It might be in the name of hit sound tracks that music directors become famous among music buffs, but for Anil Johnson, fame came along with his noted background tracks in less than five years of entering M’town. After setting an excellent background score for Prithviraj-starrer Oozham, Anil has bagged two back-to-back projects — Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Aby and Biju Menon-Indrajith film Lakshyam. It is reported that Aby has three music directors — Bijipal and Jaison J Nair apart from Anil. On that he says, “Yes, three of us are working on the film. While Biji and Jaison compose sound tracks, I do the background score. As we three are good friends, we feel happy to collaborate for a film.”
Anil points out that though he composes sound tracks also, creating background score gives him more happiness. “Composing background music means giving a musical feel to each and every scene of the film. We have to work on the mood of the film. That is really challenging. When it comes to sound tracks, we have to preconceive a song before the shoot and majority of the situations allotted for songs is almost similar to previous works,” he says. Even then, the sound tracks composed by Anil have been chart busters. “I am happy that my songs in Oozham and Life of Josutty became hits. Though my song in Drishyam too became popular, I consider that track as part of the score.”
So how he did land in Aby? “I knew director Srikant for the past few years. We were schoolmates, though we were not in the same friend’s circle then. It was post 2000, when we both entered the ad film industry that we became close and that relation helped me become part of his debut feature film,” says the music director. Debutant Anzar Khan’s Lakshyam, which has Biju Menon and Indrajith in the lead, is the next film to have his tracks. Jeethu Joseph is the writer of Lakshyam. After that, Anil will start working on the music tracks for Jeethu Joseph’s next film with Pranav Mohanlal in the lead.
