We filmed Test using broadcast channel cameras: Sashikanth
Director-producer Sashikanth in this interview talks about his upcoming film Test—a Netflix Original Film that will stream on April 4. He talks about working on the story across the last decade and throws light on characters Sara, Arjun and Kumudha played by Madhavan, Siddharth and Nayanthara respectively;
Sashikanth
CHENNAI: The Indian Premier League has just begun and cricket fans are on the edge of their seats watching the shortest format of the game and cheering for their home teams. However, there is one Test that has garnered all the attention and it is the Tamil film that marks the directorial debut of Sashikanth, who has previously produced films like Irudhi Suttru, Kaaviya Thalaivan, and Vikram Vedha among others. Now, Test being a direct OTT release, Sashikanth sees the positive side of it and says, “For a debut director’s movie releasing on a leading OTT platform is a huge thing. Imagine, audiences in Korea, Mexico and Europe watching your film on television and phone screens. As a producer, I have seen theatrical releases and I look at this as the way forward.”
Madhavan
Siddharth
Throwing light into the story of Test, Sashikanth recalls Virat Kohli’s mental toughness. “He played a Ranji match for Delhi the day his father had passed away. When he was asked about that in an interview, he said, ‘There was no choice of not playing the match’. The mental toughness that a sportsperson requires is massive. There is no Tamil word that is equivalent to narcissism. You can either call a person egoistic or selfish. But with Test, I have explored narcissistic behaviour as a positive trait. So, this was a starting point and I penned the story around a cricketer and even a common man on how narcissism drives him,” he sums it up.
Sashikanth being an ardent disciple of cricket couldn’t have zeroed in on a better title than Test. “Test cricket is not just cricket. It is a test of life and even temperament. The story too happens over five days of a test match. We used live sound for portions that weren’t shot in the ground and we had real match telecast cameras shooting the film. That was a huge task as a film is being shot using a broadcast camera. Also, except Siddharth, 21 others in the frame are professional cricketers. We have set it up like an India-Pakistan game in the movie. Be it Siddharth, Madhavan and Nayanthara, they all have the attitude of getting things done. How this drives them through the runtime will strike a chord with the global audience,” he tells us.
Nayanthara