Animation Filmmaker Varun Mehta, has recently won an award for his film ‘The Wonder Stone’ at Summer International 2012 Contest at Santa Barbera, US organized by the film community Film Skillet Online.
Film Skillet is an online community from LA, USA that marks the excellence of short film and independent filmmakers from all over the world. The site organized an online competition this july 2012 to get the best from the categories of drama, fiction, horror and Science Fiction.
The Wonder Stone is a film about six friends and their interaction with an alien stone that comes to earth for mysterious reasons. After inhabiting super powers from the alien stone, The kids develop their powers and misuses it for their own greed. Finally evolves a message to save earth and nature…the kids have to fight their own fears to achieve an impossible triumph.
Speaking to Animationxpress.com, Varun Mehta, Said,”Our Earth is dying everyday. Pollution, Over Population, natural calamities, Deforestation has caused cracks in the map of our earth. And What’s Worse? We are so busy in our lives that we don’t look up on to see how much our planet is suffering. Well it’s a fact that no matter how the adults try, but it’s a fact that they have been more or less a failure in bringing a difference. But Children can learn a lot in their tender age and they can really take up the issues to work for the planet. This was the main concept but I wanted to make it more appealing by bringing ‘supernatural’ elements. My basic idea was to give it a ‘Universal Appeal’ with some action and special effects so that people can both enjoy and learn about saving the earth. That’s how the idea of ‘an alien stone’ was born.”
The Film had its premiere at VMP(Varun Mehta Productions) Studio last year besides that The Film was also screened at Chennai’s International Children Film Festival.
Talking about the challenges faced Varun said,” The film was itself a Challenge. First to create an alien stone, than the superpowers for each child, fight sequences, every scene was a challenge in itself. For each character I had to design a special design for powers I just had to think and bring it on board. It’s a science fiction based film with a message.”
Recently, Varun re-launched his studio and office with a new name called ‘Wiz’ which stands for Wizard. apart from that he is Working on an animated short film called Survivor. It is a story about a kid who watches his village in horror every year being washed by floods.