Interview: Ajay Dev Dinesh - director, screenwriter, editor of Neena Signing Off

Synopsis: "Neena, an adventurous final-year engineering student with a love for travel and new experiences, finds her world shrinking overnight when the COVID-19 lockdown confines her to a single room. What begins as temporary isolation slowly turns into a suffocating loop of routines, screens, and silence. When a new job takes her to Kochi, she sees it as her ticket to freedom but soon realizes the walls have only changed their color. Caught between global chaos and personal stillness, Neena’s spirit starts to crumble under the weight of monotony and loneliness. “Neena Signing Off” is a reflection of a generation that learned how fragile and how resilient the human mind can be when the world stands still."

ROFFEKE: In your director's bio, you write that you are driven "by stories that find beauty in the ordinary and emotion in the quiet corners of life...through subtle performance and real-life experiences translated into powerful visual storytelling." As a fan of Bollywood films, I can confidently say that your film "Neena:Signing off" is definitely not the typical, larger-than-life Bollywood film. What challenges, if any, do you face in making (and marketing) films that are not the norm?

AJAY DEV DINESH: India has multiple film industries, and Bollywood is one of them, the biggest one, but this movie was made in a smaller industry named Mollywood. Mollywood represents films from the state of Kerala and is one of the smallest film industries. Making a movie in this industry is very hard due to budget constraints, low returns, and difficulties with OTT and other releases for the film. We deliberately took a call while filming "Neena: signing off" that we are making this film for festivals and not for commercial purposes, which gave us a clear focus on how much to spend and how to be creative within that budget. This is a film made by contribution from a lot of friends rather than from a professional perspective. And one thing I learned about Marketing for films is that, if you make a good enough film and it gets some appreciation in film festivals, people would want to see it and YouTube channels would be willing to buy it, so the idea should be to make a good film that people would love.

ROFFEKE: The first song: "life goes on, through new roads, life goes on" is so beautiful. Was it created specifically for the film or was it licensed for the film?

AJAY: The song was made for the film only. It's a very short song, and we have no plans to release a single album for the same since it's beautiful when seen with the film rather than as an independent.

ROFFEKE: It was delightful to watch the phone text messages and other phone content displayed outside the phone screen. Could you please explain the editing process regarding this? Which editing software would you recommend for this?

AJAY:  The whole VFX work for this film took more than 2 months of daily effort for us to complete. We had planned it while filming to leave spaces in screen for all these visual elements to appear. The software we used is Adobe's After Effects, and there are a lot of plugins that would give you something to start with, and then you modify them by yourself to fit them into your film. Other than that, we used AI generations too in some shots to fill in for what we missed while filming.

ROFFEKE: Your film is a work of fiction but is partly inspired by real events. a) What is your process of fictionalizing a true event? b) The presentation fiasco that happens around the halfway point of the film is heartbreaking. Was this inspired by true events or did you make it up?

AJAY: Most of my stories originate from a true incident that I then fictionalise. I usually take the core element from the incident and bring some characters into the same incident, and then think, "How would this guy behave in this situation?" In the case of this film it's based on several true stories, not just one, so I didn't start from any particular incident. The first step was to define the character, then take them through these incidents and then figure out how to conclude this character's journey. The presentation fiasco was fully fictional; it never happened in real life.

ROFFEKE: What lessons did you learn during the lockdown?

AJAY: During lockdown, I was just out of college, so the main thing I learned was the value of freedom, to be able to go anywhere at anytime, do anything you like, I was really learning the value of these during lockdown but used most of the time that I got in learning about filmmaking, finance and engineering which are the three things that I am really interested in. Also started planting seeds of stories in my head so that later they'll become a big tree of stories.

ROFFEKE: Your film has a strong mental health theme and you write in your director's bio that: "With Neena Signing Off, I wanted to capture the silent struggles of a generation to show why mental health is just as important as physical health, and why it should never be ignored." How do you yourself take care of your mental health?

AJAY: I had struggles with Anxiety from childhood. I realised it when I was an adult that "it was anxiety" what I was feeling sometimes and then seeked proefessional help to understand it and then get rid of it. It took me a year to go through therapy, medications and then finally come out of Anxiety fully. That is one more reason I want everyone to take good care of their mental health, because I myself know the difference.

ROFFEKE: You have a background in engineering. How did you make the transition from engineering to filmmaking? What skills/lessons, if any, from your engineering era do you apply to filmmaking?

AJAY: Even before becoming an Engineer my heart was always into filmmaking. During college days and school days, I would use my laptop to edit some small videos, learn about how to edit or direct a film through YouTube and other online sources and think about stories. I am good at learning things, especially softwares so I learned editing software during my Engineering time and was also part of the media team in my college, which helped me learn how to operate a camera. If you see the credits, I have done cinematography as well in some schedules. All of these came from my school and college days.

ROFFEKE: You were the screenwriter, editor, visual effects artist and director of "Neena:Signing off". Any advice for aspiring screenwriters, editors, vfx artists and/or directors?

AJAY: I don't believe that I have achieved enough to advise young filmmakers, but one thing I can say is "When you make a film, be too serious about it, put your 1000% to it, plan it well, think of obstacles upfront and create Plan B, and finally... be creative."