I've got a new profound respect for directors and music directors: Amitash Pradhan

Remember the villain from Dhanush's Vellailla Pattadhari? Amitash Pradhan, who has also made his Hollywood debut with Heartbeats, is back. And this time, he has come up with the music video Sing for the moment, which is a cover of Laal Ishq from the Bollywood film Ram Leela. 

Talking about the video, Amitash says, "I was jamming with my friend MT Aditya, who has worked with Raghu Dixit in Bangalore and with GVM for the Ondraga singles, one day and he said we should do a song. We were wondering if we should do an original song or a cover. At that point of time we didn't have the idea of doing a video. We took Laal Ishq from the film Ram Leela, and we wanted to give it a Coke Studio feel." The actor then got well-known technicians from the city to join the project. "For example, the violin is played by Ananth, who is Anirudh's violinist, and editor Rajkeerthy sir's son RK Vijaay handled our editing. We also had a seven-hour session with Nakul Abhyankar, who works with AR Rahman; he was my vocal coach for the song," says Amitash who was impressed with the scratch of the song.

"It sounded really nice and we played the song to Anirudh, who recommended it to be made into a video. We also showed it to Vignesh Shivn, who told me to write the ending first and then work backwards for the script. That's when I decided on directing it as well; we had worked on it for four months and weren't sure if someone else could do justice to it." The actor also got a lot of advice from Ravi Varman and Rajiv Menon. They then got Arthi Venkatesh of Solo fame on board as the female lead. "We didn't want someone whose beauty takes time to grow on us considering the time limitation. Moreover, the entire story is around her and casting a known face was important," adds Amitash, who showed the video to Anirudh. "Without us even expecting it, he said that he wanted to release it," says a visibly ecstatic Amitash as he adds that it's not a commercial song made for any monetary gains. 

Talking about donning the director's hat for the first time, he says, "Direction was extremely difficult and with this song, I've got a new profound respect for directors and music directors. Acting and directing at the same time was tough as I had to keep switching my mind space from one to another. Sitting at the editing table for four weeks now has given me such a high that I want to direct a feature film soon after I do a couple of films as an actor," concludes Amitash.