Location Diaries: Between the lines

Much of the shoot of Sanchita Shetty’s upcoming film, Adhik Ravichandran’s Kadhalai Thedi Nithya Nanda, was held within the confines of a house, and featured her along with co-stars GV Prakash, Yogi Babu and Anandraj. Well before the shoot began, Sanchita had long discussions with director Adhik and costume designer Sathya. "I have a different look in this film; so it required several look tests," says Sanchita. "Right from my artificial nose ring to the design of my anklets, footwear, and the sari, the duo were particular and thorough with detailing."

When the actual shoot began, she saw a different side of director Adhik—a more relaxed one. "Though he narrated the script to me, I was surprised when no written dialogues were given to me before the shoot. He told me not to worry, and just land up on the sets."

As she was anxiously waiting for her lines to be given on the first day of the shoot, a totally chilled out Adhik approached her. "He explained that he wanted the lines to look natural, and so, instead of giving us the dialogues, he just told us the scene and how we were free to communicate the lines as we wanted. This was a totally new way of working for me!" Soon as she got the hang of it, she says she found it to be quite liberating. "My Tamil fluency has improved over the years, but there is a certain dialect I had to use for my character, and so, for some words, I took the help of an assistant director, to get the pronunciation right."

Yogi Babu, she says, was the highlight of the shoot. "I was looking forward to meeting him, and was quite excited by the prospect of matching my comic timing with an accomplished comedian like him. The two-day shoot with him was such fun. Even just the way he looked at us or an expression he gave, would have us in splits, which sometimes caused the shoot to get delayed," she says.