Ashish Chachlani has been making people laugh with his videos. The popular YouTuber and comedian who has a huge fan following, has made his debut as a director with a horror short film— Aakhri Safar. Why horror and the young content creator says, “Because I was over doing the same stuff. I wanted to experiment with something else.” He says that he always wanted to become a director. “Horror, is one thing that I have always loved and a lot can be tweaked around it. I also wanted to do something new for my viewers,” he adds.
The short film released last week and has since garnered over 10 million views. It features Ashish, Deepak Sampat and Akshata Sonawane.
Talking about Aakhri Safar, he says he got inspired by reading stories on social media. “I had read a story on Quora. I was coming back from Mumbai and my driver asked me whether we should take the Aarey Road, but I didn’t wanted to because I have heard many scary stories about it. I was willing to take the long route. I went on Quora and searched for ‘ghost stories of Aarey Road’ and found so many,” he says, adding that all the stories were quite predictable so he thought about ‘giving it a twist’. “What if the entire episode is a prank to save money? Once I thought of the idea, I wanted to work on it,” he shares.
How different was the experience from creating content for his YouTube channel and he replies, “A lot goes into this medium as compared to creating videos. The videos I make are more into my comfort zone. But we had to work hard on this film because we had to shoot it at midnight on the road with a professional camera. It felt like we were shooting a movie. The whole experience was very professional but fun,” he says.
He shares that the whole experience has taught him several lessons— the most important one being that ‘you need to make it crisp’. “You have to play with the audience. Just because you have got 15 million subscribers, you cannot take them for granted. You have to watch your own content as an audience. You too need to enjoy that content.”
Is direction in his wishlist and he says, “Agar sabki dua rahi toh zaroor (If I have everyone’s blessings then definitely). I want to be a director. I have written a lot of scripts and I have been writing stories since childhood. One day, I will get into it.” Because the film has got positive response, he says that he will work on something similar soon.
He says that directing and acting at same time can be challenging because one tends to become conscious. “You keep thinking, ‘Is it coming well’. So I need someone on the set to understand my vision and tell me if I am doing fine. I have Kunal or my brother on the set whom I explain what I want and can get out those emotions out of me. Sometimes, I am giving my 100 percent but it doesn’t come out,” he explains.
