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Home , Anil Chatterjee, Calcutta 71, Chander Pahar, Chhabi Biswas, Dekha, Ek Din Achanak

PART IV

APPENDIX

Interviews

Names of Interviewee Page

Aloke Dey 3 Anil Radhakrishnan 13 Anup Deb 23 Anup Mukherjee 53 Biswadeep Chatterjee 91 Dileep Subramanian 122 Dipankar Chaki 150 Hitendra Ghosh 181 Hitesh Chaurasia and Jayadevan Chakkadath 204 Jyoti Chatterjee (part I) 243 Jyoti Chatterjee (part II) 269 Kunal Sharma 292 Manas Choudhury and Bobby John 308 Nakul Kamte 337 P M Satheesh 364 Pritam Das 415 Promod Thomas 434 460 504 Subhas Sahoo 520 Sukanta Majumdar 547 Vinod Subramanian 575

Biographies and Filmographies 614

2 Aloke Dey (2014)

Duration: 00:30:35 Name Abbreviations: Aloke Dey– A; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay– Q Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: As a background I would like to ask you about your coming to sound, and subsequently into the film industry. A: as a profession? Q: yes. A: I really didn’t have that kind of a focus as such after my graduation. There was a good studio at that time, a sound recording studio very close to my place, well known in at that time. So I used to go there generally, but I never thought that I’ll get into this kind of a profession. So only one thing I don’t know somehow I decided not to join any kind of work like banking and all that stuff. So I just got to know about FTII, that there is a sound engineering course and all that; because I went to technicians’ studio where one of my relatives used to work, Satyen Chatterjee. Q: ok. A: famous sound engineer. Q: hm. A: I just went there to see what normally sound recording is and how they do it. And at that time I think ’s film was going on, they were recording background score. So I went there. He asked me, “ok you can come and see it inside. See how we work and what we normally do.” Then he said, “If you’re interested then you can contact few people. There is a film institute at Poona”, that was the only institute at that time. So he said, “You go and meet few people here in Calcutta, find out what it is exactly and if you’re interested then you can appear for the exam.” So that is how I met a few seniors in Calcutta and they guided me really very well. And then I appeared for the exam n got in. So that is how it started. But even before joining the FTII it was not decided that what kind of field I’ll be working. Whether it’s the music recording field, or it’s a re-recording field, it’s a dialogue recording field or it’s a location recording field, now there are so many sections. Earlier it was only either studio work or it is recording section or music or dubbing or you go for freelancing which is location recording. At that time there was no concept of sync sound recording for film as such, though it is a very old concept. People at that time were not using it as “sync sound”. It came much later in film I’m talking about. So now there is another profession, that way.

3 Q: but then, after finishing the film school you came to the (film) industry, isn’t it? A: yes. To be very frank my hometown is Calcutta, so I’ve been to those places where I met, I told you, few seniors, one of them was in NFDC, Anup Mukherjee. Q: hm. A: so I met him. I met Sanjay Mukherjee out there. And at that time Anup Mukherjee was in NFDC, with Jyoti Chatterjee and all. I just went there during my tenure in FTII. So I saw them working. I really felt bad. I don’t know whether I should say or not, it was not really a very professional kind of work they were doing - the way they were doing actually. Maybe that’s the way they do it, I had no idea. So that is the time I decided I would not come to Calcutta to do all this work. Q: did you start as a mixing engineer in the industry? A: yeah, assistant mixing engineer. See when I was in the institute I got the offer from one of the studio here. So that was a re-recording set-up basically, Anand recording studio. So I joined as a second assistant. And both of them were also from FTII, chief sound recordist was Kuldeep Sood and first assistant was Anup Deb. So I was the second assistant. I worked there for five years as a recordist. Then I started mixing on my own as well. Then after that I joined Sunny super sound. I was there for ten years. Yes, from ’94 to 2004 I was there. So initially there was no re-recording set up as such and everyone was recording in analog at that time. So the chief recordist was also from FTII, Mr. Suresh Pathuria, he was there. So he offered me to join in Sunny and asked me to start it with a digital platform known as Protools. That was the first commercial use of Protools in rather. So I started with that and I was doing music recording and song mixing basically. Then we had a big set up for music as well. So that we converted to Dolby Digital mixing set up. It was only a Dolby set up, at that time Dolby digital was not there, it was only Dolby SR. but 5.1 was introduced in India from there. That was the first studio, and rather the first digital console as well in Asia at that time. So I got that opportunity so I utilized that. So any platform basically is not an issue at all for me to understand or to work with. Q: so you started your career with digital technology, right? A: no, not really, in ’89 I joined. Q: ok. A: ’89 to ’94 I was in Sunny; that was completely analog magnetic and rather a mono era. But of course we also did four-track stereo. At that time we used LTRT Ultra stereo. And then Dolby came. The four-track was on film with magnetic coating. We did few films. In fact Maine Pyar Kiya was also in that format and as well as Ultra stereo. Ultra

