Y.Sunita Chowdhary
Sujith Vaassudev had worked for Miss India. His second film Khiladi is on floors and has Ravi Teja as the lead and is helmed by Ramesh Verma. In a brief conversation with Klapboardpost.com, he reveals why he doesn’t mind doing remakes, his fantastic rapport with Prithviraj and his interest to work on exciting subjects in the Telugu film industry. How did he pick cinematography as his subject and make it his career? “It was around the time I finished B.com and I just bought a Russian camera, Zenit (before Nikon and Sony came to India) and randomly took pictures. It came out very well and the family appreciated it. I don’t know painting but somehow I began drawing and painting. It happened organically and I got a lot of encouragement.
It gave me the confidence and the push to follow my dreams. I was keen on acting, there was a group that staged plays. I got many awards for acting and I thought I would soon be an actor, made an effort but didn’t get any opportunity. Around the same time I discovered I had an interest in cinematography and took it up. Before that I found out if I could study cinematography in Pune Film Institute but couldn’t get an admission because my subject was commerce and not sciences which was a prerequisite for admission. I then found a place in a television studio, which produced short films, serials. It was just a production studio and I began my journey there. I must say I am very curious about learning things, am also a voracious reader and I spend a lot of time in the libraries devouring every bit of info on cinematography.”
How is it that there is tight budgeting, and films are produced in an economical manner in Kerala? “In Kerala, we finish films in a schedule and cannot hold artists for a long time. It is a small area and we have around 200 theatres and the money has to be recovered from there. The film will release only in 120 theatres and so we have to be conscious of spending money. I apply that principle of spending money only if necessary, here too. I believe we should spend money for the film and not for other purposes and this is one reason I guess why producers give me work repeatedly. Every penny has a value and I am against criminal wastage of money. We find locations and fix artists and their dates before shooting. We pack everything and don’t waste time hunting for things at the last minute and we don’t have to run around for anything.
Here, few artists are very busy, we can’t plan that kind of schedule. Actually, there is no mistake from the production side, if the artist doesn’t come, how can they shoot?” Ask Sujith if he isn’t bored of doing the same film in another language? He has done Drishyam and there is a buzz in the media that the current film is also a remake. He doesn’t reply to that but does answer the query related to Drishyam.”It is boring but in this case stalwarts are acting in each of the films. We planned to shoot in Tirunelveli but had to shift to the original location. So it was the same location, same shots. The film script was so strong so other things didn’t matter.“ How do you select subjects? “I am lucky but more than that, I choose good subjects. I can judge for sure if a film works or not. My eight or nine films had a hundred days run. Drisyam, Papanasam, Amar Akbar Anthony, etc are few examples.”
He further says, “There is no criteria for selecting a film, I go by my gut instinct. There is no specific reason for turning director. I became director with James and Alice and you can find such content in Hollywood. It is so difficult to narrate a story like that. Janardhanan helped me polish it, it was my story. The second one Autorsha is an experimental stuff. I was doing big films and I couldn’t find an opportunity to direct a small film so I resolved to experiment on it, so I made Autorsha.” The director says he had known Prithviraj for a long time, maybe from the film the City Of God. They struck a rapport and worked together in 12 or 13 films out of which 3 or 4 films are episode shoots.
He says, “We both know each other very well. On a set, if I look at him once, he understands what I have on my mind. In between his acting, if he looks at me, I know what he is thinking. It is an interesting and a very healthy relationship. We share all new things and talk in between schedules and gaps and the topic of discussion is cinema and nothing else.” Finally ask Sujith why South Indian actors haven’t had a long standing career in Bollywood, be it Prithviraj, Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Kamal Hassan etc and he quips, “ We might speak numerous languages and have many friends out there but nothing is greater than the loyalty and love of our territorial audience and fans. Mother tongue matters the most and that is where we connect. This is purely my opinion.”
Finally, what do you think were the reasons for the debacle of Miss India on OTT? “I am sorry. I, the producer, director and the heroine maintained good relations. There are a lot of reasons as to why it misfired but why should I talk about it?” On a question if he would work on the remake if Lucifer is offered, he says, “I will definitely do it. It is everyone’s dream to work with Chiranjeevi, he is a great human being. I will consider myself the luckiest person.” Does he believe in numerology, as there is double A and double S in his name? He responds, “I don’t know exactly how it worked for me but it did.
One driver in Chennai suggested a change in the alphabets as he identified a problem. Earlier, four of my films didn’t work at the box office. He would be sad. Everytime I do DI in Chennai, he would be with me and enquire how my previous film fared and when he learnt that it hadn’t done well, he insisted on a change after the shoot of Punyalan Agarbattis. He knows little things about numerology and I too liked the way my name sounded and the manner it raised curiosity. After the change, my film ran for 100 days.”
