Excited about his genre-blender film Rematch, debutant R Vimal Kumar says that sports and rom-com are less explored together. "There is a common saying in the industry that a one-line need not necessarily translate into a good story, and a good story need not become a good film. But this story idea itself lent a lot of unique scene situations. The trouble we had was to reduce and filter the scenes," he begins saying, as he adds that the casting, too, was a very fortunate occurrence.
Vimal explains the need to find actors who can play badminton. "I am making my debut; I cannot afford to hire an actor and then make them learn a sport in a very short time. The story of Rematch will not allow you to get away with a quick prep," he says, before adding, "It would take at least six months to create the pretense that an actor is a professional athlete. I was gifted that way because both KPY Bala and Dhanu Harsha are badminton players. Bala was a state-level player, and Dhanu Harsha, on the other hand, is a badminton player-turned-actor, who has worked in a Kannada film."
In spite of blending intense sporting action and romance, he says that the film will have a mellow and feel-good undertone to it, and he credits this to his mentor Radha Mohan. "More than filmmaking techniques, Radha Mohan sir made me view life and films in a totally different perspective. He takes things lightly and advises not to look at everything seriously. I had a different idea of film work; he completely changed it for me. It was a revelation to me that you can make movies without having a bad character in them. Instead of having a teeth-gnashing, evil-incarnate villain, you can simply show two good, but flawed persons, carrying misconceptions, and build a conflict from that. Rematch too will be one such film," he says, as he goes on to say that the challenge in the film is shooting the sports sequences. "To make myself confident and to convince the team, I had to do a pilot shooting of the badminton scenes. That both works as a blueprint for me and is easy to explain to my actors and technicians how I am planning to shoot."
With just three days into the shoot, Vimal signs off, saying that he has divided his shoot schedule according to the earlier said special focus on the sport. "Three days into the shoot, we are filming the talkie portions now and saving the sporting portions for later."