An Interview with Titli Team - Dibakar, Kanu and others

Long Live Cinema was created to make a space for discussion and provocation on alternate cinema and good cinema in general. Our effort is to highlight such films and bring these films for discussion into a wider public sphere. With Cannes around the corner and the positive buzz around it, Titli' to us felt like the ideal film to cover to re-start our engagement with good cinema. Selected for the Un certain Regard section of the 67th International Cannes Film Festival, the synopsis of Titli' reads as such, "In the badlands of Delhi's dystopic underbelly, Titli, the youngest member of a violent car-jacking brotherhood plots a desperate bid to escape the family' business. His struggle to do, so is countered at each stage by his indignant brothers, who finally try marrying him off to settle' him. Titli finds an unlikely ally in his new wife, Neelu, who nurtures her own set of frustrated dreams. They form a strange, mutually exploitative partnership in a desperate bid to escape the stranglehold of their family roots. But is escape the same as freedom?". Long Live cinema is providing an exclusive, in-depth feature on the making of Titli' through interviews conducted with the principal crew of the film.

Q. Titli was the first film you produced for the three film deal that you have with Yash Raj Films (YRF). Why Titli?

A. I had always wanted Titli to have the clout of a committed studio behind it. To procure funding and get the film made physically was never too big a challenge for me as the script (having collected a lot of admirers all the way from NFDC script lab to industry people in Mumbai) and the presence of my production company had enough of a draw for funders to invest. But the bigger challenge for a genre - defying film is to be marketed and distributed well. My conversations with Adi and YRF's track record convinced me that whatever film they produced, they never pulled punches and backed it all the way. Further YRF's own enthusiasm about Titli was a big decider. Titli's national and international release needs to be a carefully orchestrated one - as this film is special. Handled right - it could define the way hard hitting youth oriented cinema will go in India . Further, as YRF cements its international clout with Grace of Monaco's worldwide release - it will be a strong parent to Titli as it plays out to the international distributors in Cannes. I think the YRF/DBP co production and release of Titli will set a template of how to release path breaking content from a position of strength both internationally and in the domestic market.

Q. What was your role in the production process of the film?

A. To bring about the pooling in of resources and strengths I mentioned in the answer above. Further, having collaborated with Kanu before, I knew his language and strengths. My main contribution was to work with him and Sharat to bring out his vision in the screenplay over a series of script meetings. Freewheeling ideating and brainstorming sessions that helped us look at the story from all angles within the context as it was in Kanu's head. Further, Titli had to go through its paces in the usual "indie production torture test " - where every penny had to deliver double its worth. My experience in producing OLLO (Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!), LSD, Shanhgai andBombay Talkies in restricted budgets but without sacrificing creative ambitions helped us finish Titli in budget and on time. That, pretty much is it.

Q. What are your feelings about Titli being selected for Cannes? What impact do you think it will have on the perception of Indian Cinema abroad?

A. Happy and proud, obviously! Every film like Titli actually contributes a little more for the perception of Indian cinema abroad. Titli will prove to the world that Indian cinema is not just Bollywood - its world cinema from India - even when it's produced by Bollywood!

Q. Could you walk us through the journey that led you to makeTitli? From your student filmmaker days, to your documentary (Three Blind Men) and assisting Dibakar-How was the journey like to get to the point of making your first feature film?

