THE FIRST OF ITS KIND FOR TAMIL FILMS…

Indru Netru Naalai, a film on time travel and time machine is all set to hit the screens this Friday, the 26^th June. Director Ravikumar talks to behindwoods on how the idea was brought to shape.

Conceiving the idea

I made a short film 'Zero Kilometer' in 2011 Naalaya Iyakkunar final. This was a fantasy short film based on the worm-hole concept which is a theoretical passage through space-time that could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. This main knot was suggested by Nalan Kumarasamy which I scripted. The short film clocked more than 6 lakh views.

I am very fond of the fantasy genre and wanted to make a feature film on this. But I thought the worm-hole concept may not be suitable for a feature film. Nalan suggested that I do something on time travel. Although I had an idea about this subject, I did not give it much thought. However I decided that time travel would definitely help my aim of doing a fantasy feature film and that’s how I conceived the story of Indru Netru Naalai.

Communicating to the audience

I wanted a device to communicate the idea (of time travel) to our people. In Hollywood, the audiences are used to such themes and they show time travel in simple ways just by getting into a cupboard and getting out. But we need to explain it here. I wanted my hero also to not know anything about this because that’s when the audiences would be able to understand. Therefore, I wanted to show a machine. People felt that it could result in unintentional humor. But I did not feel that way and believed that it would work out well. I was confident about it.

Once we decided that a time machine would be used, we firmed up the genre. The only unanimous concern was to make people understand this concept. So I made the script simple and started the film.

Time machine

I had few ideas on how a time device should be constructed. It should be believable, unintimidating, likeable, simple and small in size. I consulted with Phantom Effects who did the CG work for the film. They said that it would be ideal to check with a concept artist without giving any of my inputs. If it works, we can take it, otherwise we can use mine. Luckily, the design that the concept artist sent was almost on the same line as mine.

Art Director Vijay Aadhinadhan and architect Stalin made a few corrections to this design to make the time machine much better in terms of credibility and ergonomically efficient.

Shooting without the time machine

We started the shoot without the machine as it was getting readied. In case we were shooting in a house, there were two segments, one with the machine and the other without it. I kept shooting those portions without the machine first, waiting for it to arrive. Once the machine came in, we finished the other block.

The first for a Tamil film

The time travel may be first as regards to Tamil films, but it is not so when it comes to plays in Tamil or Tamil literature. There are many plays in Tamil on this subject and also stories. In fact Chimbu Deven had dealt with time concept in Oru Kanniyum Moonu Kalavanigalum.

Indru Netru Naalai features Vishnu Vishal, Mia George, Karunakaran and others. Wishing the team the very best!