4 stereo they got it first before Dolby. And then so many films we did after that in that format. Then Dolby came to India with their SR unit, which is a noise reduction unit for music purpose. Then they introduced Dolby SR, then 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 and Atmos. In between S-DTS and DTS also came. Now again it’s Auro. So it’s a different format, different technology rather. Q: what is your impression on this changeover from analog domain to the digital from a more aesthetic point of view? A: see, everything has got advantage and disadvantages. So in digital the way you work now, it’s much faster; everything is user friendly. Earlier if I need to change anything which means that I’ll have to go record that part or maybe get it from somewhere, transfer that on magnetic, put it exactly in sync with that film and then get it. It is a minimum of three to four hours of work, which is now three to four second’s work. So that’s the difference. And since the machine is doing everything today actually we are not using our memory. At that time it was only a ten minutes reel though, it was not twenty minutes reel. But we used to keep every moment of the film of ten minutes in memory and we used to work like a machine. So now the machine is doing everything. So we have got multi-track recording in music set up, which is really good. But people started misusing it. At one point of time for the music director it is like, “I have recorded two hundred tracks for this particular song.” And if you actually calculate out of those two hundred tracks may be twenty tracks are good enough for that particular song. They’re just layering one-sixty track tracks unnecessarily. And they don’t know why they are adding it either without any idea or without any concept. It’s not all of them but very few, you can count them – those people who are sensible, who can use those one sixty tracks as well, they are doing the right thing. But of course the sensible people, they are also not recording two hundred tracks at the same time. They are quite confident about what they want. Q: hm. What they wanted was kind of limited in analogue because probably you didn’t have the choice, didn’t have many options, right? A: yeah, that’s what I am saying. The numbers of tracks have increased now. Earlier we used to do only mono mixing, ok? So dialogue used to come in maximum two tracks. One was the main dialogue track; the other one was the crowd, ok? Now the dialogue tracks are also like hundred tracks, two hundred tracks. Even music, even the songs, it was only one track they used to send. It’s a mixed track and from there only we were doing the final mixing. So now you are handling all the separate tracks as well to balance that, even a song, even background score, even dialogues, even effects - everything. So

5 actually you are handling too many tracks, but giving them the same output. Instead of mono you’re giving it in 5.1 format or maybe Atmos format, that is the only difference there. Q: do you find that a bit problematic with so many tracks in hand? A: sometimes it is. Because it’s not just that, there are so many tracks to handle. It is the decision, which you are taking - that how many tracks you are actually eliminating. So rather than the creative aspect, you are trying to do something which is also creative, but eliminating tracks. So your concentration, your mood, the whole flow, you’re wasting your energy into that. Why is it so? Because in today’s time whoever is working here in a separate zone altogether, somebody is doing dialogue, somebody is doing effects, somebody is doing ambience, somebody is doing music – this complete co-ordination actually is the work of a sound designer. But sound designer cannot help it if the picture is releasing suppose on the 10th of this month, the music director who is doing the background score - he is completing it on the 1st of the month. So you will have only nine to ten days to complete the film! Forget about the same track, sound designer will get and he will design it accordingly or the effects he is taking and he is scoring his music accordingly – it is not so. People who are well planned they are doing that. Because they can afford to do that, because they have enough time, they have not fixed their release. So that way if you work you will definitely get a much better work. Because that co- ordination has to happen, whether it is today, tomorrow or in future. Q: but the number of channels in digital media offers more flexibility. How do you use that flexibility in terms of – let’s say the placement of sound? I mean - compared to mono, surround 5.1 offers much more flexibility I think. Do you agree with this opinion? If you agree, then how do you handle it? A: see flexibility in the sense… earlier it was mono, you knew that you’ll have to accommodate everything in one track. Q: hm. A: so the elimination process was there as well. Since you have multi tracks but your format is again the same. Instead of mono it’s 5.1. Since you have the option you have the opportunity, you can use your machine, you can use your tools you keep on increasing your number of tracks. And later on you are just eliminating number of tracks. So that’s a wrong process. That’s what I am saying, there has to be some kind of co- ordination between all the team members whoever is working for that particular film. If that happens I am sure taking the opportunity of the equipment’s or the tools, the result will be much better. Then the music director will also think about his dynamics whether

