The action starts at a burial ground. And, the camera captures it for the next two hours till the last shot where the hero thrashes three villains, and director Mohammed Issack announces ‘Cut’. The making of Agadam is done.
The psychological thriller that runs non-stop for two hours, three minutes and 30 seconds has been certified by London Guinness World Record as the longest uncut film.
Issack, an engineering graduate, gave up his software job to make a film that is different, yet entertaining. “I wanted my first film to make an impact. I was inspired by another uncut film Russian Ark directed by Alexander Sokurov. It was filmed using a single 96-minute steadicam sequence shot. I chose a thriller and shot it with night effect, something which has never been done before. Bad lighting can ruin a film, especially if it’s going to be an uncut one,” says Isaack.
Coimbatore connectionSrini Iyer from Coimbatore plays the villain in Agadam . Srinivasan also works as an associate cameraman with Kasi V. Nathan and has been a part of films such as Appavi , Ayyan , Naadi Thudikudhu , Pudumuganga l (Malayalam) and Super Shastry (Kannada). He has done theatre, acted in short films, and also directed the award-winning short film Idayangaley .
“We shot Agadam at a three-storey bungalow near Porur in Chennai. All the actors are newcomers and we rehearsed for over a month before the filming. As there are no retakes, we cannot even bat an eyelid the wrong way. And, we had to remember every single dialogue.”
The team says a novel experiment is always challenging but the returns are high in terms of appreciation. And the feedback from the industry to the film has been encouraging.
“Such uncut films generally follow a ‘docu-film’ style. But, we have explored it as a feature film. We had to be careful about the camera movement and also the scene to scene transition as we didn’t have the luxury of close-up or long shot and top angle or mid angle shots,” he explains.
Hard work and rehearsalsIssack spent over year on the script. And, his team rehearsed the entire sequence over 40 times. The film is shot in Sony NEX FF 100, a high definition camera. Isaack says another team followed him and the cameraman Nouzad and filmed the entire making of the film in order to send the video to the Guinness Record jury.
“The trigger for the movie came from a real life accident that hit the headlines recently. It breaks myths associated with supernatural powers and makes you think,” says Isaack. Agadam releases today in Tamil Nadu.
