Interview with Radheya Jegatheva / The Quiet

Callum and Jennifer from Film in Revolt spoke with Radheya Jegatheva about his latest short film screening at the Sydney Film Festival.

So Radheya, how has life been during quarantine?

Life has been interesting. I am one to stay inside and just work in my room so it hasn’t affected me too much. It’s been good for productivity, just being able to focus more on uni work and film projects. Being at home, it does kind of feel like it’s a holiday but, you just have to keep going and put yourself in that motivated mindset.

What has been the biggest influence on your work?

I feel a bit uncultured honestly. There are so many more films I need to see and so many that I haven’t seen so I have a very long list to get through. I wouldn’t say there’s one particular influence, but there’s been influences from like a bunch of different filmmakers and content. I love Alfonso Cuaron movies, as well as the Black Mirror series, sci-fi movies and anything with a plot twist. I am drawn to more psychological and dark things and anything about space as well. Gravity is one of my favourites but I think it’s a range of different influences that all come together.

I know with most of your work you just do animation, but what was the reason that you decided to do animation over other mediums such as live-action?

I started getting interested in film when I was in high school, but we didn’t have a film subject which was frustrating. I had to try and figure out how to do it myself and I didn’t have the resources at the time to do live-action. I had tried using my Dad’s MacBook Air and used the webcam to film but it was terrible. That’s when I realised I didn’t have the resources or the people to properly make a live-action film, but I still loved storytelling. One of the reasons why I was drawn to animation was because once I learned how to use the programs, I could project my ideas onto that visual platform, and work on it independently. That was something that I could do on my own and I could just use that medium to tell stories. I also think that, especially when it comes to more surreal things and the idea of space, it’s a lot easier to make an animation about it rather than trying to make a live-action. Some of my films would need an astronomical budget to be produced in the same way in a live-action medium so that’s why I went down the animation route.

So just tailing onto that question. Has there ever been a point where you’ve done so much work and it just crashed on you? What was the experience that you’ve had with doing animation that?

All the time! Honestly, it’s happened so many times that I can’t keep count. I’ll be working on something for hours and hours and then the file corrupts or crashes and now it’s kind of trained me to back up my stuff all the time, which is good. I have so many hard drives on the table right now, thank God you can’t see it but it’s a mess. It trains you to make sure you know where everything is and make sure you’re keeping it backed up. It is heartbreaking when that happens, but it’s something I have to deal with.

When do you think films started to have an impact on you? When did you start noticing their stories and thought it would be interesting to get into films?

That’s a good question. I think I was especially drawn into film initially through CGI. I remember watching the show Primeval when I was younger, and I was just really blown away by the visuals and I was like, how do they do that? Like how did they make that? That’s what influenced me to start researching how special effects and VFX are done. I started watching VFX breakdowns in my spare time and started to learn different programs. I guess that was quite a big influence but also like I mentioned before, the movie Gravity. I watched that movie more than every other movie. I just love it. I think that movies like these started to introduce my mind to film and started to help me bridge both my passion for VFX, animation, storytelling and narration together.

What did it feel like when you won your first award?

It felt amazing, I was just blown away. I’m pretty sure my first award, or one of them, was actually part of a film festival. It was called Reels on Wheels and it was so unique. You cycle around the city on these bicycles with a big projection box and you stop at certain points and then they play the films. That was when I won one of my first awards, and it was just such an exhilarating experience. Just to know that other people appreciate your work and all of those hours and all that time you spent pays off in the end. I obviously don’t make my films for awards, but it’s really heart-warming and it motivates you to keep pursuing your dreams and to keep telling stories.

So now to your latest release The Quiet. First off, can I just say that was an amazing film!  What was your biggest inspiration for the story?

