A tribute to Writer Sujatha!! The 4th round of Naalaya Iyakunar Season - 5!! Options: Based on a short story or real incident Being huge fans of Writer Sujatha, we started exploring a lot of his short stories. For those not familiar with writer Sujatha, here is his wiki page - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sujatha_Rangarajan Sujatha, a prolific writer who has penned the dialogues for most of the works of filmmakers such as Mani Rathnam & Shankar!! Sujatha has a very distinct style of writing that is extremely modern and slick. He has the uncanny knack of describing an entire world in under two sentences. Idadhu Orathil was a three page Sujatha story. Sujatha never really created the characters in the office but the atmosphere was still created. It was a pure coincidence that he had named his protagonist Raghavan that sparked an idea for a different ending for us as well. So all due credits for our second resolution rightfully should go to Sujatha as well. Having settled on Idadhu Orathil, there was immense pressure on us to live up to the expectations of a Sujatha story. More so, not to at least tamper too much with it that it looses its authenticity. In order to keep the genuineness intact, we decided to set the story in the same time frame that Sujatha had written this story - 1950s - 1960s. This immediately brought the idea of black and white into our story contrasting it with the color of the crime scene After making a contemporary one such as Ellam Maya, Idadhu Orathil saw a 180 degree shift in casting. Sudharshan, Sharanya, Shreyas, Suchi, Master Shivaji, Raghu, Santa & Mani Ram brought a new perspective/look to the entire film helping set it in the right decade. Our endless sessions with Sudharshan (the main protagonist who was pretty much there in almost every frame) and the subtle play of Sharanya as the wife helped establish the relationship between the two characters. Suchi, Shreyas and Master Shivaji added spice to the office scenes. Mani as the art connoisseur, aced through his part with such ease that we were all spellbound. From a cinematography standpoint, Ashwin & Chinniah got their hands quite dirty. A vertigo shot (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom), a 25 feet top angle shot for the crime scene and VFX planning for the gallery scenes were some of the highlights of the camera work that went behind this film. From the pre-production and art side, Chitra, Viji & Guhan were heavily involved in the planning and execution. The art department meticulously planned every frame from putting a pendulum clock out there to making a stand for serving tea glasses to what not The pendulum also inspired the opening shot in the office scene to show the office! Of course as always, our production gurus Raghu & Santa ensured that everything converged for us on the day of the shoot. Post was very different on this film. We first attacked the VFX portions of the gallery scene as Vidya put together the first edit. Then came the black and white decision that upset our Lighting Chief, Chinniah The most important aspect about going Black and White is that it needs to be planned ahead of the shoot. It is not a great idea to go B&W after the shoot is done. Chinniah was rightfully upset but of course after negotiating with him for quite a bit we agreed that B&W was the way to go. That was not going to be enough. There was the character rose color pudavai that had to be highlighted. We had to color just the saree. It took Vidya 24 hours (2 12 hour sessions) to meticulously color every frame. It went to a point where she wouldnt stop and I had to pull the plug else we would have never delivered the film After all this was done, I thought now the film should look good. So we played it and I did not like it one bit. The film felt dead. I was super dejected and we hit one of my favorite dinner joints munching away in frustration. My phone beeped. Vidyashankar had sent me a sample that he had created for the film. This was the first sample. I got all excited and played it on my phone as I couldnt wait to watch it along with the video - (note: it is never a good idea to do this, at least for most parts ). The music was kick ass. It had the right mix of thrill, the 1950s - 1960s flavor I was looking for and the bgm for the opening crime scene definitely pushed me to the edge of my car seat. VS had nailed it. I got home. Ran into my garage. Plugged it in and watched it with the video. It was spot on. I called VS and said this is exactly what we need. Freeze it! VS did not talk for a second. He just asked me if I was sure. I said Yes. VS started screaming You have lost your creative senses to like this piece. Dont compromise etc... etc... I dont recollect the exact words after this point since they felt like poetry to me from VS I just told VS in the end. VS, this is what the film needs. I dont want to change anything. VS is not the type to let go easily He continued to pull new tunes, make minor modifications here and there. Every single one of them was caught and removed It is very important that once you get it right (rare to get it right the first time but once you do), it is very difficult to not touch it after that Idhadhu Orathil was made and we as a team felt that we had not let Sujatha down!! Here we present to you, Idhadhu Orathil - a tribute to Writer Sujatha!! - Team Kaapi Tea Sudharshan Ganesan Sharanya Madhavan Shreyas Srinivasan Daya Pv Suchi Annasami Raghuraman Ramamurthy Santhanakrishnan Ramaswamy Mani Ram Ashwin Radhakrishnan Chinniah Poosapadi Guhan Vaithialingam Chitra Venkateswaran Vijayalakshmi Gs Vidya V. Raghavan Vidyashankar KR :) :)
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 17:28:30 +0000