A tutor at the South Seas Film and Television school has been putting into action what he has taught over the past year. On March 3, course tutor and post-production facilities manager, Amit Tripuraneni finished his first feature length film Memories of Tomorrow. The film is a thriller and follows two assasins living in New Zealand as their past starts to catch up with them. He directed the film and says the project has been a labour of love. "We made this film without any budget and no official funding. All the money to make the film came out of our own pockets, about $ 15,000. All the actors and crew worked for free and we filmed over the weekends."

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"It was a real challenge trying to shuffle everything around to fit in with everyone's schedules. Some weekends there would just be three people there - the camera person, me and the audio person, other days there would be eight or nine crew."
Mr. Tripuraneni began writing the script for the film on January 1, 2004. He says it was only 50 pages of double-spaced typing, so there was a lot of improvisation.

"The brief for the actors was that as long as they knew what the scene meant, it didn't matter what they said. Sometimes I would run scenes for five or six minutes. I wouldn't yell cut until I had what I wanted from the scene. The cameraman would start shaking and the audio man would be looking at me wondering when I was going to end it."
He says there is not much dialogue in the film, the story is potrayed through how they move."That's why we didn't have fixed lines, as long as they were in the character it didn't matter what they said."

He says the actors and crew were all really talented and took pride in their work. "Everyone took ownership of the project. I've found that if you tell them what to do you'll only get so much, but if you let them have the freedom you'll get so much more," he says "That's why the film is getting such a great response, everyone was passionate about it."

Mr. Tripuraneni has had a couple of industry screenings and already there is interest in the film from a couple of American distributors. "They can't believe we have done this without any funding. For an average low-budget feature film you would spend $ 100,000 to $ 150,000, so it is quite remarkable."

He plans to submit the 86 minute film to a couple of film festivals, and ultimately hopes the film will benefit all the people who worked on it.