAHANA, before RAHANA 1984 was even conceived as an idea. Because the two movies are connected, it made sense to use some of the sounds from the first movie in this one. I continue to compose the music over this period of time while production on the main feature RAHANA continues at the time of writing this description. I used various digital instruments on PC and MAC and iPads as well as a Yamaha PSR E443 keyboard.

I am heavily inspired by music from John Williams and Ennio Morricone. although my music is nothing like their stuff, they are always at the back of my mind when I am composing. So I aimed to make the music as emotive as possible to work with the scenes rather than overpower the scenes.

RAHANA 1984 screenplay, cinematography, direction and soundtrack are by Suchet Budon.