A1. I am a Delhi boy who was born in Punjab. I shifted to Delhi when I was around 10 years old. From a young age I was already exposed to a sort of Film, television world as my father was an actor at NSD and my mother was an actor-writer. This also gave me exposure to the world of images. I remember when I was young and watched movies such as Ben Hur and 10 commandments at Shakuntalam theatre and wondered what is this magical world and how enamored I was by it. Also from a young age, I was exposed to the grind of television because of my parents. As a young boy I used to assist them, sometimes would act, and sometimes the schedules would stretch very late. I got really put off by it. When I was 16-17 years old I started rediscovering cinema by myself again. I started watching different sorts of films, and I thought hang on', there are some interesting films being made. I then decided that I wanted to know what all type of work has been done in cinema and its history. At that time, though I was not actively thinking about it, but somehow I wanted to learn all of this, as I wanted to make a film that does not repeat anything that has not been done before. I had decided that I have to go to film school. In 2003, I got admission at SRFTI . When I entered the institute, I was a very fiction oriented person. At the same time the documentary movement in India was very exciting and Calcutta was at the center of it, and that is where SRFTI was located. The same year Doc Edge began. This exposed me to another style of making films. The documentary style helped me explore new things, to engage with real life , made my experiences manifold, and look at stories as they are unfolding. My diploma film was also in competition at the Cinema Du Reel. After graduation, I produced and directed documentaries for NHK and ZDF/Arte. In 2007, Dibakar Banerjee was looking for an editor. A faculty member asked me to deliver some DVD's to Dibakar. I had the idea to also put my DVD along with it. At that time Dibakar had already started work on Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!. The documentary that I was shooting was also set in Delhi and was exploring the spaces of the city. Dibakar found my work interesting and was looking for new young voices to be his assistant director on the film. After that, our association has rapidly grown and we found ourselves more and more on the same page. After co-writing the screenplay of LSD, I started working on my own screenplay. I spent around 1-1 and a half years on it and shopped it around. But something did not click. At that time Dibakar told me that what I was writing is not straight from my heart, it is not honest, as if it's written so that somebody would want to see it. I was very thankful for that conversation. After that I took some months off and that is when the seed of Titli was born. I questioned myself- What is it that makes me angry? What do I want to scream and shout about? What do I find disturbing? This is what formed the arc of the screenplay. Titli is really about family, about one's roots, about a boy who tries to escape from his oppressive older brother but begins to become exactly like his brother and his realization regarding it and what he can do about it. The film is about circularity, of the images that run in a family, of running away from them and trying to root them out, and asking could one really do that. In a sense, the films delves deeper into these issues and tries to question them.

Q. What aesthetic influences (film, literature, art) have shaped you as a filmmaker?

A. Since the beginning I have always been overexposed to images. My journey has been the complete opposite as that of others. I ate up all the images I saw. But that does not mean that I want to limit myself to one voice. I want to do different kinds of films. I should not be a filmmaker. Rather my films should be like a beast on its own that breathes its own fire. I should be absent. I do not subscribe to the auteur theory. For instance, Stanley Kubrick is a filmmaker, who made different films, belonging to different genres and he did it so brilliantly and instinctively. Each of his films stand on their own.

Now the reverse has happened. In past 6-7 years, I have stopped watching TV. I have started reading a lot. It's taking me to a journey within. Also acquiring less images is way of making my own images.

Q. You assisted Dibakar on Oye lucky Lucky Oye! and also wrote the screenplay of LSD. How does Titli diverge from the Dibakar Banerjee style and what would be the similarities?

A. I don't know how to answer that. But what I do know is that the similarity we share is to tell our stories as sparingly as possible. We share the same cinematic ethos. We believe in telling stories as they are fearlessly and honestly. Titli is a very personal film and the film has such a personal way, intensity and thickness to it.

Q. Why is Titli such a personal film to you?

A. This film has been in development for a 3 and a half years. It stems a lot out of my own experiences in my life, of the people around me. I dive-boarded these as dramatic content. I shared a tough relationship with my father and emotionally that is the place where Titli begins from. This relationship (with my father) made me break out and become my own person, and it also brings with it a conflict period. The emotions I felt during that period forms the central arc of Titli's journey.

Q. Can you talk about the writing process of Titli

A. I had the root idea and then Sharat Katariya and I went over it. We gradually discovered the script draft after draft. We asked ourselves, what is the film trying to say that is never been said before?'. The first draft was the character's journey. In the next draft we wondered Why is Vikram (Titli's brother) like this?', If Vikram has made Titli (the titular character) who he is , then who made Vikram? We wanted to understand Vikram and not just reduce him to a villain. This added another layer to our screenplay. We started shopping the script around and also found producers who were interested. But, I had the sense that this is not the film that I wanted to make. That we needed to work on it more. Then Sharat and I went over the draft, it seemed as if we were pushing blame from one person to another. After working on it, we found our breakthrough layer and that is when we cracked the film. Then we felt that now if we take this script to the producer, after hearing the narration even he (the producer) will think whether this story has been told before or not. We finally wrote a film that we thought that deserved to be made and we were ready to make it.

