The dusty road that leads to the huge set doesn’t give an inkling about what’s in store. The main door of the set opens to the stylish office and studio of a news channel.
Debutante director Sreebala K. Menon’s film Love 24 X 7 , with Dileep playing the lead, is being shot inside the set built on the side of the bypass at Palarivattam in Kochi.
“First things first, this is essentially a love story in a media backdrop. Usually in films dealing with the media, it’s inner workings will be shown only for a short span but here we’re showing all its ins and outs,” says Sreebala, who has written a few stories in the past and has been an associate director to Sathyan Anthikkad for the last few years.
Love 24X7 is the story of Roopesh Nambiar (Dileep), a committed journalist, who hosts shows and is a popular news anchor on a TV channel, Nalamidam, which, incidentally, stands for ‘fourth estate’.
The heroine, debutante Nikhila Vimal, plays a trainee journalist, Kabani, who works for the channel. She falls in love with Roopesh.
“We always imagine that we are each unique and our life stories are equally unique, especially when we set out for something new. But, I’ve observed that our lives often mirror the journeys of those who have travelled the path before us. This is the relevance of the film’s tagline, ‘Life repeats itself’. The idea will be become more evident when you watch the story on screen,” says Sreebala. “I had actually started writing this as a short story but later I felt that it had enough content to be developed into a fill-fledged script,” she adds.
Sreenivasan dons the role of Umar Abdullah, the head of the news division of the channel.
Veteran actress Suhasini, Sasikumar, Lena, Shankar Ramakrishnan and Sidhartha Siva are also part of the cast.
The scene being canned has Dileep wearing a ‘jooba and mundu’ getting reading to host the channel’s morning show. The make-up artiste talks to him about Kabani and the hero is watching her from the corner of his eye, on a nearby TV screen.
“I have done some research watching the presentation styles of several news anchors from national channels and also from Malayalam,” says Dileep. According to him, his character Roopesh is bold and straightforward. “I have realised that the job of a news anchor is not easy. Whenever I read out from the teleprompter during the shoot, I become tense, thinking I will fumble the lines. I can imagine how difficult it is for news anchors to do it all live. They have to be aware about the issues that are being discussed and more importantly, have to present it all in an attractive way,” says the actor, who has got a slew of high profile projects up this year, including Sidharth Bharathan’s Chandrettan Evideya , his next release.
He will be flying to New Zealand soon to wrap up the final schedule of Jeethu Joseph’s Life of Josutty .
Love 24 X 7 is being produced jointly by E 4 Entertainment and Grand Productions.
Sameer Haq is the cinematographer and Bijibal composes the music.
