Everyone who studied in the Pune film institute want to die ultimately as a filmmaker, said Oscar-winning sound designer Resul Pookutty, who is all set to don the director’s hat now.
“Every film school student wants to die as a filmmaker and I’m not an exception to it. If all goes well, I will start my film next year,” Pookutty told Onmanorama during a chat on the sidelines of the IFFI 2015 at Panaji in Goa. However, he said it is not yet time to reveal more about the project.
Asked about new projects as a sound designer, Pookutty said he was on a break now. “I did some 12 films, including ‘Pathemary’ recently. I'm a bit saturated and taking a two-month break now. However, I'm writing and trying to put my film together.”
Looking forward to IFFK
He was excited about his story idea being picked up for the film writers’ lab to be held in connection with the IFFK to be held in Thiruvananthapuram next month.
“Luckily one of my story ideas has been selected at the IFFK film script writers' lab. I'm looking forward to (the) IFFK and to interact with the mentors.”
He said he was also planning to set up a production company and bring out new filmmakers.
Flays lack of standardisation of theatres
On the state of sound designing/recording in Malayalam films Pookutty said the south Indian films have come way ahead in terms of accepting the job of artists handling sound. However, he said, the lack of standardisation of screening halls were putting big barriers for the artists.
“Traditionally, to Indian cinema sound means musical work. Somehow all in all, in the Indian cinema, sound was not considered a part of the big picture, though as a civilization, India has understood the possibility of sound. It has been part of our living. If you look at our Vedic scriptures, they depict our thought process about nadabrahm and adi brahm, both of them were sounds. If you listen to my speech at the Oscars, it was about adi brahm. And Indian music was always about nadabrahm. So at one level, traditionally we are so much into sound, but somehow it is not featured in our cinema culture. Only very sporadically people have used it. And that's where I place myself,” he said.
“And there was a huge growth in the importance for sound in cinema in the last 5-10 years. I'm not saying it's not just because I won the Oscar, but the honour has definitely helped so much in spreading an awareness among the youth. They are the driving force, they are aware of it and they want to study it. In the last 10 years, there was a tremendous change in terms of sound.”
However, he said there was still very little awareness on sound reproduction. “That is because there is no standardisation of theatres in the country. We are not following any standards. Anybody can set up a theatre chain and do business. By the end of the day, they are the people who are dictating the industry, but as a practitioner, I must say, the acceptance of sound has tremendously moved forward.”
Challenges as an artist
“When you look at a painter or a sculptor or a writer there is no barriers between his work of art and his audience. But for us, for our work to reach the audience there are so much barriers. Not more than 40 per cent of a sound artist’s work is reaching the audience in the existing theatrical condition. This huge barrier is actually taking our true audience away from understanding the work. The barriers come from how an audio-visual medium is set up. So when our work is not projected in the way we have conceived it, forget about people appreciating it.
Stringent quality standardistaion is the only way to overcome it. That's the least we ask for as technicians.” signed off Pookutty.