Q. What were the challenges you faced when it came to shooting your first film? (its small budget, your crew has talked about limited resources)

A. I come from the school which says that the filmmaker is responsible to his producer. It is equally important that the filmmaker expresses himself but also makes money for his producer. We knew we had a story that needed to be told organically and that it could only be made within a certain budget. I think, this worked in our favor as demand for more money or resources would give us lesser freedom to tell our story organically. Also we felt that our story did not need this kind of pressure. I would say this is not the weakness but the strength of the film. It is a film that screams, shouts, might make the audiences feel awkward, could be difficult to digest and shakes the status quo. My crew was also emotionally connected with the film and we were ready to fight the tough time in making the film. And I think that is why the film has the energy that it has right now.

Q. How does it feel like for you debut feature to be selected at Cannes? What expectations do you have from the film's screening at the prestigious film festival?

A. Right now I am just numb and there is a certain sense of disbelief. I am at the mix theatre and working really hard to come out with a film in its best possible form. This is a very crucial and simultaneously an exciting time for the film. At Cannes, I am looking forward to how the audience will react to the film, as for the first time the film will be screened for a large audience. I am a little nervous but also very excited.

Q. How did you get involved with the writing of the screenplay of Titli? How much time it took/ how many drafts? You and Kanu already had a story in place or did it evolve in the process of writing the screenplay?

A. My script Dum Laga Ke Haisha was part of the NFDC Screenwriters' Lab where Urmi Juvekar was mentoring the project. She suggested my name to Kanu to collaborate. In our first meeting itself, we realized that our journeys have been quite similar, whether it was our roots in East Delhi or participating in the Berlinale Talent Campus. May be that's why it didn't take us time to develop trust in each others' instincts during the process.

It took us roughly over a year to arrive at the script and many drafts (haven't counted how many drafts though).

When we first met, Kanu already had a story in place but I didn't want to stick to it as I felt it was restricting me from getting deep into the world that we were aiming to create. We followed this route because a lot of times the characters choose their own path and that is not necessarily the path the story is providing. But what is the most important guiding factor is what one wants to say with the film and that's what helps evolving the story and screenplay both. So we decided to start fresh but Kanu's job was to bring me back if I went too far from what the film was about.

Q. In general, what are the challenges of writing a screenplay for a film?

A. The biggest challenge is to sit down and start writing. The discipline of being on the desk for 8-10 hours is a prerequisite. Rest is all very technical and varies from script to script. Sometimes one is totally unaware of the world one is going to create in the screenplay, so creating a plausible world becomes a challenge. Sometimes creating a character becomes challenging. Sometimes writing a happy end is a challenge. Sometimes, overcoming the fear of Whether this idea or the image that inspired me will translate into a screenplay or not' is a big challenge. Another challenge is to find a magical moment in each and every scene on a daily basis. But, to tackle all these challenges, one has to be at the desk.

Q. You have directed 10ml Love and the upcoming Dum Laga Ke Haisha. How are directing and screenwriting different? And how does your skills as a screenwriter aid in directing?

A. Writing is a lonely process and directing is teamwork. Writing is your personal struggle to create a scenario but directing is a struggle to bring life to the same scenario and take it beyond the written word. When one is a writer and director both, it's a boon. Sometimes, the location or the artist or the staging needs a rewrite, sometimes what looked good on paper falls flat during rehearsals - in all these situations being a writer comes really handy and one can change things around to make the scene work. And the best part is, you don't need anybody's approval to make that change. You are not waiting for the writer's mail with a fresh rewrite when you have a 6 AM shift.

Q. All of your films be it Bheja Fry, 10 ml Love, and your latest Dum Laga Ke Haisha belong to the comedy genre. Titli is a hard hitting gritty crime drama. Is there a difference in the approach in writing?

A. For me, the approach doesn't change with the genre of the film I'm writing. One thing that is common whether it's a comedy or a gritty drama, they all thrive a lot on dramatic irony. The outcome can be a comic closure or a dramatic closure to a scene but what is important is to create an engaging emotional journey with unexpected moments.

Q. How do you feel about Titli being selected for Cannes?

A. Reassured. Titli has been a very emotional journey for both me and Kanu. More emotional for Kanu than me because my job finished once the screenplay was done but he took the baton forward. The two of us sat in a room everyday with black coffee and green teas. Discussions started from the story and went on to become really personal. We have both grown with this film and changed as people - changed each others' way of thinking in some ways. There was a lot of give and take. And in hindsight, every moment was totally worth it!

