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Editor Arghyakamal Mitra at work with director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and scriptwriter Shyamal Sengupta looking on. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray |
Editor’s choice
Staring hawk-eyed at two monitors, Arghyakamal Mitra is busy combining a string of shots into sequences in the edit room at Aniruddha’s Lake Gardens office on a December afternoon. A series of frames and lines stretching into graphs flick through the first monitor while Arghyakamal goes click-click on his mouse pad; on the other, he is catching the scenes in motion.
Peering at the screen over his shoulder are Aniruddha and Shyamal Sengupta, script and dialogue writer. After the shooting madness, the director seems to be loving the peace and quiet of his studio. “The basic edit has been done. Right now, we’re trying to fine-tune some of the scenes,” smiles Aniruddha.
But the editor is fidgeting over a conversation sequence involving Prosenjit and Tanusree Shankar. “We’re a bit tense. We’ll be playing the final edit for Shyamalda (Sengupta) and (cinematographer) Ranjan Palit later this evening,” explains Aniruddha.
Shyamal is anything but tense. “I’m not worried if what I see is different from the script I wrote. The script has to die once the film is made. You have to watch it from a new perspective and see how it’s been refined,” he says.
From 25 hours of raw footage, Arghyakamal has filtered a seamless blend of two hours and 10 minutes, which is “the editor’s cut”.
Unlike Aniruddha’s last film Antaheen, which had a “cut-and-dry” pace, Aparajita Tumi will be more “lyrical, dreamy and languorous”, says Arghyakamal. “Every story has its own pace and Aparajita Tumi takes its own time to unfurl. It has newness in terms of its temporal quality and uniformity despite the characters living in the US or in Calcutta.”
As Mr Scissorhands goes about snipping, splicing and polishing the scenes, Aniruddha admits: “You feel bad. Sometimes you feel your arms and legs are being chopped, sometimes you feel it has got better! (Laughs.) But that is because we are emotionally attached to every shot. Arghya starts reacting to the visuals, acting and camerawork with an objective vision.”
While Aniruddha has had his moments of pleading with Arghya for certain helicopter shots, dialogues and movements, “he hasn’t been overbearing”, much to the editor’s delight.
For Arghyakamal, every movie is a new terrain waiting to be explored and he is charged up for it as much as he was for his first. “Personally, I don’t read or look back at the script at all. The script might say ‘it’s a beautiful morning and someone walks by gently’ but if that doesn’t show on screen it holds no meaning. I react to the way it’s been shot and what’s happening on screen.”
Aniruddha agrees. “While the script is the backbone, a film evolves from the way it’s written to the way it’s shot and then edited.”
Arghyakamal has been “lucky” that most directors like “Ritu (Rituparno Ghosh) or Anjan (Dutt)” have been friends first. “And my association with Tony (Aniruddha) goes back to his advertising days.... So I know the feel they want their films to generate,” says the man who won a National Award for his work in Abohomaan.
So, how does he go about it? “I come to a quick deduction about what he’s (the director) trying to achieve. I try to preserve and construct that vision at first. Then we sit down for a jam session and I throw in ideas to shorten, add, change or restructure parts for the next version, which is the director’s cut,” says Arghyakamal.
And the cardinal rules to keep in mind? “Be communicative, understand the audience’s psyche and don’t just be technical. Also, the courage to refuse shots that don’t contribute to the story. Finally, respecting other unit members — from the actor to the cameraman and highlighting the best they’ve given”.
Sound of music
The action has moved out of Aniruddha’s edit suite in Lake Gardens and travelled to Media Minds in Bandra (Mumbai), where music director Shantanu Moitra is infusing the two-hour-10-minute film with melody. It’s the same digital recording studio where Shantanu had created the chartbusters for Parineeta, Lage Raho Munnabhai and 3 Idiots.
“I love working on background scores. I do the songs for a film only if I get to do the background score. It’s a complicated and challenging task that could take eight days or even a month. It can make or break the film…. And it’s essential to watch the film and understand the flow before I can begin mapping the music,” says Shantanu, his fingers running on the keyboard and eyes glued to a screen mounted on the wall.
Over mugs of coffee, he scans each scene. “We need to have strains of a Tagore song in the background for the party. It’s after all Bangalider get-together,” says the tunesmith. Aniruddha suggests “the sounds of cello” to bring in a “haunting feel” to the post-party sequence.
The mood changes every 10 seconds and so does the music, swinging from subtle and sparse to rich and dramatic notes. “My task is to steer the story with musical cues. Once I’m done with composing, I sit down with my core team of musicians who are the first ones to shoot the volley of bullets,” laughs Shantanu, pointing at his studio musicians and then scooting off to Munnabhai director Rajkumar Hirani, who needs him for a jingle. The next day, Shantanu is the first to reach the studio.
“Life is fast here and the traffic slow! I live in Versova, so I always start early morning. It also helps me get into music mode better,” says Shantanu, resting on a divan — sometimes reaching out for his mouth organ, sometimes watching repeats of a scene.
