Changing The Lens

OutlookIndia

#OutlookMagazine | For decades, production designer and artist, Aradhana Seth, has worked on creating film sets that are intrinsic to storytelling.  Tanul Thakurdown & Ojas Kolvankar writes.   Listen to the excerpts from the latest issue of Outlook - only by Pragya Vats.   #VirtualProduction #Filmmaking #Cinema #Bollywood #AI #IReadOutlook #ReturnToReading   Read more: https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/virtual-production-could-democratise-filmmaking-says-artist-aradhana-seth-magazine-337431

Transcript

00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the current issue of Outlook.

00:05 Outlook looks at two cover stories.

00:07 One, titled "Almost Real, But Not Quite".

00:11 Virtual production can make the filmmaking much cheaper and convenient.

00:16 But will the AI-powered tech also forever alter the essence of cinema itself?

00:22 Second, it's titled "Paradise Lost".

00:25 Can we row the Shikara Isles and have the heritage walks?

00:29 The cover carries the image and words from the visual artist Veer Munshi.

00:34 He says, "My installation depicts the fast-changing characteristics of Indian cities.

00:40 So I was wondering about the fate of our paradise on earth called Kashmir."

00:45 Changing the lens, an interview with Aradhana Seth, production designer and artist.

00:51 She spoke to Tanul Thakur of Outlook and Ojas Kolwankar.

00:56 There is an experience, a tactile one, that production designers create

01:01 with objects that bind time and space and complete the narrative in a film.

01:06 For decades, production designer and artist Aradhana Seth

01:10 has worked on creating film sets that are intrinsic to storytelling.

01:14 A location, an altar, a house built from the scratch and aged.

01:19 To give it a context and to place it in the story are her ways of storytelling.

01:25 Her Goa house is a testimony to her craft.

01:28 Objects from film sets are a part of her museum in the making

01:32 where she plans to preserve parts of ephemeral sets

01:36 and these objects are clues and causes and serve more than one function.

01:42 They add depth and with technology, some of the depth might be lost.

01:47 Seth recalls how on the film, "The Darjeeling Limited 2007"

01:53 where she was the art director and set decorator,

01:56 they duplicated cabin number 4041 and mirrored it when doing so.

02:01 The train bogie was the site of the action and integral to the plot.

02:06 It ensured that the director Wes Anderson could film looking out of the window

02:12 of a moving train as it traversed on an actual railway line in Rajasthan.

02:17 This helped the camera access to remain the same.

02:21 They were filming both to and from the starting station.

02:24 For this particular project, they had to design a mount on the ceiling of the corridor to install the camera.

02:31 This made it easy to shoot the characters walk up and down the long corridor

02:36 without the camera appearing in the frame.

02:39 "If we were to shoot The Darjeeling Limited today,

02:42 I wonder what Unreal Engine would offer us," says Seth.

02:46 There is a realness to objects when they are part of the set and not just projected on a screen.

02:52 They can evoke emotions and reactions.

02:55 When asked, "What was your earliest experience of working with films?"

03:00 Seth replies, "My first movie, in which Annie gives it those ones, in 1989,

03:06 as an assistant director, was a set in the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi.

03:12 The screenwriter and production designer, Arundhati Roy's script

03:16 was nuanced in its understanding of the spaces.

03:19 In fact, she had lived in that hostel.

03:22 It was interesting to see the choices she and the director, Pradeep Krishan, made

03:26 when it came to designing the sets and locating the film.

03:30 Be it their decision to shoot in the school itself, the real location, and preserve the look and feel,

03:36 they often retained certain aspects and embellished others to add to the look, feel, and period that the film was set in.

03:45 Over the years, it became very clear to me when we needed to build a set from scratch,

03:50 when one could build into an existing location, and when the space needed only set dressing.

03:57 Multiple location recces, sourcing and research were a big part of prep.

04:02 While wandering and looking, she soaked in the atmosphere.

04:06 So, as a production designer, my biggest compliment is, "But, what have you done on the film?"

04:13 It means that I have been able to create the milieu and the time period in its smallest details.

04:19 From wall texture, set dressing, art, furniture, and the small objects that are seen in the frame.

04:26 I never want to create a set that looks like a set, unless it is meant to be a set.

04:32 For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.

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