Meet Divyansh Sharma of Origins Productions in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Divyansh Sharma.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Ever since a young age, my parents encouraged me to participate in extracurricular activities. Be it debate, slam poetry, theatre or track and field events. It gave me an enormous amount of confidence and I immediately fell in love with the idea of a stage. A moment where everything stopped and I could offer something to the world. I could share ideas, thoughts and in some ways the truest reflection of myself. The more I engaged on stage the more I realized ; That on the some very lucky days I could inspire people and I could affect their lives for good. As I worked on my craft as an actor. These lucky days started to happen more frequently. And I realized I have a very deep desire to help people. And I wanted to help as many as I could through the medium of storytelling.

And then films happened. From Fellini to Tarantino, to Brando to Daniel-Day Lewis. I was spellbound. I would come from school and just watch and rewatch their films and not only would I leave the film with a better mood but would have novel ideas for conversations. Thoughts from a story in a visual medium and one that I could revisit a thousand times. And geography didn’t matter. I was sleeping in India but dreaming in American Cinema.

Once I graduated my high school. I informed my parents of my decision to pursue acting and directing. They were supportive as always. I submitted to a bunch of drama schools and received an amazing scholarship from the AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing arts for a B.F.A in acting. Next thing I know I am on a flight to L.A to pursue my dreams.

My time at Amda was amazing I polished my craft, learned about American culture, about people. Portrayed characters from the canon of classical theatre like Peer Gynt, Richard III and Othello and graduated with honors.

After graduation, I signed with an A-List Agency and booked two global commercials for Google and Apple. I loved working on the apple commercial because I got to play Elvis. An Indian Elvis. If you would have told me I would play Elvis in my teens I would have never believed it but that’s the magic of film. As cultures age and the zeitgeist evolves, avenues open up that never existed few years ago.

In my college years, I had always wanted to write, direct and act in my own project. I was a bookworm devouring books in my college library like nothing you would have seen. I was going through directing books of 500-700 pages in a day. Staying up late. Waking up early. I was obsessed with learning about other jobs involved in films besides acting. So I decided it was time to give it a try. I had tried my hand at spoken word in college and I wrote 10-minute plays and got positive responses from the audiences.

So I decided to explore the medium of spoken word and social media and ended up writing my first short film ” Graffiti”. It is a film about a spoken word artist who becomes a pop culture icon for love after he refuses half a million dollars to publish his spoken words about his deceased girlfriend.

So I built my team, hired people, fired people. Auditioned people. Learned my lines, chose our camera lenses and showed up on our locations and knocked the film out. I edited the film myself and since we were short on cash I ended up composing the music for the film too. Luckily the film spoke with audiences and we won over 30+ awards at film festivals across the world including Los Angeles Film Awards and New York Film Awards and premiered the film at the Chinese Theatre at Golden State Film Festival.

I learned so much more than I could have ever hoped for from this film experience. And it also bolstered support in my abilities from my film investors. So I received a bigger budget for my next project.

This time I wanted to make a film that would primarily be a drama and deal with intense subjects. And time passed and life happened and I landed on my next film Cigarettes in December. A film about two very damaged people who combat identity, assault and racism on a path to healing. But this time I knew how things worked better than I did before. I had a lot more support, my college was gracious enough to allow me to film inside Campus for a location. I had people much more experienced than me guiding me with a team sent from the gods : Comprising of friends, family and the best professionals in their field.

I was playing a sexual assault survivor and I attended several support group meetings. Talked to actual survivors while writing the film. Gained 30 pounds, lost some muscle to portray my character with total honesty and watched countless hours of documentary footage on these subjects. The day came we shot the film overnight two back to back days. I edited it with a team, had a music composer this time. How times change and finished the film. The film is now making the festival run and recently won Best Drama and the Best Actor award for my performance in the film from Los Angeles Film Awards. Awards that would have been impossible without our incredible cast and crew.

I then got lucky where my college roommate and long-time friend gathered funding and launched his production company Origins and asked me to sign on to be the Primary Lead Actor in the next four projects of the company and write two of them as well. We are currently working on our first feature film ” A Dream in Frames” the screenplay to which has also won awards and I hope my mission to help people reaches a whole new platform with the feature film.

And that wraps up my story of being in the Arts till this moment.

Has it been a smooth road?
Well to begin with I had to work extensively on my American dialect. There are certain sounds and intonations that are so different from my native dialect as a Hindi speaking Indian.

The next step was to be seen as more than just an actor who was Indian in America and I found out as long as I did my work and showed up to the audition well-prepared majority of the times it all worked out for the good.

That being said there are certainly times when I have walked into auditions and been asked to do a reading in my native dialect. Alot of the times If the story has a demand I’m game for it but sometimes it makes no sense and I respectfully decline. Perception is a very powerful thing and for so long Indians have been portrayed a certain way. And to be fair you cannot expect an accurate representation of an Indian from a non-Indian writer. Which is also why I have taken to making my own films by writing, directing and producing them. Although a high-risk venture, this is my contribution to rebrand Indians in Hollywood and break the status quo.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Origins Productions has simple but very effective mission statement. The company aims to ” Re-invent the cinematic standard one story at a time”. I really like it. Because it allows for innovation and encourages artists to write and tell stories in their own independent unfiltered voice much like how VOYAGELA encourages the voice of the interviewee to be represented as such.

I at Origins am signed on to make four different Features with complete creative control to write, direct and act in the film the way I see fit with Anthony Villanueva, the Co-CEO and founder of the company.

I believe the thing that I am most proud of at Origins is our focus on innovation, storytelling, and resourcefulness. Film industry is such a rigid industry when it comes to pumping out films as products with a set way of looking to others for help. But since we were a team of actors and writers we never went through a traditional route. We genuinely believe if the story is strong and you believe in the project, then the story must be told. Our mindset is that resources are never a problem, one just needs to be resourceful.

We have successfully made two different short films that have had successful film festival runs. We are in pre-production of our first feature film with three more ready to go with a T.V show in talks and all of this has happened in the span of not even a whole year. Universe has been kind but all of us at Origins we just love storytelling and when you love something you are ready to go to the ends of the world and back for it.

If you ask me what sets us apart. The answer is simple : Our integration of AI with Film-making. Origins’s is partnered with Poletus. An AI-company which is a government tier 1 vendor in India and they loved our films and our mission so much they allowed us access to their proprietary AI technology which is the brainchild of the insanely talented CEO Rishabh Sharma. Origins makes use of this AI to write and edit films in a very unique way which has opened up alot of channels of what all is possible in the future and we are very excited for it.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
For film industry. LA is the place you want to be. I totally would recommend starting a film-related – entrepreneurial venture in L.A. You have the best of the best of film Industry professionals in L.A.

If I could change something it would be the cost of Film permits in L.A. As a film-maker, it bleeds you when you are just starting out but I also understand the inconvenience that could be caused to people going about their lives from the presence of a film crew. Since it is a mini traveling village.

That being said a lack of resources or geography should never stop one from telling the story they love. One has to lead by example. After all, You gotta be the change you wish to see in the world. Right?

Contact Info:

• Website: www.originsprs.com
• Email: info@originsprs.com

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.