It took me 15 years to realise the connecting thread of all characters that I created: Rajat Kapoor

Mumbai: Filmmaker-actor Rajat Kapoor, who is awaiting the release of the upcoming season of his streaming show ‘Tanaav’, has had an interesting journey as an artiste.

He wanted to become a director in the first place but had his brush with fame owing to his stellar acting performances.

Having accumulated enough goodwill and social capital, the actor forayed into filmmaking delivering nothing but the best there as well. However, it took him 15 years to pin-point the connecting thread between all the characters that he created.

Rajat spoke with IANS, and shared how he realised much later that all his characters were dealing with some kind of obsession.

He said, “I realised all my characters are very obsessive. This became apparent to me after 15 years of making films. My cameraman pointed this out to me. This was after ‘Ankhon Dekhi’, I told him that I want to make a trilogy. He then said, ‘Rajat sahab, apka ho gaya trilogy, all your characters so far, are obsessed in some or the other way.'”

He told IANS, “Even if you see my recent movies like ‘Kadak’, ‘RK/RKay’ and the new one that I just finished, the lead characters are obsessed with something. These are the people who interest me as a filmmaker. It’s something about their journey that resonates with the storyteller in me. They keep calling out to me, and I’m pulled into their world.”

While the rise of OTT has increased the shelf-life of a film, Rajat feels that OTT has more restrictions on the distribution compared to how it was in the past decade.

He said, “The OTT platforms today are very powerful, and the kind of curation that’s happening for films on their end, is in a way stifling for the independent filmmakers. I’m still very disappointed and sad to say that ‘RK/RKay’ is still not on any OTT platform, and it’s beyond comprehension for me because it’s not even an arthouse film, it’s an entertaining film, and has a mainstream actress like Mallika Sherawat but still it didn’t get the kind of response that I anticipated.”

The actor said that he is very disappointed with the way distribution, apart from theatres, is heavily controlled by OTT.

He continued, “Even 10 years ago, when there was a culture of studios or big production houses controlling the mainstream cinema, there was some space for independent filmmakers. Now, there’s literally no breathing space for an indie filmmaker. I’m sure this will change in 2-3 years but right now, the scenario for indie cinema is very bleak, let’s not even talk about the arthouse cinema.”

Rajat feels that filmmakers in Hindi cinema don’t stress much on shot-taking or the imagery which is in direct contradiction to what the likes of Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino who have said that all you need to make a film is a great idea, and stick to it, specialists in different departments can be hired later.

Rajat told IANS, “I know they have said this but they don’t mean it, or they don’t mean it in all seriousness because cinema is an audio-visual medium, it’s different from writing a novel or a stage play. The essential element of a film is the camera. A series of shots or sequences make a scene, and a scene can convey emotions in millions of ways.”

The actor shared that the editing of a film can entirely change the trajectory of the narrative or make or break an actor’s performance.

He said, “You may feel, as an actor, that you have done a great job while the camera was rolling, but if the editor feels that it isn’t fitting in the scheme of things, it’s cut much before where you felt you delivered excellence or it stays too long and you look stupid on camera.”

“So, it’s your duty as a filmmaker to have the bare minimum vision of how the world that you have created in your story will reflect on the camera and how it will come out on screen,” he added.

‘Tanaav’, produced by Applause Entertainment, is set to drop on September 6 on SonyLIV.

–IANS