BENGALURU: Ever imagined what it would be like if an invisible narrator revealed secrets you hold close? It could sound like a thriller, but director Prateek Prajosh’s short film Piddi, which is currently streaming on Disney Hotstar, is a light-hearted comedy, which is a quirky and unconventional interaction between the two lead characters – Sunny and the narrator of the movie.
The 10-minute-long movie, starring Maanvi Gagroo and Veer Rajwat Singh, is set in a cafe where people’s secrets are revealed to everyone by an invisible narrator of the movie. While the fourth wall technique, where actors from the audience speak directly to the camera, is quite an in-thing now, Prajosh clarifies it’s nothing of that sort that he has tried to achieve.
“Though the narrator is invisible, it is still a character. What it tries to do is bring in a theatrical effect to the movie, where there is an announcer speaking to the character. Since I have a theatre background, I tried to experiment with it,” says Prajosh. Ask the city-based director what the name of the movie denotes, and he says that it means ‘insignificant’. “It’s a wordplay we tried. By the end of the movie, you will figure how insignificant Veer’s character is, which is the lead,” says Prajosh, giving a hint that there is a baby in the movie, which hardly has any screen time but has a huge role to play in the story.
Though an experimental way of filmmaking, Prajosh says the story of the movie was one of the convincing factors for people to come on board. “It was good that the cast and crew were open to experimenting with the concept,” says Prajosh, who shot the movie in 2019 but was stuck with post production in 2020 during the lockdown. Though the project took a lot of time to see light of day, Prajosh recalls that many had given up hope that it would finally be out.
Having been part of many short movies and feature films, Prajosh has always been inclined towards short-length storytelling. If you are wondering if there is any formula to crack this short film equation, he says ‘absolutely no.’ “I don’t see any formula in short filmmaking because then you will be putting them in a template. But what I feel is that in short films a good story or narrative helps because there is no luxury of time unlike a feature film,” he explains.