Q. What was the brief given to you by Kanu for the casting of Titli?

A: Kanu and I have been working together for many years and have similar sensibilities on most things. I think both of us were very clear that even though we are making the film about the under-belly and especially the lower class, we will not, make a caricature of these people. Something that every Hindi speaking film (that gets a release) does. And thus we wanted to humanize each and every character in the film. We were dealing with very sensitive material. We told each other; we are potentially making a film about the same kind of people who had brutally assaulted a girl on a moving bus in December 2012, aka the Nirbhaya case. Since they are our protagonists we need to keep our personal biases aside and without justifying them or their stance, need to wholly understand who these people are. Why do these criminals become who they are and how do their acts reach demonic proportions when they commit a crime, like the one on the bus? I don't think those men live like that every single moment of their lives. It's a flux of so many complexes that makes the repressed lower class Indian man to be who he is and to do what he does.

Couple of my favorite scenes from the film have been chopped off in edit, either because they were shifting from Titli's POV or probably they weren't taking the story ahead. But for me some of these scenes said a lot about these people. How Ranvir Shorey's character gets angered when an upper middle class woman asks him to shut up in a packed movie theatre, embarrassing him. But he can't reply back as she speaks to him in English. Also what he does to that woman later is edited in the film. Hope the viewers get to see it in the deleted scenes. Another favorite moment in the film that is still there is when Ranvir's character asks his middle brother - "Ghar ki laundiya se kaam karayenge?!". (You want a woman from the house to fend for us?!) And Amit Sial's character replies - "To chaara kya hai aur. Sabhi to kara re." (What else then? Everyone's doing it.) These two lines for me sum up the whole film. The dichotomy of the times that we are in. How crazily traditional and modern at the same time, even at the lower class societal level. How Indian men are still trying to deal with the slow yet steady uprooting of the manes of patriarchy in our society. In fact this line wasn't even written in the script and we chanced upon it during rehearsal!

It was these themes of Classist oppression', Patriarchal repression', Becoming the mirror image of who you hate the most' etc. that we were dealing with. And as the Associate Director and Casting Director I persevered, with Kanu and the rest of the team, to discover these truths through the process of making this film.

It is the great vision of a first time director, who promised himself to make a very personal and a very honest film, that inspired us all. And he went through four years of mental torture to realize that process. It is a great script like Titli, that allows your imagination, as a head of department (HoD), to go places and lets you explore multiple facets in a character that you rarely get to discover otherwise. I think every good HoD is always looking for the perfect combination of great vision and script. Titli for me had all the right components. It's possibly the best film I have worked on and I have been lucky to work with some very good directors and very good films.

Q. Can you walk us through the casting process of the film? What were you looking at during the audition/casting phase? Why did you choose certain actors for a particular role? (eg Shashank's role, Ranvir's role)

A. For the same reasons stated above, I wanted to push my team and myself as much as we could. I got on board my two long time casting associates Vinod Rawat and Prashant Singh. Even though we as a casting unit do our best for every film, in my first meeting with them on Titli I said, "Let's make this our best work till date. The ingredients are all there. Now it's up to us to either deliver or fail this opportunity."

Since I also had responsibilities in the Direction department, Vinod and Prashant did a bulk of the groundwork of finding some very good mix of actors and non-actors. And then we worked very hard to workshop both the actors and non-actors. Most of the work with the professional actors was to making them unlearn crafty acting and to move in the direction that Kanu had found after a lot of trial and error. Most of the work with the non-actors was to equip them with the art and craft of acting, in a very brief period of time. We prepared and delivered tailor-made crash courses in acting to various individuals. I love throwing a non-actor in the middle of a bunch of professional actors. Because when the non-actor, once trained sufficiently, performs, he/she puts the professional actor under tremendous pressure to perform as organically and effortlessly as the non-actor. I think this is what happened when our professional actors performed with Shivani, who plays Neelu (Titli's wife) in the film.

Shashank (who plays the lead Titli) was put through quite a bit of torture himself. Kanu and I took way too much liberty to put him through what the character goes through. He's the one actor in the film who is very different from the class and world that Titli inhabits. The very first thing we had to do was break his class. We tried for quite a few days and nothing seemed to work. He had the presence for the part but not the background. He was trained at Whistling Woods, played the guitar, sang only English songs. Diametrically different from the part and initially just not getting the point. So one day I took a big step.

