In conversation with M’town’s hit contemporary screenwriting duos
.jpg "Writing ‘two’gether")
Ranjeet Kamala Sankar and Salil Menon, the duo that wrote Kohinoor
Hit screenwriting duos are not new to M’town — Siddique Lal, Rafi Mecartin, Vinu Kiriyath Rajan Kiriyath, Sachy Sethu, Udayakrishna Sibi K Thomas and Bobby Sanjay — are some of the most notable. When some of them shifted their focus to direction, most of these partnerships came to an end.
After a brief gap, some brand new duos have appeared in the Malayalam film horizon. Nadirshah’s Amar Akbar Anthony, Rajesh Nair’s Salt Mango Tree and Asif Ali’s Kohinoor are recent hits that have to thank duo writers for their success.
For Vishnu Unnikrishnan and Bibin George, Amar Akbar Anthony happened in the course of following their dream. “We were friends since we were school students. We are basically mimicry artistes and it was that element which helped us bond,” says Vishnu, who has acted in various films, including Amar Akbar Anthony.
It was around two years ago that we completed this script and our prime focus while scripting this film was to play the lead roles. We knocked at the doors of several filmmakers, but in vain. It was then that we met Nadirshah ikka through Kalabhavan Shajon chettan. We thought our story won’t suit Nadirshah as we believed he would make a film with Dileep. But he insisted on hearing the script and declared after the narration was over that it would be his first film,” recollects Bibin, who has earlier written the scripts for various TV shows.
“Our experience as stage artistes has helped us a lot while writing the script, especially the dialogues. While writing, we think a lot about what would be the audience response to each dialogue. We were comfortable writing together rather than doing it separately,” say the writers, who would love to continue their journey together.
When it comes to ‘Vinod and Vinod’ of Salt Mango Tree, their film discussions during their studies at Sainik School were behind their partnership. “We were classmates and moreover we were family friends. And both of us loved cinema dearly. Though we dreamt to be the part of this industry then, we gave priority to finding a job,” says Vinod Jayakumar, on how he teamed up with his friend Vinod Vijayakumar.
“As part of the job, he had to shift to Bangalore while I got a job in Thiruvananthapuram. It was around four years ago that we decided to look for opportunities as screen writers. Yes, the initial journey was very tough. But our contact with sound designer MR Rajakrishnan, who is like a mentor to us, made it easier and that was how we wrote our first script for Akashavani, which is all set to release. It was during the pre-production discussions of this film that we met Rajesh Nair. He liked a concept, which we had shared with him. Within a short period, we wrote the script of Salt Mango Tree,” he says.
Physical distance never became a barrier for these techie turned writers. “As we stay in two different places, we do not see each other frequently. During the writing of ‘one line’ (story gist) and the climax scene, we sit together. The rest of the scenes are written after sharing these between us. We depended on certain sites that enabled us to interact and write together,” he adds.
Ranjeet Kamala Sankar, who wrote Kohinoor with Salil Menon, explains the creative process. “We would argue and debate for a particular idea and at the end, one of us would win. All the arguments would only help fine tune the project. As we are two individuals, we can think about two or three stories at a time, even if one of us gives importance to the ongoing project. I think it is a big advantage,” he sums up.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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