Venkat Prabhu recollects his experience working with Ilaiyarajaa in Custody

Custody, the Tamil-Telugu bilingual directed by Venkat Prabhu, is gearing up for release on May 12. With Naga Chaitanya in the lead, the film also stars Aravind Swami, Sarath Kumar, Krithi Shetty, and Priyamani among others.

In a previous conversation with CE, Venkat Prabhu recollected his experience working with his uncle, Ilaiyarajaa, for the first time in Custody. Shedding more light upon the compositions and background score of the film, the Maanadu director narrated how his Rajaa Pa scored music for a particular scene. "I’m not sure how many youngsters now know Ilaiyarajaa’s ‘How to name it?’. It is an instrumental album, composed entirely of violins. The second part of the album was called ‘Nothing but Wind’, and as an answer to the first album, this one was composed entirely of flute music," he said while explaining how he took a track from How To Name It and placed it in the background of a scene while filming. 

"The content in that particular scene is a standard one, so much so that the audience can predict what the characters say, even if they watch it on mute. So, I thought of handling the scene musically." When VP played the scene with Rajaa's track from the album, the Maestro said “Idhelaam ippo record panna aal illa da.” (I don’t have people to play the violins now to re-record this track.) "Then, as I was adamant about wanting the same track, he recomposed a two-minute piece for me and re-recorded the whole thing with violins," the filmmaker described. 

The film is backed by Srinivasaa Silver Screen. The technical crew of Custody consists of SR Kathir as the cinematographer and music is scored by both Ilaiyaraaja and his son Yuvan Shankar Raja. Editing is by Venkat Raajen, while Rajeevan handled the production design. Venkat Prabhu has penned the dialogues for the film in Tamil, while Abburi Ravi has penned the Telugu dialogues.