With Kapil Sharma’s directorial debut I Me aur Main releasing this Friday, he talks about his journey and the art of filmmaking.
While his father, eminent astronaut Rakesh Sharma was conquering the final frontier in the early ‘80s, Kapil Sharma, an impressionable kid back then, was exploring his own little universe from different angles: “I started shooting still photography at an early age with my dad’s point and shoot Kodak Brownie. I guess that’s where my interest in image-making really began.”
What followed was a love for theatre, a Masters in Communication, a professional certificate in filmmaking from the prestigious Maine Media College, Rockport; working in a number of films, documentaries, and now his directorial debut — I, Me Aur Main. What is it about this medium that makes it saare jahan se achha for Kapil ? “It’s the fantasy, imagination, leaps of faith — the ability to transport viewers to different time zones, experiences and places. While the beauty of documentaries lies in its unplanned spontaneity that keeps you on your toes, with films you’re trying to create an elevated magical quality of experiences.”
And this heightened perception is what he explores in I, Me aur Main— a youth-centric film on the complication of relationships (starring John Abraham, Chitrangda Singh, Prachi Desai) set in a new urban scale fast-changing India. “We’re trying to do stories that are bit centric. Blockbusters tend to stick to fairly straightforward superficial stories that try to straddle a bit of everything to cater to a larger audience. But with I, Me aur Main we’re trying to tell a nuanced urban-centric story with a bit more drama and entertainment that reflects what it’s like living in a big city today,” shares Kapil.
Having worked in both Hollywood (The Darjeeling Limited, Outsourced, The Fall) and Bollywood (Teen Patti, Ghajini, Drona) films, Kapil is part of an Indian crew who work on hybrid Indian setups for visiting Hollywood film directors and Bollywood films as well, working along a more process-driven way of things which they hope is a little more ‘organised’. He says that while the experiences with Hollywood films are always great fun, and with a lot of variety, the key difference lies in the kind of filmmaking. “The craft is the same but our grammar of storytelling is a little bit different from that of the West,” he adds. “The bigger budget independent films are usually more fun to work on because it’s extremely quick, and has a smaller crew. There’s an intimacy about the making of it, and a certain magic in a group of people coming together to tell a particular story that they’re all committed to telling. Of course when that becomes bigger and larger it tends to get more impersonal, the stakes are much higher, the scrutiny levels are more insane, and the personal connect tends to get lost or diluted.”
While the onus of his directorial debut looms large, Kapil reminisces, “It’s been a thrilling journey of making the film with a cast and crew who’ve been extremely supportive and trusting. At the same time having worked so much on films, what’s been fantastic is the familiarity one has on the film set. So it’s been a unique combination of incredibly new, yet familiar.”
