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| Sasikumar |
When I saw the film
Subramaniapuram (the Tamil original of
Ananthapuram 1980), I was surprised seeing utmost care taken for the period sets, lighting, and costumes, all portraying the '80s quite authentically. I did feel that it had too much of violence, though. I then called Sasikumar, the story-writer, producer, and director of the film to talk about the film, and he readily agreed to do it. Our telephonic conversation is presented thus on TeluguCinema.Com as an interview:
Sri: Hi, Sasi! I saw your debut film, and it's wonderful! But, I felt it had a lot of violence...
Sasikumar: Thanks for your appreciation for the film! I have only shown what had happened in the 1980s and there's no exaggeration in it. The story is based on some real events and we incorporated some more scenes around the real incidents in Madurai (where the Tamil film is set).
Sri: How did you bring in the nativity of the time?
Sasikumar: Post-production work for the film took eight months, because it's hard to get the real feel of those times. It's not just a feeling that we brought in - I had to find bicycles of that time, Lambretta scooters, typewriters, televisions, and all other furniture, appliances, vehicles, ...everything from the past. It was not at all easy! We adopted a village near Madurai and redesigned the whole street to bring the atmosphere of thirty years ago.
Sri: What about costumes?
Sasikumar: That's another big thing! We went to really rural areas of today, found the shops where we can get such dresses, and so on. It was strenuous. We brought a whole set of designers and had them handy at the shooting scene. For scenes involving groups of artistes, we had the designers ready so as to take measurements of individuals and get the clothes stitched immediately!...
Sri: What type of camera did you use for the vintage look? Was it just done in DI?
Sasikumar: We used Super-16mm film to get that look. Ours is the first film to use Super-16mm in Tamil. Even in the art department, we took care to use old colors to get that raw look. Of course, we did use DI too.
Sri: I was surprised to see wall posters of Rajinikant's films of those times!
Sasikumar: It was one of the toughest jobs on our hands then! The problem with wall posters was that we cannot even reproduce similar wall posters as the fonts are now changed completely and no printing press existing today uses such fonts. We had to go to distribution offices to get the old wall posters and bought them out from there. In other words, the wall posters we used were actually those printed in those times and stowed away all these years.
