Ravikanth Perepu was 9 when he watched Mani Ratnam’s Sakhi . “What I saw on screen felt real,” he recalls. He dreamt of being a director some day. Not an actor, mind you. He began writing short stories. By the time he was in Intermediate, all he could think of was cinema. “We were four of us, friends. One wanted to be an actor; the others wanted to be directors. Two of these friends were associate directors for Kshanam ,” shares Ravikanth.
The 25 year old has stunned the industry and moviegoers alike in one swift stroke. A slick urban thriller like Kshanam is a distributor’s nightmare. The format isn’t considered viable in B and C centres. Ravikanth and his partner in crime, actor and co-writer Adivi Sesh, knew what they were getting into. “I thought Kshanam ’s scope would be limited to cities like Hyderabad, Vizag and Vijayawada,” admits Ravikanth. Now, back from a promotional tour, he’s happy that Warangal and Kurnool have also embraced the film. This Friday, Kshanam opened in Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune and Goa with subtitles.
“Once PVP (producer Prasad V. Potluri) gave us a go ahead, we decided to keep the budget low. That’s the only way we could make it viable,” he says. The idea for Kshanam came from Sesh, who wanted a thriller with the emotional core of a missing three year old girl. Ravikanth and Sesh spent 10 months writing the screenplay. Pre-production began three months into the writing process. “Every little detail had to be worked out to execute the film in a small budget,” he says. They went to shoot with a 20-member crew.
Talking about the writing process, he explains, “We’d come up with possibilities for each situation. And we’d never choose the first idea since that would be predictable. We wanted to keep surprising the audience. The cast was chosen to go with the unpredictable nature,” he explains.
Satyam Rajesh and Vennela Kishore, mostly stuck with comedies, were approached for parts with more depth. Who would expect Satyam Rajesh to be a serious cop? “Adah Sharma, Kishore and Rajesh are fine actors who haven’t had the opportunity to showcase their skills,” says Ravikanth. An associate director played constable Reddy, whose face we don’t get to see. The idea came from Tom and Jerry series. “We hardly see the faces of the people, yet there’s a comic element,” Ravikanth points out.
Kshanam was shot with Rs. 1.08 crore, he reveals, but the team wanted to give the film a rich look. Ravikanth turned to cinematographer Shaneil Deo and composer Sricharan Pakala, whom he knew from the time he cut his teeth as an assistant director in the 2013 film K.I.S.S ( Keep It Simple Stupid , directed by Adivi Sesh).
Shaneil heard the story over Skype and flew down from the US. Attuned to American films, Shaneil saw Kshanam differently. “He and the associate cameraman Vamsi used overhead lighting, or mood lighting, which helps the audience gel with the mood of the characters. We could afford only small cameras but Shaneil and Vamsi did a good job. C.V. Rao of Annapurna Studios helped us enhance this with Digital Intermediate,” says Ravikanth.
Ravikanth reveals that Sricharan composed the background score in a storeroom. “He would sit there with a keyboard, computer and headphones. Sricharan hadn’t done a thriller before, so he gave different themes to different characters and used these notes in a different arrangement as the story progressed.”
Clear of what they wanted to see in the film, Adivi Sesh, Ravikanth and the associate directors took charge of editing the film.
The film has earned Rs. 5 crore and talks are on for remake in Tamil and Hindi. Ravikanth isn’t sure of helming the remakes: “I don’t know if I’ll be able to retain the flavour of the original; I like to work with fresh stories.”
Kshanam was a risk that paid off. Ravikanth declares he’s a risk taker. He wanted to study filmmaking after school, but his parents insisted he pursue engineering so that he’d have something to fall back on. During college days, he and his friends would make short films and upload them on YouTube. “We got plenty of negative comments, which helped us learn,” he says.
Ravikanth cleared chemical engineering in first class and told his parents that after spending four years doing something he didn’t want to, he wanted two years to make a mark in what he wanted to do, filmmaking. He knew Adivi Sesh through Facebook and came to Hyderabad from his hometown Vizag in 2012, worked as an assistant director in K.I.S.S .
Now, there’s a long road ahead and the onus is on him to prove that the first directorial isn’t just beginner’s luck.
