Monsoon muse

Love it or hate it, but the rains form a theme for many works of art. And just so, interpreting Indian monsoons through the medium of film and music was the brief for a team comprising of Academy Award winning Sound mixer/designer Resul Pookutty, filmmaker Sajeed A,  Cinematographer Hari K Vedantam and music director Ruel Benedict. The idea came from 101 The Brief who spearhead the series, Stories of a Generation. Thus came the video ‘Interpreting the Monsoon,’ which was launched online on June 12. While the rest of the team had a carefully detailed plan before making the video Resul Pookutty had none. “No planning. You don’t plan these kinds of things. Certain works are like that. For me monsoon is familiar, it is part of my being. It has played a big role in the way I have grown up. This is something I know from within.”

The creators at work

Elaborating on the work he did for the video, he says “The idea was to create an image track around the thought of monsoon. I saw the edit, I wanted a few changes, and then I made my own expression about the monsoon. I played that to the composer and asked him to create a musical interpretation. The final product is an amalgamation of all these layers. What Sajeed (the director) has done is, he has connected the onset of monsoon with Theyyam which I think is quite a tremendous idea. “The way the story goes is that Vettakorumakan came down on earth to clean up and monsoon for me in a way is also clean up. It is at that point — when he enters earth— that the sound follows the picture. Until then, sound and picture are disconnected.”

In connection with the video, Resul Pookutty will also go live on 101India.com’s Facebook page today. Director Sajeed .A says,  “When it comes to rain, one of the sequences that most people remember is the one in Pather Panchali:  a drop of rain falls on top of a man’s bald head. We got thinking about how we can bring out the essence of Kerala since monsoon reaches Kerala first.” Sajeed  is a Malayali based in Mumbai, he says that the idea to include Theyyam came out of his fascination for the art.  “The story of Vettakorumakan struck me. Vettakorumakan was sent to Kerala and that immediately connected with the monsoons and how it comes all the way to Kerala. That was how it started, the parallel journey of god from heaven to earth and rains coming all the way from heaven to earth. The rest then fell into place immediately after that.”

Going into details about the video he says,  “The video was majorly shot at Malayattur. I wanted to shoot in between extremely tall trees and Malayattur has those kind of trees. Wanted to equate the tree, nature and God. Our plan was definitely to shoot in the rain, but I had artificial rains, just in case. Most of it was shot in real rain only.” About the person behind the Theyyam costume he says, “The Theyyam artiste was Payyannur Ganeshan; it was really tough for him. His makeup alone took more than three hours. He was in costume from 6 in the morning till late at night. In the middle of the forest in the rain, with that heavy make-up and costume, he did not complain and was extremely cooperative.” The arresting visuals are accompanied by an otherworldly background score.

Vocalist Sahirah who worked with composer Reuel Benedict, says    “After Ruel got the brief, he wanted to create something uplifting yet sombre  as well since the monsoon brings both destruction and life. That was the theme that was running throughout the video. Ruel also wanted to include Indian instruments, so Santoor became one of the main instruments that was used.” Shedding light on the concept behind 101 The Brief, Cyrus Oshidar, MD & CCO of 101 India.com says, “‘The brief’ is all about celebration of creativity, it’s about finding different kinds of creative people and allowing them to be free to create. Coming to this video we thought we’d give these guys the concept called interpreting the rain, since the monsoons were coming why don’t you guys interpret it. They wanted to create something rooted in culture and doing something that is replete with nature. It was a free reign for the creatives, we did not sit here and tell them what is right or wrong.”( The video can be watched here https://www. 101india.com/arts-culture/interpreting-monsoon-theyyam-kerala-101-brief)