Anup Bhandari’s directorial debut Rangitaranga is talked about even today. Now he is focussed on his second project Rajaratha, a film that will give him a wider exposure with its Kannada and Telugu version.Apart from Nirup Bhandari, Avantika Shetty and Ravi Shankar, the cast of the movie includes top stars such as Puneeth Rajkumar, Rana Dagupati and Arya. The director says, “Thanks to Rangitaraga, I just had to make a two-minute phone call to explain why I needed for them to be part of Rajaratha and they all came on board”.
Anup admits that he put double the effort into Rajaratha, when compared to his debut. “Rangitaranga had budget constraints and I had to complete work on it in 40 days. Even otherwise, I like completing my work quickly and experience with the first helped me organise better for Rajaratha. I could complete the shoot in an 80-day schedule. Unplanned, it would have taken 120 days. The extra effort was needed because it was made in two languages,” says the director, adding that he may have set a record in going sleepless for nights together, during post-production.
“There have been days I would start with my edit job and get into dubbing studio and follow that up with working on background score with music director, Ajaneesh Loknath, and then get on to song mixing. I made frequent trips to Hyderabad to check on DI. I have done all of this at a stretch for 20 days atleast. And over the last week, for 4 days, I slept half-an-hour on flight with a brief nap in Chennai. That’s how much Rajaratha has taken out of me,” he says.
Anup agrees that two years was indeed a long time to make Rajaratha. But there were reasons, he says, “Rajaratha was started a long while after Rangitaranga because the latter occupied us for a long time, for creating an overseas market and for holding on to the cinema for the longest time. I also wanted to shift my family back to India and that took time as well. There was a clash in dates of artistes and demonetisation took a toll as well… there was funds in our account, but we couldn’t pay in cash.”
There was the weather too. “A part of the shoot had to be done in rainy season and I had to wait for the next season, and all of that was done to maintain continuity,” he says.
Does it help for a director to involve himself/herself in so many departments? “I do it because I want to be a part of it, and it is my film. Secondly, technicians love my company. It is more a collaborative process and this is an unconventional approach. In fact, Ajaneesh has always ensured that I am by his side while he is working on my film,” he tells us.
Anup’s heart lies in mass entertainment but he has attempted to give the movie a ‘class’ appeal. “I have grown up watching Kannada and Hindi cinemas and so there is a desiness in the heart of my storytelling. My approach to film making has been influenced also by the world cinema I have watched. I follow their camera moments and editing pattern. So the look and feel of the film will be neat and clean,” he says.
“Having said that, my approach worked seamlessly in Rangitaranga but, in Rajaratha, the styling had to be different. I believe that camera is meant to tell a story and not just to capture moments. It needs focus, and there was a lot of scope for all of it in Rajaratha.”
It was interesting to know that Anup has watched Rajaratha at least 5,000 times, and never once bored. “Having felt the need to put my bit into every department, I had to sit at least a 100 times with each tehnician. This apart, I myself watched it many times at the edit desk. But I never was bored and that’s how I judge a film, and I hope the audience feel about it the same way too,” he says.