Blood curdling screams, eerie smoky nights, the sunsaan raat routine, fangs and fingernails dripping blood, the abandoned bhoot bangla , a lost soul who also doubles up as a vamp in search of blood and gore, and more victims. If that’s been the idiom of our horror films for a long time, younger filmmakers are setting a new tone for what comprises a scare.
His horror movie in 3D, Pizza , might deliver a solid scare this season, and send a shiver up your spine when your pizza delivery guy arrives, if director Akshay Akkineni is to be believed.
The Hindi adaptation of the 2012 Tamil flick Pizza , this version tests new waters by adding another dimension — 3D. “It’s a pretty scary film. But not just scary. It’s got another take; it’s a suspense thriller too. And yeah, it’s coming for you,” declares the debutant director in a telephonic interview; you can almost hear the wicked grin across the line. Why 3D? “You don’t really need 3D for a horror film. But I wanted to take the visual aesthetic of this film to the next level and make it a fantastic watching experience for the audience. And 3D just blended with all the nuances of this story.” Akshay says that for him personally, a scare has three layers — the visual, the visual in 3D, and the sound effects with music. The sound and the music have to be in the same palette, he points out, for it to work.
He believes that the audience aesthetic has changed over time. With Hollywood fare in the genre being easily accessible and downloadable, audience knows what a film can be like — in terms of content and aesthetic. “The kind of blood-gore-sex milieu doesn’t appeal to a wider audience. The multiplex audience is much smarter than filmmakers. It’s not that I don’t have blood in my film…” he’s quick to add. “It’s my conscious choice not to use nudity, sex and sleaze.”
The film has been shot completely in 3D, and the whole filmmaking experience was very different for him, says Akshay, who’s earlier directed a 2D short. “First I had to unlearn that. Then, me and my DOP Jaya Krishna took a week off work, picked up about 15 books on the technology and read and researched it. Luckily we got our hands on the TX5 equipment — the same that was used in films such as Spiderman and Transformers — in India. Till now, the kind of 3D we’ve seen in India has been gimmicky stuff. But we’ve only used it as a visual aid.”’
But a horror film in 3D, and a remake at that — a rather odd choice for a feature film debut? “The offer came to me and I wanted to make Pizza mine. Producer Bejoy Nambiar was very supportive and liked the calls I took, including the decision to go 3D and the way I adapted it. You’ve seen plenty of scary films in the sex and sleaze milieu. I wanted to break that, take a risk, and set a new benchmark.” He’s seen the Tamil original four times. “But I’ve not seen the Kannada (Whistle) and Bengali ( Golpo Holeo Shotti) versions. I wish I hadn’t seen Pizza too. I can’t take away from the fact that it’s a remake. I would like to make it my own adaptation.”
The film has been edited by Akshay’s father and winner of several national awards, Akkineni Sreekar Prasad. Akshay says it was the most beautiful process, both as an emotional and professional experience. “It’s the first time we’re working together. He first saw the rushes. I used to cut the scenes first with his assistant. Then my father would edit… we did have teething issues. But finally it was a collaborative process — we would settle on a combination of what he and I did. I learnt a lot from him.”
With no formal training in filmmaking Akshay has been assisting the past few years, working on a Telugu film Panjaa, and with Nambiar before on MTV Rush and David . “I was hoping to work in the Tamil film industry. I was beginning to move out of assisting and work independently when this offer came.”
