Raja Sevugan, director of “The Mannequin.”
RAJA Sevugan, a 17-year-old director, is excited to share the short film he and his peers made over the summer. “The Mannequin” will have its closed premiere this Friday at 5 p.m. at the Regal Saipan Megaplex in San Jose.
Sevugan is a member of the first cohort of the “Cinema on Saipan: Movie Making in the Marianas” program, a joint project between Northern Marianas College-Community Development Institute and the Public School System.
The program is designed to introduce PSS high school students to the art and craft of filmmaking.
Students spent three weeks learning the principles of filmmaking and storytelling; screenplay writing; hands-on film production training in cinematography; sound recording; and more.
Sevugan will be one of three directors whose film lights up the big screen at the Saipan Regal Megaplex on Friday.
He said “The Mannequin” is a horror film. “It takes place in an abandoned mall where three friends go looking for a missing person to claim the missing person’s reward. However, things take an unexpected turn, and they end up in serious trouble.”
Sevugan said he first gained experience in filmmaking at Marianas High School, where he took a video production class. When the opportunity came to be part of the Cinema on Saipan program, he jumped on it even though he believes he is “not a natural storyteller.”
“The program drew me in because it was the first of its kind and it was about something that I was not entirely familiar with. I also thought that it would be a good experience to learn something new,” Sevugan said.
Friday’s film premiere will be the culmination of a long process of creative collaboration for Sevugan. He and his cohort-members met for “multiple hours” over a weeklong course of script creation and film planning.
“After agreeing on the final version of the script, we had to create a shot list of all the shots in the film, call sheets for the actors and the crew, and schedule plans for pacing throughout the shoot,” Sevugan said. “Not to mention, we had to find our actors, and contact various local companies to request a donation of a mannequin.”
At the end of the planning, Sevugan said he and his crew still had a tight deadline to meet. The film had to be completed in two days, he added.
In that time, Sevugan said one obstacle they encountered was the film location’s proximity to traffic.
“We wanted to go for a more silent and desolate film. However, with the cars passing by, and the lack of mics, we had to reshoot some scenes multiple times which took up a lot of time,” Sevugan said, adding that they ended up changing scenes.
But he said after overcoming a challenge with lighting, everything else was smooth.
“Overall, it was fairly straightforward when it came to shooting the project at our designated location. However, I believe this is due to the enormous amount of post-production planning that my crew and I did. While shooting, we did come across some situations where we had to improvise and change our script or shot type, but I think it went fairly well,” Sevugan said.
He added that the opportunity to be creative through the class enabled him to grow as a storyteller and film creator.
He credits the program’s instructor, Demetrius Borge, for allowing him to express and develop his creativity in new ways. “Mr. Borge pushed me beyond my boundaries, which helped me become a better storyteller than I was at the beginning of the program,” Sevugan said.
He now looks forward to other opportunities to develop his filmmaking ability and would sign up for an advanced class if given the chance.
Also to be screened on Friday are the films directed by his classmates Ulusmar Ogumoro and Sheryne Yang.
