Varun Raman

About Varun Raman

Studying Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College set things in motion. One Easter, whilst everyone was revising, I decided to drop out and spend that time instead watching David Lynch's Twin Peaks. 

Dale Cooper's everlasting optimism in the darkest surroundings gave me the determination to trust my intuition and pursue filmmaking.  Knowing I wanted to direct, I tried my hand at screenwriting first. After spending four years in Manchester, I had to preserve my affection for the place by     leaving it – and ended up in Bristol, which is also a pretty cool city.  The last place I worked at was a bookies – as strange a place as you’d probably imagine.  Luckily, I just started writing full time. Attempting to avoid a summer of living inside my head, it appears I’ve come full circle and would like to experience the other side, as a producer, putting on some worthwhile events for others to enjoy.  Not only will it open up my perspective of the whole process, I’m always     looking for talent to work with, because talent is the only thing you can trust. For the past five years, I’ve collaborated with Tom Hancock.  We started with a show on student radio – and currently, we have two shorts in post-production and have been commissioned to write a feature film.  After that, we’ll write another feature set in Bolivia for music video           director, Ian Pons Jewell. If you have any time, feel free to waste it on PARALLEL MADNESS – the website for our               fledgling production company. Looking forward to meeting and working with some cool and interesting people. MUCHOS BESOS.

Varun Raman's blog

BONJOURNO

I’m a bit late to the game.  So I’ll just get to it.

The intensive weekend was a cool, natural way to breed familiarity.  Having people with different interests brings a refreshing vitality to the course.  One of the things you ask from a collaborator is passion – and there’s plenty going around.

In the past, I’ve learnt that programming films can bring demons out of people.  But thankfully, no demons showed up – we all passed the test and came out with a focused, genuinely decent program.  There’s a good, friendly group here and I’m looking forward to working in whatever team I end up with.

Out of all the briefs, I’m completely infatuated with the BFI Gothic Season one.  The genre is historically and aesthetically rich.  And it’s the insane, groundbreaking ancestor of some of my favourite stories.  The collaboration with Compass Presents could potentially result in the perfect physical manifestation and sensory experience for people to behold and fear.

The immersive cinema aspect is the real hook.   I see my future in film directing and this event seems to be harmoniously congruent with that kind of work.   The event will require showmanship and an inspired, coherent theme that will dictate every creative decision made.  It will also need a fierce loyalty to details – because the details will matter when figuring out how to direct the audience’s imagination to that eerie, sinister place we’ll be taking them to.