2013 saw two found footage films, Case no.666/2013 by Venkat Siddareddy in Telugu and the Kannada film 6-5=2 directed by K.S. Ashoka. The latter has now been remade by debut director Bharat Jain in Hindi with the same name and releases this week. Bharat Jain was one of the distributors of the Kannada film and was drawn to it because it eerily reminded him of an incident in his own life.
The film narrates the story of a group of six friends who go on a trek. The group encounters strange incidents and among them three succumb, two disappear without a trace and only one returns to the city. Months later, a camera is discovered with some footage of the events recorded by the friends. Footage from this recovered video is pivotal to the film.
Bharat Jain says, “Something similar happened when I went with a group of friends on a trek years ago. The film brought back those memories.” Jain has distributed over 90 and produced five films in Kannada and is the creative head of the Jhankar Music label. “I felt this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to direct,” he says, on deciding to remake 6-5=2 .
He auditioned 300 people before finalising his cast and says, “As someone who has distributed and produced films in Kannada, it’s a different ball game to go to Mumbai and conduct auditions there.” He was on the look out for actors who would match the faces and voices of the members in the found footage. He selected Prashantt Guptha, Ashrut Jain, Gaurav Paswalla, Gaurav Kothari, Disha Kapoor and Niharica Raizada and roped in Sathya Hegde for the cinematography.
The cast went through a 10-day workshop, which included extensive walking and trekking in the woods where the film was to be shot. Though Jain is associated with a music label, he says songs had no place in a found footage film and almost 70 per cent of the sound in this film comes from the found footage video. The film has released with minimum publicity and Bharath hopes that word of mouth publicity will work in favour of the film.
