Ram Madhvani was the first filmmaker who utilized small-format DV technology to shoot a feature film intended for mainstream distribution in India. In many ways a guerrilla effort, Let's Talk startled Shringar, the largest film distributor in India, by opening to full houses in Mumbai (Bombay) in December, 2002. The film went on to play prime-time slots on India's Star Movies channel. Let's Talk will be distributed in the U.S. by Cinebella.

Option A : Will he get depressed? That's mood one.

Option B: Will he get angry and say that he will invoke section 497 of the Indian Penal code? Which basically means that the wife is the husband's property, and if the lover is caught he is caught for trespassing. This law actually exists.

So will he get depressed, or will he get angry? Or will he get violent, or will he rape her, or will he hit her, or will he forgive her? You see all these scenes and many more. In fact, there are eight different moods which are played out. Depending on what kind of character you are, you could possibly go through all of these depending on your mood.


BTdv: How is the Radha/Krishna story embodied in Let's Talk?

RM: When you are talking of the Thumri and you are talking about light Indian Classical, a lot of it is in fact about Radha and Krishna. And I felt that I also needed to make a film that was in some ways rooted. Though it is set in Bombay, it is about people who are a contemporary kind of couple, world-traveled, etc. I just felt that I should also root it within the Indian culture. And because the structure was formed on the Thumri—and plus it would have Thumri music, and I was dying to do an album of Thumris done in a contemporary kind of way—I thought it would be good if I did some kind of a subtext using the Radha/Krishna myth.

I wont get into the boring theoretical explanation of the reasoning behind the thinking. I think that is best left to be seen rather than explained.


BTdv: It's uncommon for the producer of a film to double as the cinematographer, as was the case on this production. Whose decision was it for Sumantra Ghosal to operate the camera?

RM: Sumantra suggested that we do the film on DV. I said, "Well, you better shoot it then." He is a director, actually, and he is my partner, and he is the co-producer of the film. He began Equinox and Shift Focus, which is where we intend to do our feature films. He began Equinox many years ago and I joined him as an assistant. He was interested in cinematography, and I had used him in a couple of ad films including the one that got a bronze at the Cannes Ad festival—which was incidentally shot on DV. I found that because he is a director he would allow me the space to work with the actors and would not be that protective of his own work. Sometimes the cameraman protects his work. And I felt that Sumantra, being a director, would allow me that space. That being said, I thought was a little unfair because I really didn't give him the opportunity and the time to practice the craft of lighting. The fantastic thing was that he went with the spirit of the film.

		BTdv: What sort of equipment did you use to shoot Let's Talk? RM: We used the [Sony DSR] PD100. We used two cameras with anamorphic adapters. Apart from that we used very few lights. The sound was recorded on Jazz and on DAT by somebody who used to work with us, and so was not really recorded by a professional sound recordist. It was only much later that Nakul Kamte came in. And thank God for that. He was there through the mixing process and he did a lot of clean-up and sound design. BTdv: Why did you choose to work with DV? RM: We are from advertising, so we have used digital quite often. The reason why we shot on DV is because I felt that it liberates the actor. I also wanted to make a film with a small crew. I wanted to make it with ten or twelve people maximum. I didn't want to have a camera department that didn't know
	A telling poster

Having said that, perhaps my next film will be 35mm because the subject matter will demand that. I think that the way this film was done—the way that it was approached, the philosophy of it—demanded digital and the freedom that digital gives you.


BTdv: Were you inspired by any foreign movies that had been blown up from DV to 35mm?

RM: No, I was not inspired by any foreign DV movies that have been blown up to 35mm. I certainly saw a lot of them. Like Dancer in the Dark. I just wanted to see if the blow-up was okay. I read what Lars Von Trier was doing, obviously. I knew of the Dogme movement. But we saw these blow-ups more for technical reasons rather than for philosophical reasons. I think movies inspire you, technology doesn't inspire you. I think movies and their emotions and feelings inspire you.


BTdv: I understand you used a lens adapter in order to get a 16:9 image.

RM: Yes, we did use a lens adapter. Because Lars Von Trier used it in the Dancer in the Dark. And we were told by our technical consultant Paraminder Singh Chaddha from Prime Focus (he used to work with us earlier) that if you blew it up with the anamorphic adapter, then the quality would be better because there would be less to blow up. I am answering this in layman's language.


BTdv: Why did you choose to shoot an initial one-hour version of Let's Talk before making the final version?

