Hard lights, soft lights, top shots, warm tones, shaky camera… shooting Bunohaans was one helluva experience for DoP Harendra Singh or Hari. The SRFTI man from Bihar, now settled in Mumbai, has shot over 200 ad films.

How did you make each of the cities — Bangkok, Dhaka, Calcutta, Pune and Mumbai — so distinct from each other in terms of colour and tone?

See, every city has its own architecture and colour which adds to a film. When we shot in Bangkok, I shot with very hard lights and mostly artificial lights because Bangkok is crowded and dotted with big buildings. I took a lot of wide-angle shots because Amal (Dev in Bunohaans) goes there for the first time and is sort of lost. But to balance it out we also shot in temples to give a sense of peace. Bangladesh was all about nostalgia for Amal, so we incorporated lots of greens in every frame, from fields, to the Padma river… then we shot in Mumbai where Amal is on the run. There it was very high tension... the drama was at its peak. Amal has lost everything, so we shot in one light and the camera was mostly hand-held and shaky. I used minimum lights for the Mumbai leg of the shoot. Ninety per cent of the film was shot in wide-angle lenses because that captures the journey of Amal best, which is full of hardship.

How did you shoot the Calcutta leg?

The Calcutta shoot was the most interesting. We shot with static camera, mostly. We had a very interesting dilapidated house for Amal and for all the indoor shots I used a hand-held camera to show that people living there are not in a happy state, from Amal’s mother (Sohag Sen) to sister-in-law (Sudipta Chakraborty). There is so much poverty and hence the tension. One thing that we consistently did for Bunohaans was shoot according to real time. For example, if we needed to shoot a particular scene at noon we would do that and Tony (Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury) was very encouraging. We shot a particular scene at 3.30am. When Amal enters the bylanes I used one top light falling on his face basically to highlight the fact that he is entering the underworld.

The flashback song sequence between Amal and Sohag had warm colours…

We made them wear colourful costumes, I used warm tones, diagonal lights and we mostly shot those sequences in the morning. Everything adds to the frame, from costumes to makeup.

For each of the characters you used different tones and colours…

Amal had a completely no-make-up look. He is the boy-next-door. We kept his costumes in monochrome as opposed to his friend Robin (Anindya) who is always in orange! Madam’s (Moon Moon Sen) house on the other hand had a greenish tone and glossy light.

Which is your favourite scene from Bunohaans?

Where Amal is travelling in a cab with the money and gets a call from Shantida (Shantilal Mukherjee). I used sunlight behind Amal and Shantida. That’s my favourite. I thought the scene was beautifully shot. The last sequence where Amal’s mother calls him and asks him to return home is also my favourite. It’s a wide-angle shot with sunlight falling on her face while the sun is behind Amal. The contrast came out beautifully. Mother embodies peace and forgiveness so the sunlight was on her face while Amal has chosen the wrong path and so the light is behind him.

Arghyakamal Mitra
editor

After seeing the rushes… Tony told me that he would like something racy, but not a roller-coaster ride. Things should linger on in the mind, with a sense of remembrance. It should be memorable.

My focus was to… preserve the strength of the acting, its intensity, to help retain the nuances and subtle gestures, and to make the film taut. One must remember that the audience’s first interaction with cinema is through the performances. They always remember the performances. So we wanted to make sure that the audiences feel the intensity of the acting but not feel the transition of the scenes. We wanted each scene to have a lingering effect. Bunohaans is a social story with thrilling elements.

We had to leave out… two of Tony’s fave sequences. They were like mild pauses which we had to leave out.

Bishwadeep Chatterjee
sound designer

How did you go about designing the soundscape for Bunohaans?

Geographically, there were five locations — Calcutta, Bangkok, Dhaka, Pune and Mumbai. Now, every city has a unique soundscape... if you close your eyes and stand at a busy intersection in any city you will notice that Calcutta has a typical sound, same with Mumbai, and Dhaka has yet another sound. While I was familiar with most of the places, I had never gone to Dhaka before. So I went along with the unit to Dhaka and recorded its rich soundscape... thousands of cycle rickshaws, busy streets, intense early morning azan in old Dhaka.

What were you aiming for?

When we visit any country for the first time, apart from the sights and smells, what stays with us is that place’s unique sound... so I had to get into the protagonist’s head space and figure out how he would perceive the place and in what context... of course, Shantanu’s (Moitra) music perfectly blended with my sound design — from a rough neighbourhood in Calcutta to a swanky airport in Bangkok to a small village near the river in Dhaka.

How challenging was it to do this film?

Every film is a challenge. The biggest challenge in most regional films is the budget allocation for sound. And yet we didn’t compromise.

What were some of the key elements you focused on?

It had to have grit, pace and of course a strong emotional quotient.

Shyamal Sengupta
scriptwriter

When did you and Tony start working on the script?

One fine day last year Tony asked me to read Samaresh Majumdar’s novel. I told him it was more like a long story but there were cinematic elements. Then we started thinking how to translate it into film. The only advantage was that the story moved from one country to another. Otherwise, the book had a lot of literary dialogues and authorial comments which we couldn’t use.

So what was the way forward?

We don’t believe in using voice-overs or wall-to-wall carpeting of dialogues, and the challenge was to lucidly transform the story on film through cinematic devices. It was quite an arduous task. We wrote all the dialogues, taking only the essence of the lines from the book. We created new scenes and transformed characters. For example, the climax where Amal is on the run in Bombay was conceptualised by us. When Amal opens fire and kills someone, he enters a new life and surrenders to the big bad world of Bombay. For Amal, we created causalities. How does he get into a profession fraught with tension? He is an innocent guy, with no criminal record. His friend Sohag (Shrabanti) is down with a terminal illness, and her treatment becomes a big problem. Reality looms large and pushes Amal to move into the grey zone.

How long have you and Tony been working together?

Since Antaheen. It’s never a cakewalk. Writing is a lonely, strenuous activity. It is a prolonged process. We discuss everything and it takes around six months to come up with the final version of the script. We also disagree. But then everything works out in the end. I have this tendency to shock the audience which Tony doesn’t agree with. We argue but then finally I realise that he makes sense... there’s a logic behind his argument. Tony is very encouraging.

A special screening of Bunohaans

Tanusree poses with a Bunohaans mug at Priya. Pictures: Rashbehari Das

(L-R) Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, lyricist Chandril Bhattacharya, cast members Sudipta Chakraborty and Tanusree, and Aniruddha’s wife Indrani Mukerjee

A special screening of Bunohaans was held at Priya on August 16. Kids from the NGO Anubhab Foundation, a trust that runs a school for “economically backward students from the slum areas of Kidderpore”, put on a dance performance. Scholarships were then distributed by Anubhab Foundation to economically backward students.

Text: Arindam Chatterjee and Kushali Nag