Srinivas Avasarala’s dream comes true

It has been a successful stint for actor-turned-director Srinivas Avasarala since last six years after he made his acting debut with Ashta Chamma. His film education in the U.S. proved to be highly beneficial to fulfil his dreams. Now he has moved further from acting as he is making a debut as a director finally, fulfilling one of his long-cherished dreams.

Srinivas admitted that directing a film is one of the toughest jobs as he has not done anything of the similar kind before. But the debutant director is quite confident about his directorial venture, Oohalu Gusagusalaade, which has released yesterday. He also thanked his producer, Sai Korrapati, for his assistance in making his dream come true. Srinivas said, "Sai and I were on the same page throughout the shoot and that made it easy for all of us to deliver our best. Although he was ready to increase the budget, I insisted on shooting the film on a shoe-string budget because I wanted the film in a safe zone. Initially, Sai used to keep a tab on how the film was shaping up since I didn't have prior experience, but when he saw the initial cut of the film, he was extremely happy.” Oohalu Gusagusalaade is a big screen adaptation of a 19th century French play, Cyrano De Bergerac, which centres on a young girl, Prabhavati, who is quite selfish. This role will be played by Raashi Khanna.

The director added further, "I didn't want actors who would simply deliver the dialogues. The lead character, Prabhavati, has shades of grey; however, she shouldn't turn off the audience as well. Raashi has done a wonderful job and the actor Naga Shaurya is brilliant as well." He went on saying, "We needed hundreds of old books and audio cassettes since the girl is a big fan of Mohammed Rafi. We couldn't find them in the market, so I brought my personal collection to the set to shoot those scenes.” He made the film on a tight budget and he shared his experience saying, "We didn't have enough money to fill the entire frame with set properties. So, we shot a lot of close up scenes and changed the set properties in the background so that each frame looks different." But the director ensured that he is not going to stop directing films from now onwards, "I'm going to keep directing films whenever I feel I am ready with a bound script in hand. Filmmaking is a tough job since it requires a lot of co-ordination. Besides, I didn't want to get used to the luxury of being a director because you never know what might happen few months down the line.”