Meet Nile Zaman of Cutting an Edge Productions in Sepulveda Boulevard

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nile Zaman.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
It all starts with a dream and I have been a dreamer since my childhood. It was an impulse; suddenly my head would start creating stories, based on whatever was available to my eyes, be it lamps, biscuits, the ceiling, walls in the bathroom, the whole world was my muse. When I think about it now, I probably feel it was due to my lapse in concentration in studies that I often intended to get distracted and make stories in my endless, limitless, infinite mind. I was also crazy about superhero figures; for hours and hours, I would be busy with these figures making sounds of fire and car, bangs and crashes, imagining these figures were warriors protecting my bed, guarding my life. Being in India, the fascination for the theatres are imbibed in us, at a large scale; a movie is a perfect outing for a family and has been popular since centuries when there was no entertainment for a family to enjoy together, as a whole. Watching films was an activity is enjoyed since childhood, I loved the characters, drama, sound, the dark movie halls and the air-condition in the burning heat of my city, the smell of popcorn and the quietness of the threaten. On my 16th Birthday, while I was studying commerce for my family business, I finally dared to tell my father about my interest in film-making. Since that day my life has just changed as it made so much more sense to do something that you so passionately cherish and love, I decided I wouldn’t have it any other way. I finally completed my commerce in High Schooling and went to study Media Science in Kolkata, India. Kolkata is extremely rich in culture and has contributed immensely to Indian and to World cinema . During my tenure as a student in media, I started with hands-on film-making. After my college classes were over, I would go and learn about the different cameras, starting from celluloid to digital. I strongly feel digitization has been the biggest sensation in the process of film making, its liberties and swanky features gets you rolling from the word go. This advent allowed young filmmakers like me to make a film without rethinking much about production, as the cost of these digital cameras were much lesser than the celluloid camera. My first film, Anarchy, a college project, expresses a man’s struggle to overcome his past that haunted him till he was contrived to become an Anarchist. The Cinema was a 45 minutes short feature delineating some brutal actions and touching a few sensitive notes. The making of this film was the perfect base I required to kick start my film making fantasy.

Soon I realized it was time to take a bigger step in life, that is when I decided to move to LOS ANGELES to learn cinema at the highest level, New York Film Academy is one of the most reputed institutions for Media since its inception. Its hands-on learning technique gives us an amazing experience about film making, in a short period of time. My desire to be associated with NYFA was predominantly because of the manner in which it nourishes an amateur to become a competent professional. It was the perfect opportunity for me to sharpen my skills as a filmmaker. NYFA’s location in Los Angeles campus made it immensely convenient for me to get the Hollywood feel. Finally, it was time for me to direct my Thesis film, So I started writing my short film ‘The Chefs’, which was about two Ex Girlfriends who find themselves competing with each other in a cooking competition. Their past is a big obstacle in this competition and the result is something nobody expects. I was considerably happy with the way ‘The chefs’ performed well in film festivals. Having three awards under its bag at different film festivals, including the prestigious “California International Film Festival.” The team were very happy the hard-work they put was finally paying off.

