‘It is important that actors know their lines’

It’s been a little over a week since Boomika premiered on television and OTT platforms. But the director of the film Rathindran Prasad and the music director Prithvi aren’t over it yet. We meet them at Prithvi’s studio in the city and they can be still seen discussing how they went about each scene.

“We made the movie using live sound sync because I wanted it to look as natural as it could. Having worked in international projects, when narration is done in live sound, the audience will be able to relate with the locales and the character much easier,” Rathindran opens up. However, according to him, it is quite challenging and exciting at the same time to shoot. “There should be absolute silence on the sets. We must ensure that the mobile phones are in silent mode. There will be mics placed above the head of each character. Even when someone sneezes in distance, we will have to reshoot it again. So the organizing has to be perfect,” he opens up.

Music director Prithvi, says that he got involved in the project from the time he listened to the narration. “I in fact gave him the theme of the film as and when we were discussing the project because it resonated with me immediately.

Rathindran fixed that this would be the theme music of Boomika. After some time I went to Ooty where the film was shot with my entire studio set up and composed music from the spot when they shot for it. The place actually looked spooky and I knew what the characters went through when they shot for it. So it was easier for me to understand the mood of the story,” Prithvi tells us.

The anti-climax scene of the film has been the talking point on social media in which Pavel Navageethan walks down the stairs with a lantern light in his hands. “In fact, that is the scene I loved working the most. I am glad that a lot of people noticed it,” says Prithvi as Rathindran reminisces on the character sketch. 

“I initially gave a kongu Tamil dialect to Pavel’s character. On his own, he added the tribal dialect to it and delivered it beautifully,” Rathindran says.

Boomika is one of the films where all characters are native Tamil speakers. “To me, it's important that my actors know what their lines are. That is why I cast Aishwarya Rajesh, Vidhu, Surya Ganapathy, and Madhuri. When Siddharth played in Inmai I realized he was an actor who wants his lines written in the languages that come in the final output. He even expects a Hindi dialogue in a Tamil film to be written in Hindi. Those are the kind of professionals we need. Even in my yet-to-be-released film Idhu Vedhaalam Sollum Kadhai, Abhay Deol learned his lines before he could shoot for it. The process not only becomes easier but also a memorable one,” says Rathindran.

As we finish chatting, Prithvi takes us to his composing suite and plays a few compositions he had made for Boomika.