RM: Well, we shot the scratch film because we lacked the courage of going out and making a feature film. Most of us just talk about making films and never get down to them. And the great thing about using digital and using these small cameras is that it actually is very cheap. You can go out there and see whether it is working or not. It helped us because of the process that we followed and because we were an honest, self-critical team—obviously there were lots of insecurities, etc. But I think we were eventually out to protect the film. But I think that when you are doing that kind of process, you need to not be autocratic, and I think that the director needs to allow the people to be genuinely collaborative and to manage that process and yet have a vision which includes everybody's collaboration and have a vision that directs a lot of people who are hugely talented to one goal.

We did the scratch film and we showed it to people and then we went and rehearsed the whole film and re-wrote the whole film. We kept two or three scenes from the scratch. Though we did re-shoot them.

The scratch film was about an hour long. And that gave us a lot of feedback and also gave me a green signal about going ahead and having the courage because people said go ahead and make this. "It is good." "It is worthwhile." So we kept the scenes that we liked. Rather than writing it out—because I felt sometimes the writing process was too formal—I would get Boman and Maia to actually keep acting out various lines and transcribe it, then read it, or sometimes they used to write it then act it immediately in my conference room, which was called Stalag 17. I actually had my actors there doing the writing along with me. And I think it was a hugely liberating process for the actors and for me because I think that was one of the routes through which we could get the internalization of the dialogue rather than, you know, getting an actor to mug-up his lines and then understanding it. I felt that this was more pure because in some ways it used the actor to create the character rather than using the writer to create the character and then bringing the actor in later. And I felt that that helped us get the kind of Chekhovian kind of truth that we were searching for. This rehearsal and writing process went on for over three months after the scratch film.


BTdv: How did the cast and crew benefit from making the scratch film?

RM: I found that when I was making the scratch film there was a sense of freedom that allows you to be a lot less insecure. The two quotes that I like are: one, if you are not living on the edge, you are wasting space; and, two, if you are living on the edge, you might as well jump off. With the scratch film we could jump off and yet have a safety net.

There is a sense of bravado to the performance because you know that you can go out there and do it without there being the risk of screwing up. Because you can, and it's okay. And I think the lack of tension really, really helps the process. This process actually came from advertising. We are doing scratch films all the time, and we are researching them all the time. And I find that the idea of making the scratch film before you go out and shoot is really, really fantastic because it allows people to know whether the film is working or not.


BTdv: Incidentally, the Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray also worked in advertising before his transition into films. Have you been influenced at all by Ray?

RM: Of course I have been influenced by Satyajit Ray. Anybody in the world of cinema who wants to make films in the realistic tradition is influenced by Satyajit Ray.


BTdv: Audiences seem to have been very impressed with Boman Irani, who plays the cuckolded husband in the film. Why did you want to work with him on this project?

RM: Well, I can just go on and on about Boman. I had seen Boman in Jesus Christ Super Star playing King [Herod]. Then I saw him playing Mahatma Gandhi in Gandhi vs. Gandhi on stage. He was a 6'2" Gandhi. I also had seen him playing a 70-year-old Parsi gentleman. And I felt that here's an actor who could dance, who could act, who could make you cry. I cried even though I didn't believe he was Gandhi. He made me feel for what Gandhi was going through. And I felt that here is somebody that I must tap. I also feel that Boman is one of those rare actors in India: he has a extremely fantastic memory for detail, which he uses, and an amazingly good observation of life. And in some ways the greatest thing about him is that he doesn't really act. I think that's quite incredible for an Indian actor or for any actor.

BTdv: So was this Irani's first feature film? RM: This was actually Boman's first film. Though there was another film of his which got released before ours. This was Maia [Katrak]'s first film, too—though Maia had done an acting course at RADA twelve years before. Boman had done many commercials, of course, before this film.
			Maia Katrak and Boman Irani

		2) The celebrity campaign. Film stars and directors like Aamir Khan, Shabana Azmi, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Shyam Benegal, and Pooja Bhatt saw the film and commented on it. We used their statements (with their permission) as part of our publicity campaign in newspaper ads, handouts, posters, etc. 3) MTV Bakra. We staged a mock scene at Oxford book house cha bar, where our main stars Maia and Boman behaved like a married couple having a fight. The audience was made a Bakra (Bakra is a bit like playing an April Fool's Day joke). This was also an awareness plan for the film. The audience reaction was shot with hidden cameras. Shringar was part of this activity, having worked out a deal with the cha bar. 4) Radio spots. We had specially recorded radio spots and our music running on 92.5 FM as promo for the film—with Shringar's help.
	The "celebrity campaign"