Jimmy Shergill-starrer ‘Choona’ earlier had darker tone, reveals composer Dhruv Ghanekar

Mumbai: Music composer Dhruv Ghanekar, who composed the songs for the Kangana Ranaut-starrer ‘Dhaakad’, has also composed the soundtrack composer of the upcoming OTT show ‘Choona’ which is a heist comedy drama, and stars Jimmy Shergill, Aashim Gulati, Vikram Kochhar, Chandan Roy and Namit Das.

The composer, who started the work on the soundtrack in 2021, shared that initially the show had quite a dark tone in its narrative.

Giving insights about the soundtrack in the series, he shared: “‘Choona’ is crime ‘dramedy based in a small town in north India. Pushpendra Mishra – the director of the show has a terrific aesthetic and writing style that is deeply rooted in north Indian culture. We were actually working on another project when he told me about the subject of the show and I was immediately hooked. The sound is not rustic or typical at all.”

He further mentioned: “Pushpendra (Pushpi – as he is fondly known) pushed me to experiment and explore a more cinematic sound that juxtaposes itself against the gritty images. Since this was my first web series that I had worked on I had to re-calibrate a lot of my processes in order to take advantage of the long form style of storytelling. The show is highly entertaining and a lot of fun to watch and my job was to keep the momentum and pace always moving forward.”

Opening up on the challenges of working on a long form content for the first time, he said: “I began working on the show in 2021, during the pandemic. The whole process of making music had changed during that time. The first part of the process was composed in complete isolation as I began work at the peak of the pandemic. The show initially had a much more serious tonality, hence it was my job as the composer to gently shift the mood of the series into more of a dramedy. Things were coming along until Covid struck some of the cast members and the entire schedule came to a grinding halt.”

He continued: “Finally, after several months the shoot commenced and the almost 6 months after which the show was being readied for post production. The cost and implication of Covid related delays meant that the original music teams had moved on to other projects and I had to assemble a new team in a short period of time.”

“Also the tonality had changed and hence, I had to shift the tone from dark to a lighter more action based sound in order to add some brevity to the show. The overarching brief was to make it entertaining and fun to watch without diluting the dramatic moments. The challenge was to keep the show entertaining without using cliches and also keeping it dramatic without it becoming too serious,” he added.

The show is set to drop on August 3, 2023 on Netflix.

–IANS