‘Calling them technicians makes them seem non-creative’

Actors Zoya Hussain and Jim Sarbh’s new talk show turns the tables, putting actors in the interviewer’s seat to speak to composers, editors and make-up artists

There is a certain perverse delight in hearing actor-producer-director, SoBo boy-gone-movies Jim Sarbh talk about how much research he had to do as preparation and how he had to learn to not interrupt people when they were speaking. And assess what kind of questions made for interesting answers and which did not.

This has been in preparation for Crew Cut, co-actor Zoya Hussain and his new endeavour on YouTube that takes the audience into conversation with technicians in the business. “I like the term crew better than technicians, because it makes their contribution seem, well, technical and not creative,” says Sarbh, whom we saw most recently as Adil Khanna in Made in Heaven and in Rocket Boys as Dr Homi J Bhabha. “Often, they are the ones with a sense of entirety about the project, a sense of visual storytelling matched only by, perhaps, the director. As actors, we only know a section of the project.”

Sarbh confesses to be “endlessly curious” about filmmaking and is constantly speaking to music composers, sound artistes, cinematographers about their craft, or wondering how the set designers on Gangubai [Kathiawadi] gave the walls that patina so evocative of age and decay. “If a costume designer has put two pens in the pocket of the character (as for Rocket Boys), I need to know why,” he says. “Are they different coloured? Which colour would Dr Homi Bhabha use for what? Is it because he has many documents to sign and doesn’t want to run out of ink.”

Hussain, also, has been “fascinated by what film [the actual reels] look like, shadows, lights, the nostalgia. I romanticised light and how long takes made you feel. As I gained a better understanding of things, I gravitated towards how cinematographers make the visual language of a film. The intake while we watch a movie, way more than we realise, is thanks to them.”

Fascinated as much as both were by these aspects, they knew the general populace may not be drawn to these conversations, so they reeled in more recognisable friends to spotlight these heroes with their fame. So, actor Vidya Balan speaks to long-time collaborator, costume designer Niharika Bhasin who won the National award for Costume Design for The Dirty Picture. Other names include Arjun Radhakrishnan, Anil Kapoor and Mrunal Thakur interviewing make-up artists, sound engineers, and editors they have worked with. 

“We just reached out to people we know first, and then kind-of-know, and then don’t-know-but-want-to-know,” says Hussain about the process of pairing actors and technical experts. “And almost everyone was thrilled to participate,” says Sarbh. “There was the matter of getting dates, but that’s just technical.” Balan, for instance, was so immersed that she had memorised the three sheets of questions handed to her to conduct the interview seamlessly.

While Hussain says “there wasn’t much prep” as an interviewer, Sarbh admits at first getting into the technicalities of the craft such as the type of lens used, etc and then realising as he saw the episode, that it didn’t make for engaging conversation for everyone. “What was interesting was the minutea of the vision. For example, for Rocket Boys, two timelines converge and I asked Oberoi what was the overriding emotion he was trying to evoke at this point of conversion. He said ‘death of the utopian ideal’. Two decades into independent India, which was built on non-violence and a dream of a great country, the country was besieged. We had lost a war with China, things weren’t great with [East and West] Pakistan, and Bhabha and Sarabhai had to now build a bomb.”

Besides these technicalities, Hussain wanted to know the human elements: Why they picked the profession, what inspires them, what they like outside of work, who they are, some jokes, lots of advice, and how their brains just cook up things. “It’s been lovely to see what technical aspects of film viewers are fascinated by. It’s also just lovely to be a silent participant to watch and listen to energies come together,” she says.

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