The Malaysian filmmaker who went from a childhood laptop to Los Angeles
PETALING JAYA: For Malaysian filmmaker and editor Praboo T Arivananthan, what began with watching films on the big screen as a child has evolved into an international career spanning feature films, documentaries and post-production.
The 30-year-old Melaka native, better known as Praboo Ariva, developed an interest in filmmaking after watching The Terminal with his father in 2004 and being introduced to the original Star Wars films by his mother.
A year later, he began experimenting with Windows Movie Maker on his father’s old laptop.
“I remember putting images and clips together, adding music, changing the order of things, and discovering that simply moving one image could completely change how a moment felt,” he said.
“I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but looking back, that was really where editing started for me,” he told theSun.
By 17, Praboo had edited his first feature film, KID, which later received a theatrical release in Malaysia.
His journey subsequently took him to Los Angeles, where he studied editing at the American Film Institute (AFI) Conservatory, becoming the first Malaysian selected for its Editing discipline and the second Malaysian alumnus of the conservatory.
Following his studies, Praboo was invited to remain at AFI as a Post Production Specialist, where he worked with emerging filmmakers and provided creative and editorial guidance throughout the post-production process.
He said his ability to communicate across languages and cultures also became an important part of his work, particularly in an international filmmaking environment.
“I understand Mandarin, Hindi and Tamil in addition to English, and AFI brings together filmmakers from many different parts of the world,” he said.
“My job was never to impose my creative voice on someone else’s film. It was to understand what they were trying to say and help them find the strongest way to say it through their own voice.”
Praboo has also explored how technology can support filmmaking. In 2025, he and fellow AFI alumnus April Yang developed an automated workflow that converted editorial image markers into stills that could be shared with cinematographers and other collaborators.
The project led to an invitation to speak at a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) forum.
Today, Praboo works as an Associate Post Producer at DramaBox, where he oversees aspects of post-production, collaborates with editors and helps shape storytelling for short-form vertical series.
He also continues to work on independent and feature projects.
His credits include Presumption of Death, recently released on Amazon Prime Video, while he serves as Post Production Consultant on Dreams in Nightmares, scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on Aug 21.
Another notable project is Memories of Love Returned, on which he worked as an online editor. The documentary went on to receive multiple awards at film festivals internationally.
Despite his growing list of credits, Praboo said his motivation remains rooted in the same curiosity that began with a childhood fascination with movies.
“It’s kind of crazy when I trace everything back,” he said.
“I went from being an eight, nine-year-old kid in Melaka watching The Terminal, to discovering Windows Movie Maker on my dad’s old laptop a year later, to editing a feature film as a teenager, and eventually moving halfway across the world to Los Angeles to continue building a life around storytelling.”
“The tools have changed considerably since Windows Movie Maker, but the reason I do it really hasn’t changed. I still want to understand how stories work, help filmmakers tell them better, and create something that makes an audience feel.”