Aniruddha joins in for lunch; Shantanu’s music-mate and lyricist Swanand Kirkire hops over for a chat.
Aparajita Tumi’s lensman Ranjan Palit saunters in, looking tired after an overnight commercial shoot with Shah Rukh Khan. He is headed for the film’s colour correction starting next day.
look who’s here!
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| Shantanu Moitra, Prosenjit and Aniruddha at the Media Minds studio in Bandra. Pictures by Sangeeta Khalkho |
Aparajita Tumi’s main man Prosenjit, who is in Mumbai to shoot for Dibakar Banerjee’s political thriller Shanghai, turns up to say hello. “They have added more scenes with me in them, and I was shooting with a thick beard which I have just shaved off!” he says, dressed in a tee and jeans.
With “Bumbada” in the house, it’s time for some cha and adda. “Superb performance!” exclaims Shantanu, hugging him. “Thank you,” smiles Prosenjit. “I think everyone has put in some great acting.”
“Have you seen the film?” Ranjan Palit asks Prosenjit. “Just whatever I saw while dubbing. I never like watching my films. I called Ritu (Rituparno Ghosh) the other day to tell him that I have finally watched Chokher Bali after eight years and I really liked it! Only films I end up doing the festival rounds with, I’m forced to watch sometimes,” says the Tolly star.
Aniruddha and Shantanu usher him into the studio for the sight and sound of the film’s first reel. The lights are dimmed and the first few frames start rolling.
After 10 minutes, Prosenjit springs up from his chair and says, “It’s looking great! Shotti khub bhalo lagchhe!... Shooting on foreign locations is not just about gloss. When aesthetically done, it relates to real people and their lives. I think we finally have what Bengali audiences have longed to see in a Bengali film.”
Delighted, Aniruddha keeps his promise and takes Prosenjit out to shop for his glasses.
Shantanu gets back to work with his music team.
Colour code
Sitting two rooms away in another chamber at Prime Focus is Aparajita Tumi’s director of photography Ranjan Palit (second from right). He is here for the colour correction.
“The DoP has to be present because he has shot the film in a certain way and has to guide the colourist,” Ranjan tells us, as he scans and dims the colour in a chain of shots making up the dinner sequence involving Prosenjit, Padmapriya, Kamalinee Mukherjee and Chandan Roy Sanyal.
Unlike the mixing chamber, this room is so quiet you can hear a pin drop. Plonking down beside the colourist, Ranjan maximises and grades each scene with hues and tones to match the mood.
The scene that is causing a crease on his forehead now is where Kuhu (Padmapriya) is talking to her mother (Tanusree Shankar) standing by a window. “I had shot it with a little bit of green and I am wondering what to do with it. I’ll just go with the fluorescent shade because it’s an uncomfortable sequence. It would be nice for it to not be too pleasing.”
Unlike many who use the Digital Intermediate (DI) as a restoration process to redo things, Ranjan dislikes “adding unnecessary effects or tweaking it too much from its original”.
While DI can take up to three weeks, Ranjan is aiming to wrap up in seven days. “I have already covered one reel,” he says getting up from his seat mid-afternoon.
It’s time for a coffee break in a special massage chair in the DoP lounge next door!
Audio lounge
On the cards is a date with sound whiz Bishwadeep Chatterjee (right, in picture above), a Bengali living in Mumbai for more than 25 years and responsible for the sound of Devdas, Parineeta, 3 Idiots and more.
Bishwadeep is designing the structure of all that will be audible in Aparajita Tumi. He might be the last one to enter the post-production stage but his work begins as the editor starts chopping and the actors begin dubbing.
“There’s a constant exchange right from the scripting stage till the edit. I need to monitor the technical compatibility. Ultimately it’s going to come into my hands, so I need to tell them about the processing, equalisation or reverbs I want or don’t want. I will not be able to undo the files once captured and sent,” he explains.
Sitting in the mixing theatre at Prime Focus in Royal Palms, Goregaon (East), equipped with top-notch visual effects and post-production facilities, Bishwadeep is ready to kickstart the last phase of the film. “Shantanu has created beautiful melodies for this film and Tony is a great visualiser. Those are very inspiring for us technicians,” says he, going through the visuals on a large screen. “I would have been happy if we had the budget to do sync sound (recording the sound on location) for a film like this. They shot in LA, which is very quiet, so we would have got the real textures and sounds of the place. In Mumbai, we’re trying to get back to that process (sync sound).”
Armed with dubbing files, foley recordings (incidental sounds of footsteps, a closing door or the rattle of cutlery created artificially), background music, songs and his own bank of sound effects, Bishwadeep settles down for the final step of layering the scenes and sounds. He has “nearly four terabytes” of sound effects in his library, “recorded and collected over time”.
“Aparajita Tumi is not dramatic or full of suspense that would require major effects. Visually it’s mostly indoors. I’m looking at elements of sounds to complement that. It will be textural and breathing with traces of music, sounds and voices floating in,” trails off the sound man.
Mohua Das |
