Location Diaries: Thara local 

Sai Dhansika talks about her experience while shooting for Meera Kathiravan’s Vizhithiru.
Location Diaries: Thara local 

Meera Kathiravan’s upcoming film, Vizhithiru, has made for a rather challenging project for Sai Dhansika, who plays a slum girl in it. The Chennai dialect was particularly hard for her to master. “Every day, I was trained by one of the assistant directors, a college girl well-versed in Madras baashai,” she says. “I managed to pick up the words and intonation pretty quickly.” 

In fact so attuned was she to it that sometimes, even after the shot got over, she’d continue talking in the same breath, to make sure she didn’t forget the flow. “Vijay Milton sir (the cinematographer) would be doubling up with laughter to see us prattling on in Chennai Tamil. People, who have heard me dub for the role, have complimented me. So, that’s great,” she smiles.

The film also has her trying her hand at comedy for the first time in her career. “And to work with someone like Thambi Ramaiah is no joke. He improvises all the time. So I had to be extremely well-prepared and be alert during every shot to get my comic timing right.” Her task was made even more difficult by director Kadiravan who insisted that each scene be shot without any cuts in between. “All the rehearsals we had helped.”

Dhanshika, who plays a character called Saroja, also reveals that she was given only one costume for the entire film. “Somehow, in most of my films, I end up getting just one or two costumes!” she laughs.

Shooting for the film has resulted in her sleep patterns changing. “For this film, we shot for several days through the night all over Chennai.  We’d take a minor break and return again by noon. When night sets in these days, I don’t even feel sleepy,” she says

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