Director hopes it doesn’t become the new normal
Ankita Chaurasia (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 20, 2020)

The Coronavirus-induced lockdown may have put the world under house arrest, but writer-director Arati Kadav instructed her actors on camera angles, lights and scene composition from her living room to shoot a film drawn from the pandemic on their mobile phones. “The plight of the migrants reminded me of how dinosaurs had been wiped off within seconds of the Big Bang even while other species survived,” she points out. Titled 55 Km/Sec, the sci-fi film imagines another apocalypse brought about by a speeding meteor and narrates it through the lens of a woman in love.

When she was approached to play the protagonist, Richa Chadha didn’t think twice. “We are creative people, how long will we sit without practicing our primary skills?” says the actress, who did her own makeup and styling, set up the camera and used the lapel mic of her musician-brother for the shoot. The family and roomies of the actors were their crew.

Arati wanted a particular colour palette for every character and during her online recce of everyone’s house, she hit her brief uncannily. The team coordinated remotely on daily video calls with the director making extensive storyboards to show how she wanted the scene to pan out, while another screen served as a monitor for her to ‘okay’ the shots.

Richa admits it was a challenge to do the emotional scenes involving co-star Mrinal Dutt without him being physically present. But she is happy they were able to create something thought-provoking and beautiful in these grim times.

The film, which will require extensive VFX and CGI work, is currently in post-production. “Since everyone has shot individually, the challenge is to make it all look seamless,” says Aarti, who wants to do the rounds of the festivals with the film. She also hopes that shooting from home on phones doesn’t become the new normal as it takes away from the filmmaking experience.