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Are The Lives Of Silicon Valley Engineers Too Good To Be True?
Paving The Path For An Alomost Two-Dimensional TV and PC Monitors

ARE THE LIVES OF SILICON VALLEY ENGINEERS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!?
By Meena Yeggina

BUGABOO - A Film by Silicon Valey Engineers

Doing the impossible is as Indian-American Silicon Valley engineers as it gets. First, the reputation of being the model immigrants and later help push the DOW over the 10,000 mark. Now, they create a movie that tells the story of a successful, well-behaved-yet-bored-with-life engineers who seek to solve this "Bugaboo" in their mind.

We've had lots of fun making the film," gushed Lalitha Rajgopalan who took care of the Production/marketing part of the movie. "We'll hope it'll be a success. If it doesn't, it's okay."

Director Sujit Saraf is not that accommodating. "If the movie is not recognized well, I'll be definitely disappointed," he said.

The movie has a lot going for it. First, a group of dedicated and talented artists and specialists. Second, young director Surjit Saraf, who along with Sanjay Rajgopalan founded Naatak three years ago. Naatak has a steady fan following and Saraf himself directed three successful plays. The organization has the reputation of producing very hip yet humor tinged plays.

"We were not interested in producing a major thought provoking or artistic flick. It's a light hearted thing based on the chaos theory," said Bharathi Ramavarjula, who's part of the production t eam. Explaining further, Ramavarjula reveals that, bapu, the main character of the film, wonders what happens if some random disturbances were introduced in the seemingly calm, well-settled lives of the Silicon Valley engineer.

He takes the advice of Jeevan Ullas Ph.D., a typical Indian character played by Rajiv Nema, another producer of the film.

"Working on a shoe-string budget of $21,000, the group of artists had to simultaneously work in almost all areas from sound to stage setups," said Priya Krishnan, who has taken care of the sets mostly.

BUGABOO is a Silicon Valley film. It has been produced by people who live and work in the Silicon Valley, who have prospered with the hi-tech boom of the nineties. The internet and the personal computer, while creating Silicon Valley, have also created armies of well-paid Indian professionals who lead a curious existence: as professionals they constitute the epicenter of America's recent growth binge, but as individuals they continue to stay inside cocooned, secure Indian communities which are quite divorced from all things American.A group of such engineers defy the even flow of this existence by introducing "random disturbances" into their lives. These deviations from normal routine punctuate the film until they finally lead to a "grand deviance", unthinkable for sober, law-abiding engineers from India. It is then, at the end of the film, that they discover simple solutions to seemingly complex problems in their lives.

BUGABOO does not belittle or ridicule the achievement of Indian professionals in Silicon Valley. It questions the worth of that achievement. It wonders aloud if utopia is really quite dull. BUGABOO is the first film of its kind. It has been made by, of and for Silicon Valley engineers. It could also have a wider appeal among expatriate Indians and Indians in the urban centers of India.

We're not interested in making profits though we'll be extremely happy to collect some extra cash. We just want to break even," said Rajiv Nema.

The movie sounds neat, tasteful and humorous. "It is nothing like Hyderabad Blues, which all said and done is a love story," said Lalitha Rajgopalan. "Bugaboo is about Silicon Valley professionals shot here in the heart of the valley.

So should getting a few more extra millions through a low-budgeted, low-profiled movie impossible for the valley's software engineers? Definitely not for the model Indian-American ones!
 
 

Interview With Director Sujit Saraf

IZ: How did you get the idea of making a film?
SS: Just impulsive. We're used to producing plays. We had a nice predictable crowd of 600 people per play. And they were all reasonably successful. We just wanted extend or go a little further. Movies are a little different from plays but they are only extensions.

IZ: What's your background?
SS: I have experience writing and directing plays. I've done that in India too while I was in IIT, Delhi. Naatak, an organization strated by a group of people turned out to be very successful.

IZ: Who produced the film?
SS: We produced the film. IT took us about $21,000 to complete it. Tony Sehgal, a film student in Stanford shot the film and so is the director of photography. We shot the film in about 6 weekends. We rented the camera from Film Arts Foundation. It took me three months to edit the film.

IZ: What is the duration of the film?
SS: 82 minutes. The movie is in English and is completely shot in the Bay Area.

IZ: What is the crux of the story?
SS: It's about relatively successful engineers. Bugaboo is the bug in your mind which makes life uninteresting inspite of its relative achievements.

IZ: Do you cover the difficulties the professional face like body-shopping for instance?
SS: Not really. Life indeed is very relaxed. No character faces major problems.

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