Now, an online platform to learn from the film experts

How Rahul Srinivas and team put together LevelUp Learning, an online streaming platform that currently offers courses on filmmaking, music composition and others

In 2020, during the pandemic-induced lockdown, Rahul Srinivas’ phone conversation with a college friend got him thinking. “My friend, who hailed from Theni, studied Engineering with me but nursed a passion towards filmmaking,” recalls Rahul, “So, he enrolled in a film school with money that he got from pledging his mother’s jewels. A year later, after passing out, he was stuck without a support system; producers weren’t greenlighting his scripts, and he didn’t know what to do. And then, the pandemic happened.”

That long telephone call changed his perspective. “It was an opportunity,” says Rahul, who has an entrepreneurship background, “Indians have no go-to online platform to learn creative arts. Also, most courses are completely in English, with examples that aspirants cannot relate to.”

And so, Rahul, along with a team of 15 professionals, set up a Chennai-based platform called LevelUp Learning, which hopes to enable people to learn from the best. Kickstarting this week, the current courses, priced at about ₹1,500-2,000, will have about three hours of video content each, with names like Karthik Subbaraj (filmmaking), G Venket Ram (photography), Anthony Gonsalvez (editing), Ravi Basrur (music composition) and DRK Kiran (art direction) on board. The courses are more entertainment-focussed rather than educational, and broken down into separate shorter video segments that have the experts breaking down finer aspects in their area of expertise.

So, how different is this from a film school? “Our biggest aim was to come up with high-quality content in an affordable manner, especially for people who do not have a lot of time and money to spend. This will serve as a good entry point to their passion.” And so, the target group is both the passionist and hobbyist, as Rahul puts it. “For those very serious about it, the information and access to communities will be a big takeaway. Those communities will not only be useful for touching base with mentors or like-minded people, but will also enable discussion on a latest film, techniques used, etc. But for those who are into it as a hobby, there’s the convenience of accessing the courses whenever they’re free.”

Visit leveluplearning.in for details