In middle of an improvisation where he is beaten by Vikram (Ranvir Shorey's character. My associate Prashant was playing Vikram in the improv) I suddenly gestured to Prashant to beat Shashank for real. And he did! Really hard. It went on for a good two minutes. Shashank was beaten by a chappal and it was quite humiliating and painful to be beaten up, like that. And all of this even before he was finalized for the part! I was shivering even as I saw the scene unfold. Post that I sat with Shashank. As he wept brave silent tears for long, I said, "You can either go back, sue me and never return to us or to this film. OR. You can go back and learn what Titli goes through every single day of his life. Understand what you miss in yourself as Titli and come back tomorrow to be grilled even further and to be grilled for the next six months. Come back if you're ready for all this." I'm not proud of what I did, and I hope I never repeat this again, but luckily for us and all credit to Shashank, he returned the next day. And that's the first time he submitted himself completely to the film and the part. It's so ironic that the film has a line where the father says, "jab gujjar ke ladkon ne maara, chun tak nahi ki isne".Suddenly Prashant and I were the Gujjar ke ladkey!!!

Even though I have had the luxury to cast films like LSD and Shanghai over a period of six months, for Titli we had less than ten weeks to finish the casting. Even as I kept calm on the outset and Kanu trusted me to do the job, I was nervous because from experience I know that good casting fails not so much out of lack of effort but often out of lack of time given to find the actors. And ten weeks was far too less to find the 35 odd characters. We potentially had to lock 3-4 characters a week! And about 7 out of those being primary characters! When we started the audition process, not a single actor had been locked beforehand. We were even testing for Ranvir Shorey's character, as his dates weren't sorted yet.

Since we could not increase the number of days we pumped in more manpower to increase productivity in the same time period. And since our budget was only for few people a lot these assistants worked their asses off for no payment as they too believed in the film and in me. Vinod headed Delhi casting with five more assistants and Prashant headed Mumbai Casting with two more assistants. So including me, there were at any given point, for ten weeks, ten people dedicatedly and solely looking for actors for Titli. No Sundays. No holidays. I often used to finish a recce with Kanu and meet Vinod at the casting hall to see what all he had found in last 2-3 days. And then discuss the game plan for ahead. It is this strategy of casting simultaneously in two cities with a big team that helped us maintain our casting standard that we expected of ourselves.

Casting is something that evolves as it progresses. Just like writing. You may start thinking a certain way and then as you meet new people your ideas about the characters evolve. Directors always have a certain type of actor in mind, especially if they are also the writers of the film. They have lived with the vision of a person in their mind for long. And then you come up with someone very different from that. And then it's a tug of war between what you imagine and what you find. And what you find, can often be better than what you imagined. Good directors are the ones who take the best from everyone, who keep an open mind, yet have very strong clarity of what is within the scope of the film and what is not. This is one film where I can say not a single person has been cast, who is not of my liking. Many a times as a HoD you let the Director decide what he/she wants, even as you may disagree with that decision, because you cannot completely envision what the Director would do with his decision. But Kanu and I finally agreed on every single casting. Well Almost.

Obviously working like mad, takes a toll somewhere. I remember we were casting for a tertiary character that comes in the film for one scene. Yet very important, since it is the tertiary characters that infuse the right mood and flavor to any film. Somehow even after testing 20 actors, some of them Delhi theatre veterans, Kanu just didn't like anyone. And it had been weeks since we were testing for that small part. Shoot had begun and I became very frustrated with Kanu for not finalizing the part. My team had worked very hard and for some reason he just couldn't lock that character. Or maybe we just couldn't find that character. Anyways, when we sat on that character to watch the 7 shortlisted actors for the tenth time, he further shortlisted 3 and asked, "What do you think?" And I remember saying, "I don't think anything anymore. You see what you want, what you like and tell me". And he said, "Yeah, but what's your opinion between these three guys?" And still being this frustrated brat I kept my stance, "I seriously have no opinion. You decide." And I refused to budge and give my opinion. And then Kanu locked the actor he liked. It's funny when I think now, about how silly I was being but those are the kind of pressures we work under when we decide to make a film like Titli. And also that I would never throw a tantrum with any other director. But with Kanu, as he's not just my director, but also my closest buddy since many years.

Parul Sondh, Production Designer

Q. Production designers normally spend a long time in researching for a particular film. How long did it take you to research for Titli vis a vis a production design?

