The sound rises, he runs slowly but steadily, sickle in hand. His feet kick the dust up as he runs and he throws the sickle into the air just as it is about to hit the person crouching in fear, the hero runs in the opposite direction and catches it. The gang runs towards him but he turns around, lifts the attacker by the arms and slams him to the ground. He holds the next guy by the neck and throws him into the air, he bends backwards and slowly bounces off the ground.
Yes, it’s a film scene. No, there are no stunt doubles. No VFX. No, it hasn’t been made on a budget of 80 crore. No, it doesn’t have fight sequence directors or choreographers from ‘Umrika’. ’No, it doesn’t have Vijay, Ajith, Mahesh Babu or Allu Arjun in it. Only the audio has the monotonous lilt of Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu. Otherwise, this scene has about 14 school going boys from Venkateshwara Puram, a small village in Nellore district. The scenes though, are on par with any high budget movie, the camera angles, the editing, the shots, the direction, the acting and every little stunt are impeccable. And all this is shot on a regular Redmi android phone.
If you haven't yet seen it, there's this viral video where these kids recreate perfectly the mass-y fight scene from Mahesh Babu's latest release.
Over 5 lakh people have watched this particular scene we are talking about when it released on Mahesh Babu’s birthday on August 9. Anyone who has managed to set eyes on the video has only given the young boys an outpouring of praise. One filmmaker remarked — I can see a Spielberg, Thelma Schoonmaker, Roger Deakins and a Jackie Chan all in one scene. But this isn’t the first video the boys have made, they have done their own version of over 40 scenes from top Telugu films and a couple from Tamil films too. Two young men are mainly behind these videos — Laayiq Shaikh and Kiran M - Shaikh edits the videos and Kiran directs them. The childhood friends have been film fanatics since they were very little and shoot these videos while also doing odd jobs to fend for themselves.
Kiran’s father, a welder, passed away when he was only in the ninth standard. Since then, the young man has been doing odd jobs and currently works at a tea shop. Kiran and Shaikh use any spare time they have to shoot scenes, songs and even short films. The duo’s Instagram page is filled with dance videos too. This video that Kiran and Shaikh decided to shoot as a tribute to Mahesh Babu, was being planned for a long time before the actor’s birthday. However, they weren’t able to get adults to shoot the video, so they asked the kids in the village to act in their sequence.
“Munna, the boy who plays Mahesh’s character in the sequence was cast first and then he brought in all his friends to do the rest of the roles. We shot it in one and half days and then took just three hours to edit it. We decided to shoot fight scenes because a lot of people today do imitation videos of dance and comedy, so we thought that doing fight scenes could be unique,” Kiran said.
Shaikh uses the Kinemaster software on his mobile phone to edit the videos and is a self-taught editor. However, coordinating 14 children and to get them all to work together and shoot the scenes in such an impeccable manner is not an easy job but the duo enjoy every minute of shooting.
The video was also shared by the director of Sarileru Neekevvaru Anil Ravipudi who applauded the teenagers’ efforts in recreating the scene and called it extraordinary. Many other dignitaries from the Telugu film industry have appreciated the efforts of the boys as well. Both the boys are working towards one day getting into the film industry. Kiran wants to become a director and Shaikh wants to become an editor. They certainly have the talent and now, we just have to wait and see if the world will give the children an opportunity to showcase their oozing talent in a few years.
Watch the video here —
