There are men who look normal on the outside, but inside they’re thinking, “I’m a man.” Once they loose a grip over themselves, they’re helpless. Shammi has reached his breaking point, and we simply showed a scenario where a character like him could end up doing things like that. Shammi’s dark character traits can be found in every man, and most of them find a way to manage them. Everyone has a breaking point, and once they’ve reached that, their true colours come out. Yes, that’s how we had always envisioned Shammi’s arc.
The arc of Fahadh’s character Shammi carries slasher film tropes. When you know that the actors have a strong grasp on their characters, you feel very safe. Performances like that come from the inner recesses of the soul. For example, the scene of Saji and the counsellor was achieved like that. Some astonishing performances happen in just one take. Sometimes you give the right direction and the performances turn out much better than you expect. Was there a lot of improvisation? Any particular moment that surprised you? They should never deviate from their character. It’s about making them react realistically to a particular situation as their character, not as themselves. We kept fine-tuning the performances until we got what we really wanted. We tell them clearly what the characters are thinking at that particular point of time and then we make them do it. They show up on set all fresh and ready, and then we have to put them in the mindset of their characters. It all depends on their frame of mind at any given time. Have the actors understood that scene completely? Do they have anything more to understand? Can we do that scene in a different way? Only once we got the output of the actors right did we start thinking about the shots. We played out the scenes to get a sense of the rhythm and timing. First, it was all about giving the script and actors the necessary space. Everything else - the shots, lighting, etc - came much later. The first priority for us was to get the performances right. When it comes to the performances, did you plan the shot divisions in advance, or did you do all that later? Syam followed the same approach he had with all his other films. Once we had everything in place, writing the script didn’t take that much time. All that preparation was needed just to get the entire story in a basic synopsis form. Fleshing out all the characters and the surrounding details required a lot of time. Considering the challenge that comes with a script populated by so many characters, we knew we had to approach everything patiently. Syam, my assistants, and I spent close to two years in Kumbalangi, getting ourselves acquainted with the place and finding not only the apt locations for our film, but also the actors who could play some of the background characters. Is that because you guys spend a lot of time on preparation?Ībsolutely. One of the notable characteristics of any film coming from the Dileesh-Syam Pushkaran camp is their superior quality.