A. I got on to this project almost two months before the shoot, so there wasn't much time per se. I wasn't particularly overwhelmed by the time factor for research as I have been documenting communities (marginalized and others) for a while now. So this particular strata of society that we have shown in Titli, is not foreign to me plus we had an extensive recce in Delhi which was a great research point. I was thinking more in terms of what extra can I bring through design and add to this fantastic script

Q. What brief was given to you Kanu Behl regarding the production design of the film?

A. Kanu happens to be one of the very few filmmakers in Mumbai who actually understand what production design can bring to a story. Contrary to the popular belief, production design is not just about building sets but creating a space, unique to the story, that aids the process of storytelling and includes color/ texture design, character space design and detailing etc. as well. So for me, that was fantastic. He was very clear that he didn't want it to look art directed and setty'. There was no brief per se but Kanu definitely wanted the space design to get all the sub textual inferences out. It was a collaborative effort. Apart from the script sessions, we had numerous creative sessions and conversations throughout our prep time wherein I understood the characters more, their back stories, where they are coming from, their desires, ambitions or perversions, if any. All this information helped me detail out the design. We almost lived these characters, the story and built a visualscape from and around it.

Q. Could you illustrate with specific instance(s) from the film to highlight the production design process of the film?

A. From the very beginning, we all were very clear that Titli's House was the main action property and had to be special. We also knew that it would be a tough find but were excited about exploring and finding the right location. During our recce, we went all over East and West Delhi, in many localities and must have visited some 50 odd or more houses till we found one in Sangam Vihar.

For me, Titli's house was a strong reference point in the screenplay to base my design on. It represented the grim dark reality difficult to let go off. This is where they live, this is what is a constant and this is where the past has been.

I had to create an atmosphere of claustrophobia, patriarchal tension through the structure and elements around. There had to be a sense of unease in the environment, a sense of broken dreams and no escape. A mental maze of sorts, spatially translated.

A major portion of the existing house was broken down and re designed to suit our specifics. Architecturally, the layout was changed and dimensions narrowed, roofs were extended to make it more enclosed and oppressive. We went for pop colors but colder palette. I experimented a lot with wall textures. The house had to look lived in and neglected and there was also a certain inference to the layered history the family had. In terms of interior styling, I played around with the elements specific to the section of socio economic background the family came from. I used a lot of flex adverts and product boxes (appliances/household items) in set dressing, almost as an irony - a distinct mark of economic reality and their aspirations related to it. Nothing had been moved, everything just got stacked every year. The set design is strewn with clues about their past, present, hopes, and interests etc. - individual spaces in the collective dynamics they share.

Most of our properties were sourced from the raddi shops in and around the area. For costumes and set fabric, we opted for geometric patterns - checks, stripes, blocks etc. and a certain color tone specific to each family member/character. The chaos was deliberate.

Overall, Titli's production design is the veiled reality of the family and their interaction with the existential elements around them.

Q. Can you talk about the look (composition, lighting, textures, colours) of the film? What brief was given to you by Kanu Behl? How did you set out to achieve it?

A. The entire approach towards filming was to hide the craft as much as possible. Though everything, be it lensing, lighting, compositions were planned and designed but our constant effort during the entire process was to make it invisible and not make the design and thought felt.

Titli is one of the films where I got to really collaborate with the director. After my first reading Kanu took me through the world of Titli and his two brothers controlled by the patriarch daddy. Kanu always saw two worlds in the film. One is Titli's world which is very murky, confined and suppressed and the outside world. He wanted to visually create difference between how their house and surroundings look like and the other spaces where they come across other characters of the film. For the house I designed the lighting where natural light enters parts of the house and only from top direct sun light never enters the house. The idea was to bring a very hemmed in feeling for their house which has a sense of being surrounded by taller buildings which signifies their position in the society. As compared to their world the outside world was brighter, sharper and little saturated.

We did a lot of testing trying to crack the look of the film and 16mm was giving us the look and feel intended, only problem was the little extra contrast which is natural to 16mm which to Kanu and me looked a little forced specially in day light scenes so we decided to do a Pull Process on the negative which makes the contrast natural and not forced.

