A story-driven pitch film for Ola Electric — a couple's evening ride across Bangalore, shot entirely at night on real city roads with anamorphic lenses and no artificial lights.
Client Ola Electric
Format Investor Pitch Film
Role Cinematography & Creative Direction
Director Sriram Iyer
Agency Verrocchios Workways Pvt Ltd
Year 2019
01 — The Film
Investor Pitch · 2019
02 — Context
An evening across Bangalore — built from a script, shot in the real city.
The Brief
The brief was a pitch film for Ola Electric — not a spec reel, but a story that put the scooter in the middle of a real Bangalore evening. Something investors could feel rather than just read about.
The Storyline
The story came from Ola's copywriters. A young man gets a message from his girlfriend — dinner plans, a restaurant in the city. He rides out. Midway, she sends an update changing the location; the notification arrives on the scooter's screen. He reroutes, spots a flower shop along the way, stops — the bouquet goes into the 50L under-seat boot. He finds her. Simple, warm, completely Bangalorean.
The Visual Development
Our role was to take that script and find it in the real city. Every scene needed an actual Bangalore location — the right restaurant lane, the right flower shop on the right kind of street corner, the right stretch of road for the notification moment. We chose to shoot at night, letting the city's own light become the entire visual palette: sodium streetlamps, neon storefronts, LED hoardings, the orange halo of Bangalore's intersections.
03 — The Work
The combination of anamorphic lenses with ARRI's open gate system gave the film a look that felt larger than the night around it. The characteristic horizontal flares — streaking off every streetlamp, every passing headlight, every neon sign — stopped being artefacts and became atmosphere. We didn't fight the available light; we built the visual language around it.
Bangalore's night roads have a texture that no lighting rig can replicate: the warm orange of sodium intersections, the cool blue-white of LED hoardings, the spill from restaurants and storefronts. Every location was chosen as much for its light as its geography. Two full nights. No artificial sources.
Anamorphic lenses with ARRI open gate
Zero artificial lighting — city sodium, neon and LED only
Locations scouted for light quality as much as story fit
Two full nights on live Bangalore roads
Scooter screen and boot space framed as natural story beats
Ola's copywriters gave us the story. Our job was to find it — to walk Bangalore and match each scene to a real place that felt lived-in rather than dressed. The restaurant lane, the flower shop corner, the stretch of road where the notification arrives on screen: every beat needed a location that made it believable without looking like a location.
Working with director Sriram Iyer and Verrocchios Workways, the creative direction kept product features invisible as features — the 50L boot is a man buying flowers on a whim, the connected screen is a couple rerouting mid-ride. The scooter doesn't demonstrate anything. It just fits into the evening.
Real Bangalore locations matched to each story beat
Product features embedded as natural moments, not demonstrations
Warm, romantic tone consistent across all scenes
Story-first approach — lifestyle over specification
Script-to-street visual development across two nights
04 — Credits
Client
Ola Electric
Agency
Verrocchios Workways Pvt Ltd
Director
Sriram Iyer
Cinematography
Amal Rajendran
Creative Direction
Amal Rajendran
Format
Investor Pitch Film
Year
2019