After successfully finishing my Masters in the NEW YORK FILM ACADEMY in Los Angeles and winning award at California International Film Festival for my short film ‘the Chef’s’ under our home production, With the similar core team we launched ourselves into the food marketing industry. My team and I got hired by a Company called Clorder .on teaming up with them we got access to over 150 restaurants to sell our services. The response from day one was phenomenal for us. We kept getting calls from clients to come back and shoot more. Our shooting and editing technique worked and we ended up with 100 videos in less than a year. While tasting good success in our venture with food marketing, we couldn’t keep film away from us. We were working in the distribution of our short film in film festivals and trying to gather our ideal script for the next home production. Infact weekends, which was to be our holiday, my team and I would freelance as crew members in different sets to not be away from the process of film-making. Our home production cutting edge production managed some awesome content that we are proud of. Teaming up with order boosted our entry to a new market too. Along this journey, few members of my team are the closest to my heart. I personally think I have a great chemistry with my director of photography, which is so important because we form core of the team. I’ve had an opportunity to learn so much about sound from my closest companion who has worked in the biggest projects and is truly a sound expertise. I truly feel something works out well when there are great team members and I’m surely delighted to have this team with me. At a personal level, I want to make a difference with my content every day.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
BUDGET and getting GOOD CONTENT has always been a struggle for us. That could be the reason we do not have work to show in great abundance. As a team, though we feel content that we hold our nerves even now and try to do the best we can in delivering satisfactory work through good content. Initially, when we started our short film “The Chefs,” it was a very vigorous process due to the limitations of resources and budget constraints. We needed a studio and we couldn’t afford the big studios in Burbank or Central LA, ultimately we were left with no other options but to shoot in much cheaper locations. The film was shot in Skidrow which is not the safest place to be in LOS ANGELES, especially during the nights. Having majorly a female member crew, I had to be on my toes while directing the film so that everyone was completely safe. On the other hand, as luck would have it, we faced major issues in the area but when the situation is that intense we bought out the best in us to resolve matters and resume shooting.

Meanwhile, we decided we needed to get into the food industry by adding fascinating combinations and creating a formula of food visuals with slow motion effect and a specific genre of music for relativity but restricting the video beneath 45 seconds, we faced loads of apprehension and criticisms about the idea. Being from film background shaped initial clients to think we couldn’t understand the complexity of time for advertisements of food items. Finally, we decided to go without instincts to give it a shot few times, I have to be honest the earlier outputs were extremely sub-standard. We didn’t really stop though, still tried and kept doing. Today I feel extremely satisfied with our results. With over 150 restaurants in one year really feels amazing. We have always suffered in proper equipment due to budget constraints, but we build our equipment’s along the way with patience. While starting video marketing, we started off with a Canon 5D and Sony FS7, but slowly we bought three lenses, a camera rig the dig Ronen, led lights, the backdrop for food photography and videography. We excelled.

Cutting an Edge Productions – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We are an in-house production company called ‘cutting an edge productions’ for independent ventures like short films, events, food marketing videos and documentaries. After completing two short films, few events and over 100 short food videos in LA. We are working in making our first crime reality documentary on a real-life incident that happened in India.

Our selection technique for the content we desire to create is extremely vigorous, we step into the process only when we are 100 percent satisfied about what we plan to establish. Our short film ‘The Chefs’ had flaws in many departments and areas however it didn’t disappoint when it came down to the content. For us surely the story is the king. For us, it’s just not another process, for us its an opportunity. An opportunity to create some bloody good content. Most of my teammates have been film-making students at some point in their life, we have learned the principals of film-making, but we all have our own contemporary touch to it. Being in film school exposes one to a lot of tweaking, adjusting and applying the presence of mind in a dynamic environment of a film set. This adaptability trait allows all the technicians working their best for maximum output.

At the beginning we were a bit fearful like everyone else when they get into something new, we settled for a new technique and approach to our videos by limiting the time under 45 seconds for each video though display entire video footage in slow motion which is 60FPS instead of standard 24FPS and have music attached to it, Soon every restaurant started wanting these videos we initiated, Sometimes we would shoot in 4-5 restaurants a day. We just kept shooting and editing constantly and in no time we marked a big number of our 100th video. The best things about the job are the diversity of restaurants, we got an opportunity to make videos for restaurants of the different price range, for us every video we submitted to our clients were equally important, it’s like having a baby. You can’t really like one and not the other, for us every video has the same passion and dedication required every-time.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
With upmost humbleness, I definitely think the proudest moment is yet to come. But in this circumstance, there has to be 3 to be precise –

*When my Thesis film was screened at the Warner Brothers studio

*The time our short film was selected in the “California International Film Festival’.

*After completing my 100th food marketing video.

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