Spaces for Rent: Of lost hopes; regained- Part III
Since the whole story happens in one place itself, it would be very much convenient for us to actually shoot the whole film in one particular location. This factor also determined the making of the film. Now we had to finalise the location for the shooting. I don’t know how but a miracle happened. Monish’s house (60x40 ft dimension) had been lying uninhabited for more than a year for the reason that it had to be renovated completely. He said we could use the house without rent for about three to four months. Sometimes the intervention is divine. I went with Monish to see their house in the night and in the very dark of the night, Eureka! It was like made for our own film. I decided that this is going to be the house for our filming.
I called up all our gang mates to assemble to let them know of my recession era discovery. I had the whole picture in my mind. Discussions and talks were held and within two hours, Rajesh and his wife Saritha handed us Rs.2000. It was the first donation for our film. We were really happy; I was overwhelmed by this gesture of goodness.
The next day we invaded the house with brooms and buckets and mops. The house welcomed us with a carpet of one inch of dust all over and the cob-web decorations. We were possessed! We imitated the brave soldiers; we swept, mopped, cleaned, washed and sanitized the whole house with disinfectants. And lo! The house was looking amazingly empty.
That night, I slept really peacefully; even my personal worries got sanitized along with the house for the night at least.
Scripting Process:
The Lower Depths is a Russian play and we had the translation of the play in English. We also had an adapted version of the play into Kannada called ‘Ee Kelaginavaru’ written by B.T Desai for reference. We read both the versions and later decided to go on with our own version of the subject. We decided to maintain the skeleton of the original story and adapt the rest of it to the modern times.
The process began with the translation of the play into Kannada and then we began adapting it to our taste. Everything had to be logical and still it had to retain the rustic effect of the original play and story. It was quite a tough job. Four of us translated it with the help of rest of the gang mates and finished the dialogues for the film.
The characters were all the same but their representation and their jobs were different. We desperately have tried to retain the essence of the play. Muddu Krishna Sir was like always skeptical about our venture but his skepticism emerged out of the concern of our group. He was kind enough to have lent us the copy of Kurasawa’s ‘The Lower Depths’ for reference.
The whole script was revised again and again until the time of the shooting and also during its process.
Casting:
The play is an ensemble play involving seventeen characters. All the characters have their own individuality and weightage. The biggest problem we faced during casting was that all of our friends were among the same age group. Between 20 to 28 years. But the story demanded otherwise. We could not approach established actors as we did not have enough dough for it.
Dhananjaya , Poorna, Monish and Dharmesh from our team were casted in where as the others had to stay back as the technical and non-technical crew for the film. Some of them really wanted to act but I asked them to prioritise and they chose not to act. But I had casted Ashwin for the role of the Nasir and then later to policeman in the story but it had to change because we roped in Military Mahadev Sir. Vinay also was casted but he had to cope up for the shooting days for the film by applying leave for his job which was really difficult. Then his role was given to Habeeb but he had some job related problem as well. Finally, Basavalingiah Sir was casted for the role of Satin in our film. I have been sorry for not giving them opportunities but I meant their good, nothing else.
Among our age group we had, Sandesh, Shaji, Haneef, Parvathamma, Supreetha, Shruthi, Neetha, Pushpa, Dhananjaya, Poorna, Monish and Dharmesh. The older group comprised of Basavalingiah Sir, Murali Sringeri Sir, Sudheer, Mallik and Military Mahadev Sir.
We are really fortunate and glad that they obliged to work with us and give the required variety and boost for our film.
Basavalingiah Sir, was acting for the first time after twenty years. When we heard that he is interested to act in our film, we were overjoyed. We could not believe our ears. Murali Sir was like the character of ‘Luka’ come alive. I could not imagine anybody else for that role.
We also tried to include Jayaram Thatachar to act in our film but he had date problems. Anyways, all’s well that ends well.
Thus the whole casting was completed.
By N S Islahuddin
