Bringing home a fresh cinematic experience this festival season is Mahesh Narayanan and Fahadh Faasil with C U Soon . The entire narrative unfolds through various virtual communication devices and online platforms. The movie premières on Amazon Prime Video on September 1.
The trailer, trending on YouTube, hints at a thriller, where the virtual life of the characters unfold through cellphones, laptops, desktop computers, webcams, dash cams.... The action happens in real time, but in a closed space.
“Hollywood has had a few successful films in the screen-based format, Searching being one of them. In 2015, popular sitcom Modern Family had one of the episodes shot this way. This genre is considered to have evolved out of the ‘found footage’ genre, something which Dibakar Banerjee had experimented with in his anthology, Love Sex Aur Dhokha ,” says Mahesh.
For thrills and chills
Written and scripted by Mahesh himself, C U Soon is about two cousins, Kevin (Fahadh), a software engineer in Kerala, and Jimmy (Roshan Mathew), working in Dubai. Kevin steps in to help when Anu (Darshana Rajendran), Jimmy’s fiancée, disappears. “This method is proven to be one of the best formats to narrate a thriller or horror story. We went with a conventional tale so that people could easily follow it. It doesn’t have the conventional shots, camera angles and edits. Instead the story moves forward through phone calls, search engines, audio and video chats... So it might take some time for viewers to fall into the groove,” says the editor-cum-filmmaker.
Mahesh was busy with the post-production work of his second directorial venture, the big-budget flick, Malik , with Fahadh in the lead, when India went into a total lockdown. “Fahadh sent a random mail asking if there was a possibility of exploring something new during the lockdown. That’s how we zeroed in on this format. The shoot started when the Government gave permission to resume shooting with a limited crew. The cast and crew stayed together and finished the shoot in 20-22 days in various locations in Kochi,” he says.
- Timur Bekmambetov, a Russian-Kazakh filmmaker, producer and screenwriter, is credited with popularising computer screen movies. He promotes them as Screen Life genre movies. In 2015, he produced the horror film, Unfriended , narrated almost fully through the screenpage of a MacBook. He followed it with Hack the Bloggers (Russian comedy), Searching , Profile (which he directed) and Unfriended: Dark Web , the sequel of Unfriended .
- Searching , directed by debutant Aneesh Chaganty, an India-born American, won critical acclaim. It told the story of a father trying to find his 16-year-old daughter who has gone missing.
The team did test shoots and edits before going ahead with the project since it was a first-time experience for the actors and the crew as well. There was a pre-visualisation session of some shots in the 65-page script. “The actors took time to get used to the new scenario where they are constantly speaking into a camera; the action-reaction time had to be spot on. Having the main artistes in the same location helped,” Mahesh says.
He adds that even if the lockdown was not there, this project would have happened sooner or later. “All of us are tuned in to the virtual world. In a present-day family, there are serious discussions and debates about dividing Internet data usage! People now connect more over virtual platforms than in person,” Mahesh avers.
But when the project went on the floors, there was uproar from within the Malayalam film industry. “It died down when we convinced them that it is an experimental work and is meant only for an OTT platform. For us, it was also about supporting technicians and crew members who were left jobless because of the ban on shooting. It was a question of survival for them,” he asks.
Even though he is unsure about the release of Malik , the filmmaker observes that it is important to come up with fresh content frequently. “Imagine a scenario when there is no new content in Malayalam for over a year. That is an unfortunate situation. So we have to keep coming up with projects. However, it is up to the industry to decide in which format they want that. We all want theatres to reopen. But since that is a remote possibility, why not explore a new distribution mode and make the best use of it and generate revenue,” he says.
Mahesh, also the editor of the 90-minute film, has handled “virtual cinematography”, with Sabin Uralikandy as the other cinematographer. Produced by Fahadh and wife, Nazriya Nazim, it has background score by Gopi Sunder. Other actors in the cast are Saiju Kurup and Maala Parvathi.
