Ashish Bisht - My Film Is Based On Covid-19 Awareness, Where I Directed, Edited & Acted For The Film & I Came Up With A Zero Budget Short Film ' Deadly-C ' In 2 Weeks (Script Writer & Actor, India)

Acting can be learnt by joining film or acting school , they will teach you like a proper academia curriculum, the way we get trained in Engineering or medical.

1. Tell us about your background and journey.

I am Ashish Bish, I belong to a normal middle class family, and did my schooling from Government Inter College (GIC) in my small hometown, basically it's a small hill station.

Once schooling was done, I started preparing for multiple entrance exams and finally graduated in Engineering.

And once my graduation was done, I got a job as a software engineer in a big MNC in Bangalore. And Surprisingly till then acting, cinema etc. were not in the picture itself.

In fact, I was not a big fan of movies at all.

And one day, what had happened, that there were few friends of mine, they were planning to do stage play in some cultural function and they had a story with them but they wanted changes in dialogues as per their need but they were not able to do that neither they had got anyone who could do those changes.

So as we were sitting on coffee table, they were kind of upset as well because they did not find anyone who could wrote dialogues for them and suddenly out of way I said, ok if you guys not finding any one, I will writer something and will give it to tomorrow, but whatever I will feel I will writer down, I have not done it before so can not guarantee that it's going to be good and all.

And the next day when I gave dialogues to them, they liked it and I was kind of shocked too ok seems I can write dialogue.

Then a few more unexpected things happened and I ended up joining Theater group, doing stage plays. I must say, there I learned a lot about acting, writing.

So I was doing my theater plays, and one day a few students from Film school approached me that they are making a short film for their final year project and they want me to act on that and I said yes I will do it. I did film but later on what happened that I have no clue.

Next I and few of my theater mates formed a team and made short films with our limited resources and I must say by God grace our films did good in Film festivals but suddenly Covid hit us hard, there was complete lock down, it was not possible to do theater plays anymore nor short films ,all got struck wherever they were.

But as there is an old saying 'Artistic instinct can not sit idle', I thought to come up with a film on covid-19 awareness during lock down and planned to use only those limited resources which are available with me, nothing else at all.

So I wrote down a story, acted, directed, edited, tried to make music also for film and came up with a Zero Budget Short Film ' Deadly-C ' in 2 weeks.

And it is very tough to believe that till now my film managed to get Officially Selected & Nominated in 30 International Film Festivals and won Best Story award as well.

After that, I came up with another short film based on the idea of 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' and that also did well in festivals.

And Currently there are 4-5 short film scripts written by me and if I get any producer for them, then will try to make films on them soon.

Hope after reading this interview someone will come forward for producing them.

2. Did you ever think or dream of being an actor?

Oh Frankly speaking, Acting was not in the picture at all ever. As I have told you earlier also that, I was not a fan of movies at all.

But there is an interesting story behind it.

I think it was Monday, I was staying till late night in my office because there was an important meeting with our USA client.

And as soon as the meeting was over, I started preparing to leave the office and at the same time one of my colleague came to my desk and we started talking, about our meeting, then about last weekend stuff, what all we did. And during this discussion he said, last Sunday he watched a mind blowing film and he has not watched such a beautiful film ever before.

It was in his pen drive, he gave me that. But my entire week was packed so I could not watch and whenever he used to meet me he would ask, that did you watch that film and every time I used to say no, I did not

After 2-3 weeks I was kind of free so I thought I would watch it. As I was not a big fan of films ,I was not watching it with much interest hence I did not like the initial 5-10 minutes of films.

But since my colleague had praised it a lot , so I thought to watch 5-10 minutes more but when I got up ,by then 2 hours were gone , I had watched entire movie and did not realize that 2 hours have been passed, it was such a beautiful movie , I just became fan of this film and the Actor.

I never watched such a mesmerizing film and acting ever before. And this mesmerizing film name was 'Life Is Beautiful', 1997 war drama film, originally it was an Italian film 'La vita è bella'.

Basically it generated some sense in me that acting is such a powerful tool to express feelings and impact full stories.And that day onward it was kind of impossible for me to sleep at all till I joined Theater Group and started performing on stage plays.

3. How can one approach their career and have the confidence and belief to become an actor?

As far as a career in Acting is concerned , one has to find out their true calling. I mean to say that , one has to find out why they want to go for an acting career ? are they just want to be famous or they really want to be an actor. Here Actor does not refer to the lead hero in a film or play ,actor mean is, who performs any role in a film or play etc.

If there is someone who just want to be a lead hero, unfortunately it is something which nobody can guaranteed upon and if such person does not get a big lead role, then one will start getting frustrated, which will lead to loosing confidence and once you are out of confidence things will become more and more tougher for you.

So here number one thing is to find out their true calling.

number 2, I would say, one has to be practical enough, never ever be in illusions, always think practically and objectively. These things will help us in figuring out our strong points and our weaker points, which would help us in coming up with proper strategy for our improvements and come up as strongly as possible so that our goals can be achieved.

4. What does your typical day look like?

See, to be in the acting field one has to have discipline in life, so I try to follow, earlier to bed, earlier to rise rule.

Then it is very very important to do some physical & mental exercises to keep one's body and mind in good shape. And do not forget to exercise your acting muscles too , it is also very important. So I work upon these things as well.

As I am a writer too, I try to write something daily, whether one page, two pages or 5 pages does not matter but I write something.

Then some time there would be business meetings. I do that too. Sometimes I take auditions for my short films and sometimes I prepare for giving auditions when I am looking for some roles.

5. Can you throw some light on the opportunities one gets as a singer?

Nowadays there are plenty of opportunities for singers because of online platform flooding. There are cover songs , independent songs or albums songs apart from film.

One can get chance to sing in cover songs, or if someone is not getting chance then its better to start singing cover buy yourself, it doesn't has to be high production as far as video is concern but singing should be good and upload that on online platforms, that could give you good fame, basically you are trying to do marketing of your singing skills. And if somebody sees you there you might get good offers for album songs or from film as well.

And trust me if your singing is being appreciated online, there are very good possibilities that you might get concert offers too of course initially with small organizers, which will also grow with time and with your hard work.

And I forgot to tell one important thing,always try to make Team of creatively like minded people, it will increase the possibility of doing better in life by multiple folds.

6. Is formal training required or can one train themselves purely on the basis of talent?

See generally speaking, it is a must to get trained on acting or singing or any other field. Basically these are skills, there are many techniques involved in it, which one can not know without proper training and without having a proper Guru for themselves.

There are two ways of getting trained , here I will take an example of acting. Acting can be learnt by joining film or acting school , they will teach you like a proper academia curriculum, the way we get trained in Engineering or medical.

And there is another way of getting trained in Acting by joining Theater groups or workshops, here you will not be trained based on academia curriculum but here you will get trained by seeing and working with experienced actors , play directors.

And then your talents will come into picture , this would help you to understand things faster and one would be able to take learnt skills to another higher level.

7. Which is your favourite book and why?

There are many but for example, I love reading history books. They help us to understand cultures of different -different time zones or time periods, areas etc.

Then I love reading Premchand , Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay , Jaishankar Prasad stories. The way these writers write their characters is mind blowing , they put real life in their stories, hence should be must read for all actors.

8. What is your mantra of success?

There are 4 main rules, which I follow.

Number 1, find out your true calling.

Number 2, be practical enough & never ever be in illusions.

Number 3, always set practical goals & divide main goal into sub goals.

Once you have done these 3 steps, the 4th would be to work towards achieving your goal regularly day by day, keep on trying and aim for one goal at a time.

- Ashish Bisht