We never wanted to punch in things to the viewer or push in drama so we never almost never used extreme wide or tele lenses for 90% of the film. It was very rare that we changed the lensing to exaggerate things. In terms of movement we shot most of the film handheld with the protagonist Titli watching everything with him. The reason why handheld became the choice of exploring this film was that we never wanted the shots and compositions to feel very balanced and stable at the same time we wanted the characters to belong to the spaces which could only happen if they could move about freely without being conscious of the camera. We always tried not restrict them with movements or lighting rather we lit in a way and shot handheld so I could follow and capture wherever they go instead of asking them to land at a certain mark or position. Its only towards the end of the film that we change the language and use steadycam for movements.

When we were discussing how do we place these characters in the compositions, one brief from Kanu was that he never wants daddy's character to be right in front controlling things rather he should always be like this looming figure who's always aware of what's happening in the house. We always made sure that daddy is always there in the frame in the background or passing in the foreground showing his presence in the house.

In terms of colors me and Kanu had shared a lot of images and realized that most of the images we were coming across had a lot of Blue's and yellow's in such areas and similar monochromatic tones but once we started recce we actually saw a lot of pinks and greens and that really excited me because the use of monochromatic tones had been done a lot and I never wanted push in a obvious mood or make the film feel very designed plus even in terms of my light sources I somehow never wanted to use clean hues and have a very clean image rather I always imagined polluting the warm and cool lights with a little green and magenta. When we discussed this with our production designer Parul Sondh, everyone somehow agreed instantly.

Q. What camera did you shoot Titli with it? Why did you decide to shoot with that particular camera for the film? Could you elaborate the reasons.

A. The seed of 16mm came from Kanu but from the very beginning I was quite sure that this film will be great if shot on Super 16 and that's what finally ended up being our choice of format. I knew it will be very difficult convincing everyone because of the notion that shooting film is expensive. We were going to shoot in a lot of textured places in Delhi and the kind of characters we had in the film I somehow couldn't imagine seeing it in digital because Kanu and I were very clear that we want a strong texture to the film and we want to see the crassness of these faces. We still did a side by side test between Red Epic and Arri 416 camera with 16mm negative at real location instead of a studio to actually see if the idea is really getting interpreted on screen. With digital we were losing that depth and it was rendering everything very smooth, hiding the imperfections of the faces, the cracks on the walls, the uneven paint. Our film is about those imperfections. Since the whole film was handheld the Arri416 is very compact and light and designed for handheld work which gave me great control on my operation plus the locations we were shooting were mostly very tiny so it was easy to move around with it. The rooms in Titli's house were very small. Apart from Ranvir Shorey and Amit Sial both the characters of Titli and Neelu were first time actors, 16mm gave us about 10 minutes of roll time per mag and we could move around very quickly which really helped in getting performances right.

Q. What challenges you faced while shooting for Titli? Were there any improvisation or innovation made during the filming process?

A. We shot Titli in the month of April and May in Delhi which is probably the worst time to be in this city and never been explored in films. Usually its winters in Delhi that is chosen for filming as the light is beautiful and the weather very comfortable for the crew. We started with that thought but finally chose summers because the film's content is very harsh and needed that harsh top sun to bring it out, not the most pretty light but felt right.

We consciously made sure we'll not use any fancy equipment in filming and rather keep it simple and straight forward so we can make the process as organic as possible and not intimidate any actors with the presence of big lights and camera equipment. Only for a few scenes towards the end we used the steadycam.

For the showroom heist sequence I didn't want a fixed rigged camera on the car or put it on a low loader and shoot because that always look very artificial to me. Instead I wanted a handheld camera even on a moving car. We had only a day to shoot the whole sequence with a lot of action, and the number of shots were endless. that day was extremely ambitious because there were too many things to cover so we created this rig around the car where I could move from one window of the car to another in a span of 2-3 minutes and me and my focus puller could actually sit on a platform attached to the car and film the whole scene while the car is moving.

Q. What post production work was done on the footage you shot for the film.

A. The 16mm negative went through a one stop pull process and scanned at Super 2K resolution 10 bit log. The DI was done at Prasad Labs, Mumbai on a Baselight platform, linear mode with no film print LUT. My colorist JD has a done a lot of acclaimed films before and we together did a pretty straight forward color correction on this one with very minimal windows and secondary corrections. There were some basic VFX involved for enhancing a few shots.