I was really interested in silence and isolation. It’s like when I’m making my animated films because it is a very lonely process in the sense that I’m cooped up in my room just working with my laptop. I started to think about the effects of isolation and silence on your psyche and the psychological effects. I started to do a bit more research and an idea kind of started forming in my mind, but I was really interested in exploring the different ways that a character’s attitude towards silence might change throughout their lifetime in a number of different contexts and see how it could feed that into a story. That was the biggest influence on why I wanted to tell the story of The Quiet but there were just a bunch of other influences in terms of, you know, my love for outer space and want to tell a human story through that kind of imagery. I was researching things like Twinless Twin syndrome, and just all these different aspects kind of fed into it. But it was never fully fleshed out from the beginning. And as I was making it, all these new ideas kept coming in, so it was a very evolutionary creative process.

You’ve mentioned a couple of times already about your fascination with space and Gravity and that fascination is obviously present in your new short film The Quiet. Where do you think your love for that kind of thing has stemmed from?

When I was younger, my Dad used to take me to this place called the Gravity Discovery Centre which has an observatory out in regional WA. I think that’s probably where my love for the solar system came from and the fact that this had such an impact on me as a young child. Just looking at the night sky you always wonder what’s out there and I think it’s just something that I’ve just naturally loved. I’ve made two films about it, and I don’t know how many more I will make but we will see.

How long did it take you to create this short film?

I was working on it on and off because I had uni and other things. Whenever I had some spare time I was working away at it but I started properly working on it very early last year. I went on a trip to China and that’s where I started most of the work on it, and then came back and tried to finish it off, so I think the period would probably be about a year I’d say. It’s hard to say exactly just because I was working on other things as well during that entire period, but I’d say that’s about the time I spent on it just as a general time period.

So what’s it like now googling yourself and actually seeing a proper bio?

I wasn’t expecting that. I tried that the other day and I was like, What? Why does my name have a Google Infobox? Yeah, it’s a bit strange. I just never really expected to have something like that. But I mean, it’s cool. Sometimes I search myself online and I just cringe at some of the content there And I was like, Oh! I want to remove it from the internet forever.

Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Is there a career that you want to pursue?

That’s a really good question that I would also like the answer to. I don’t know. I’d love to obviously go into the film industry, whether that’s animation or live-action, I’m not entirely sure but I think that’s something I have to figure out. I do picture myself as a film editor. I think that’s something I’m going to explore and look into, but I don’t know. There are so many different aspects of film that I love. And yeah, I think that time is ticking and I’m in my final year of uni and I think I just really like being a student just because your only responsibility is to be a student, but then after that, it’s going out into the real world. It’s a bit scary and daunting but hopefully, I’ll figure out where exactly I’m going to go.

You have your father as the narrator in the film. Is there a reason behind why you’ve decided to use him in a couple of your short films rather than someone else?

The first time I used him, it was in my previous one called iRony. Originally, I actually just recorded his narration over the top, as a temporary placeholder. I was like, okay Dad, just read these lines and I’ll replace it later. I did this so I could format the narrative but then, when I put his voice in there, I realised that it worked for this very sinister vibe. I’m glad I did because so many people loved his voice and I think just naturally I was like, you know if I’m going to have a voiceover character, who better to do it than your Dad, so he was just reprising the role in a sense. It was really nice to have him as an integral part of the story and it saved me from having to pay with my small budget.

Are there any projects that you’re working on or anything that we can expect?

I’ve been working on a new animated short film. It’s going be screened at TED-X Sydney later this year. It was originally supposed to be in May but got postponed, but I’m very grateful because I needed that extra time. I’m still working on it but it’s nearing completion. I think I’m really excited to see the final product just because it’s taken so long. It’s kind of just a non-narrative experimental film that explores environmentalism through seven traditional paintings in relation to the seven deadly sins. It sounds a bit weird, but I promise that it makes sense within the film. I’m also going to undertake an internship next month for around 10 weeks. I was supposed to be in the US, but they let me work remotely, which is good. And I’m going to be making shorter projects as well over that. I have a few projects lined up and I can’t wait to get them out.

Thank you for your time. Good job on The Quiet, we absolutely loved the film and we would highly recommend people checking it out as well as your other films.

Callum and Jennifer

The Quiet
Sydney Film Festival
Until 21 June 2020