Filming Drama is Harder Than Action: Srikanth Addala

Srikanth Addala has always been fascinated with normal people. His Mukundha (2015), in fact, opens in a crowded Hyderabad neighbourhood and the filmmaker narrates that he hasn't locked a story for the film and would rather choose to pick a random person from the crowd and explore him. That turns out to be the film's protagonist. You can see that there's an attempt to make the protagonist one of us. Explaining his inclination towards reality and people, Srikanth Addala says, "Every time we go to see a film, we want to live in that world and emotion for a couple of hours. So naturally, projecting the audience's world on screen, gives them a chance to enter the world easily. The majority of the population hails from a middle-class background, and they think of simple things like finding happiness, saving money. Most of them do not think about extreme scenarios in life. That's why I'm more interested in their lives."

Srikanth's films reflect this simplicity and authenticity in the form of characters and conversations that feel real. In fact, Srikanth said that Rao Ramesh's character in Kotha Bangaru Lokam (2008) is based on his own personality when he was working as a professor before entering the film industry. How much does he base his writing on real life and personal experiences? "Not everything in a film might be inspired by real life but there will be traces. There are three major ways to develop a script: we will either have a memory to trigger us, pick up a fact, or do research. No two people in the world are the same. The way I see an incident differs from the way the person next to me sees it. When something touches our hearts, we will just know."

But the filmmaker insists that there isn't anything special with his writing process. When asked about how he details the sketches of even supporting characters and background artists in some of his scenes, he simply responds, "It all comes from observation, that's it. It's just practice. That's how I think. It doesn't happen instantly though. Rewrites do happen."

The filmmaker's latest Peddha Kapu-1 is a major detour from the dramas he is generally associated with because it looks tonally different from his best works. The film also seems to be high on action and violence. But he says it wasn't his most demanding work. Addala adds, "There's hard work involved in every film. In fact, shooting conversations and drama can be harder than action. Because while shooting fights, you see the action being performed. In drama, it's invisible because it's internal. Neither of them is easy to achieve."