Q. How did you land up editing Titli? How long did it take to edit Titliand what was the process like?

A. I got involved in the film last October. When I started, some basic work had been done on the film. It's one of the tougher films I have worked on because the whole idea was to make the edit look captured' - as if it's an experience the viewer is going through - and not deliberate. And then to balance it with the emotional graphs of the characters. It took me a bit to get in the middle of both these things and find this balance. How in life we hear a lot of important things said to us but actually we haven't seen' them being said. We remember the moment vividly not necessarily as it happened' but with some personal visual or sound that we associate with that moment. We've tried to recreate this very subtly and subconsciously. Let's see if it works . The film took roughly 3 months to take shape.

Q. You once tweeted that lots of "people have worked on it with blind faith and very less resources." What were the resource constraints keeping in mind the fact that it has been produced by Dibakar Banerjee Productions in association with one of the biggest studios of the country?

A. At the end of the day, it is a small film with a given budget. And even if you have generous producers it's not prudent to go over the assigned budget. It's a first film and it was important that it is financially balanced. So, like any other small film ( I say this because I've worked on many small budget films) this too had its compulsions and people have worked more for their belief rather than the money they will earn.

Q. What are your feelings about Titli being selected for Cannes? What impact do you think it will have on the perception of Indian Cinema abroad?

A. Am very very happy the film has been selected in the festival as somewhere it means that it has connected with people irrespective of their nationality. It's a very prestigious festival and hopefully, will get the film a wider audience and interesting insights for us to move forward with. I remember at Film Bazaar last year, people (who saw it in the Work In Progress Lab) connected with the film and found some pieces of their own lives in the story. It was highly reassuring for us because it is ultimately a very local and personal story. Nothing is more gratifying than people saying I know exactly what you mean' after seeing a film. Honestly, am in no position to comment on the international impact but I just hope we all can come up with more local stories, more fearlessly.

Q. Could you explain for the benefit for the lay reader what exactly is sound designing?

A. Sound design creates the illusion of reality in a film - whatever the reality of that particular film is - making it believable and enjoyable. It could be a thriller, a fantasy or a family drama - the way it sounds' transports you into the world of the film and into the heads of the characters. Whether any sound, e.g. a footstep, a wind blow, a metal cling, or a disturbing hum is adding to any practical or psychological requirement of the scene, is always a choice to the film maker. The choice of the sound or the tweaking of any sound to make it nuanced, to make it an element of storytelling is sound design.Good sound is like good health. One only notices it when it goes bad or is not working. Otherwise, it's like an organic part of the story, adding layers and nuances that help us in enjoying the film more.

Q. What was the brief given to you by Kanu Behl regarding the sound design of the film?

A. Kanu and I have always discussed sound as an integral part of a film's emotional graph. We shot on location and found a lot of interesting ambiances there. We saw that there are two distinct worlds in the film - one, Titli's home and the other, the outside world (the city) he aspires to be in. Also, we are a country in construction right now... digging, drilling, cranes moving etc have slowly become a part of our soundscape. Kanu wanted this layer to be present throughout the film

Q. Could you walk us through your process when it came sound designing of the film?

A. We shot at all real locations. So whenever I got time in between shots, I went out with my ambiance recorder to gather natural sounds peculiar to that location. These gave me a bank of sounds to choose from and I finally selected those that punctuated or enhanced the effectiveness of the scene in terms of the required mood and emotion. At places, I've used sounds to create unique identities of the locations. Titli house is surrounded by houses with noisy air coolers, children playing on street, utensil sounds from the adjacent house. And they create the sense of the place in its true color. And at some others, I've used sounds which don't relate directly with the scene or the space, but add to the mood. Like I found these sounds from an oil refinery adding a sense of fear and uneasiness in the scene where Titli breaks Neelu's hand. The metallic sounds from the refinery coming from a distance were adding an edge to the scene. Then in the scene where Vikram's wife asks him for divorce, there are some women singing and playing a dholak in the neighborhood. This creates a contrast with the mood of scene but somewhere also adds to Sangeeta's (Vikram's wife) mind-space of looking forward to a new life.

Q. What is the difference in sound designing for mainstream romantic film such as Band Baaja Baraat and Ladies vs Ricky Bahl and that of a crime drama like Titli?

A. For me it's not all that different in terms of sound design. The usage of background music is of course much more in mainstream' cinema, and to accommodate that, the effects and ambiance sounds are not the driving force in the final mix. This somewhere adds to the make-believe and aspirational quotient of these films. But the approach to sound design has to be as engaging and complex as any film.