Bilahari’s excitement is akin to that of a skydiver who is about to land safely on the ground. There is a sense of disbelief in his voice. If all goes well, Porattam , the young filmmaker’s debut feature film made with a budget of ₹25,000, will be releasing in select theatres across Kerala in October.
Talking over phone from Angamaly, the 28-year-old says: “I didn’t have any idea how this was going to pan out. We didn’t have a script, a proper cast or lighting equipment. All we had was a sketchy storyline and a DSLR camera that provided 4K recording. The crew was just me, Sreeraj Raveendran who handled (and owned) the camera and his assistant.” Yet they finished shooting it in just 15 days. The travel expenses alone amounted to ₹10,000, Bilahari adds. So Porattam was filmed with ₹15,000!
Bilahari
Shot mostly in Elavoor, Bilahari’s native village near Angamaly, the movie is a slow-paced thriller showcasing a few eventful days in the life of a girl. The movie, Bilahari says, deals with the issues women face in today’s society. Shaalin Zoya plays the lead role along with theatre artistes Navajith Narayanan, Pramod Veliyanad and Vineeth Vasudevan. Rest of the cast comprises Bilahari’s relatives and residents in his neighbourhood.
Bilahari, who runs an advertisement production house, has been looking for an opening in the movie industry for a while. He had approached in vain several producers with proposals for a low-budget movie. Porattam , he says, was born from the desperation to make a mark on his own.
“There was no planning involved. If we were shooting in a market, we just invited locals hanging around there to be a part of our movie. During conversation scenes, I gave them a situation and told them to react to it. It was an exhilarating experience,” he says. The inspiration to make a film without a script, Bilahari adds, came from script-less successes that filmmakers like Rajeev Ravi and Sanal Kumar Sasidharan have had in recent years.
But it was not only the script that was missing in this case. They didn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about it with their meagre budget and a crew of three. It was improvisation from start to stop.
Almost everyone involved in the movie worked for free. Only two camera lenses were available. “We had to borrow a telephoto lens from a wedding photographer for a couple of days. In between a friend gave us a helicam and we used that as well. I had to put in a lot of effort to not make any continuity errors,” Bilahari adds. The movie was shot entirely in natural light and a lot of guerilla shooting, too, was done to keep it as raw and real as possible.
The four songs in Porattam are folk songs of two or three lines sung by locals in and around Elavoor. The background score is minimalistic and relies heavily on the mizhavu. “I realised the potential of the mizhavu in filmmaking from G. Aravindan’s Kanchana Seetha. Also I used to play the mizhavu for Koothu performances staged near my house,” he adds.
While the background music has been composed by Mujeeb Majid, editing has been done by Akash Joseph Varghese.
