My First Press Conference

There is always a saying that hard work pays. It always pays off in due season. After all the hard work and running about for our film festival we conducted a press conference at the press club in mount road. The meeting was supposed to start at 11am and we were not very sure if any news papers would ever turn up for the event. Only at 9 in the morning we realized that the press release was not yet ready. Then we had Rachel at our rescue, she typed the press release in just about 10min and after all the early morning confusion we rushed from Palavanthangal to reach numbakkam station at 10. Forgot to mention we went hunting for a net café to take printouts of the press release on our way to palavanthangal station. . As usual, the morning (peak hours, office goers) we could not board the train and I almost fell at one point. So then we reached numbakkam station , and as we reached mount road (thought we would reach there in time) adding up to our misery, all the traffic were blocked and there was a huge political rally(like not to mention the name of that party which was causing nuisance to the public). But thanks to Rachel she was familiar with the route to the club. It was my first experience, I have not attended any press conference before this, a bit of nerveness and excitement too and I wanted to get on to the stage very badly. To much of our dismay we had more than 8different reporters form different news paper organizations that had come. I, with a laptop with me I sat on the stage along with Dinesh, Itch and two of my juniors too. Dinesh started the meet with his opening talk followed by others.

I spoke with Mr. V . Pugazenthi, senior reporter, Dinakaran.. Though a bit of nerve ness creped in , I managed to gather some confidence and spoke. All the big news papers, like Dinamalar, Dinakaran, Rajasthan Patrika came. Also Maalai Sudar, reporter Balamarugan came. Maalai Sudar is the sister concern of News Today (Rachel is working for News Today). A reporter from Vartha had also come. It was a big day for us packed with excitement and anxiety. This will be our first step towards success because we managed to pull the attention of the media and not mention the fact that we had a write up about our event in the Hindu and the Express the previous day. Our HOD was very pleased with the response we had from the media and hope we have the same from all the colleges in the city whom we have invited for the event.

The main highlight of the festival will be the inauguration of the event by actress Rohini. We do have some eminent speakers like Gautam Bhaskaran, film journalist, The Hindu, Hariharan, Director , LV Prasad film institute, Ramakrishna, Regional manager, NFDC and Sudhish Kamath, Film maker(The Four Letter Word). Some of the finest films ever made will be screened like “Wages of Fear”, “Amma Ariyan”, “Not one Less”, “Casablanca”, “Charulatha”, “Pick Pocket” and many more such films.