6 in this kind of environment – where there is a dialogue, there are effects, there is some kind of ambience – what kind of instrument is he going to use? Otherwise what is he doing? He is doing just the music recording without thinking of anything else. So that same music, if it is the same frequency is disturbing some other element, so he’ll have one option. Either you eliminate music or you eliminate effects. So at that time you have a choice. So whom are you giving the priority? The one you require according to your concept. It is not right always. So according to your concept you are giving that priority. But at the same time if he had the effects or if he had the music, the sound designer, he could have used some other tone, some other effects altogether. And maybe the same effects he can filter it out. He’ll keep that effect particularly in that band of frequency, which will not affect the music. So both can be accommodated together. But if you have time to think about all that, then you can really design your sound that way. So for everything you need time. Sound post-production becomes very – people think that, ‘ok my background score is over; my dialogue is over. Now we can finish within five days and complete the film. It’s not so. They may be getting their film that way, there’s no doubt. I am also doing it, there’s no option for me. But I cannot utilize those numbers of tracks, flexibilities, what you are talking about. At that time I’ll have a time limitation, I’ll have to complete the job and give it to them because they are releasing the film. Q: how do you like to proceed with the multi-channel option in an ideal situation? A: that’s what I told you. I’ll design the entire film in a different way altogether, it’s a different perspective altogether. I can create two hundred tracks to make one sound. I have that choice after getting the music or may be the dialogue. I may eliminate sixty tracks. But that does not mean that why I have used those two hundred tracks unnecessary. I used that to create that particular effect, the particular nature of effects. Q: what are the advantages of those multiple channels? There are so many channels in hand. How are they being used in comparison to mono? A: in comparison to mono? Q: yes, mono mix. A: earlier, mono mix… suppose, I am giving the example of a song. See, your vocal is accommodated in that, your rhythm tracks are accommodated in that and then rest of the instruments. I mean whether it’s a solo instrument whether it’s anything else in that particular song composition. So now you have that flexibility that you can use multiple tracks. So they are recording fifty tracks of only strings, thirty tracks of only solo instruments. But ultimately they are bringing it down to two tracks, four audio and 5.1 or 7.1 or Atmos or Auro into that format. So whether it is two hundred tracks or four

7 hundred tracks doesn’t matter at that time. But since you have those tracks you can actually balance which portion you want to keep, what are the instruments in which level. So that option you have. Earlier you had only a mixed track. So if you wanted to eliminate something you cannot do that. So then again you’ll have to go back and do the mixing and get it back. Q: hm. but space-wise, spreading out of materials or elements into more elaborate design is possible. Is it done that way? What we see is a spreading out of the sounds beyond the screen. A: yeah. Q: 5.1 can allow you to do the work in that expansive way, right? A: yes it does. You are surrounded by speakers. So you can create that width - since earlier it was a single source, Q: hm. A: so you were creating that same thing but from single point of source. And with that you were trying to create that perspective from that point. So that same kind of a perspective you can create from different sources. But what I believe, that if I am doing a film work, a film mixing, I am concentrating straight to that on screen. Since I have 128 speakers or 64 speakers or tracks rather, I should not create something in which the person who is watching the film will get distracted. Just I have 64 tracks to distract you, that I have created some sound from 30th channel or 29th channel, that’s not the idea. The idea is that the whole surround - means when you’re sitting and watching a film you should feel that you are into it. Number of tracks or number of speakers does not allow you to distract anyone to watch a film. Q: but then numbers of channel are increasing every day, I mean – A: that’s what I am saying, that what I said that 64 to 128. Q: what is the reason for the increase in the number of speakers? And how are they being handled? A: how are they handled is completely subjective. Till today - see this new format Atmos has come, if you count hundred films they have already done, whoever has done, out of them you can actually count maybe four or five films who have utilized that format Dolby Atmos properly to make you hear the right sound. So 95% people, they’re misusing it. My idea is not to create gimmick and show you that, see some “ferriwalah” is moving around. And some important scene is going on, so that is distraction.

8 Q: to keep that balance and to have a focus on the screen, making use of a number of speakers around you is needed. How to keep that balance? How to keep not being distracted? A: there is a ratio you have to choose, in which ratio you’ll keep what kind of sound, so that you will not get distracted. The moment you will get distracted audience will also get distracted. So you’ll have to create that width, the dynamics to get it right. Whether in terms of music, whether in terms of ambience, whether in terms of effects - everything. Q: this is not clear to me why so many speakers. And what kinds of sound elements are being distributed in these speakers. Why is this extra space there firstly? Why are so many speakers there? Why are they needed at all? We could be satisfied with 5.1. A: why do you need 5.1 then, according to you? Mono was there. All the classic films were done in mono. Then why do we need 5.1? Q: yes, why? I am also not sure. A: so it’s the technology. Day by day whatever technology is coming you’ll have to get used to that and create. Whatever the new format has come utilize that in proper manner. When I said 100 films - that includes films made all over the world. It’s not only in India. The new format, they are not utilizing it properly, 95% of them is like that. That includes all top engineers, all over the world. They are unnecessarily creating noise and making it too loud. That is not the concept of 5.1 or 7.1 or Atmos. The concept is the same thing, which you said that maybe you are inside the theatre; you’re enjoying the film. Why? Because you feel you are there. So to create that ambience you can utilize the speakers, nothing else. Q: so it’s primarily for ambience, right? A: yes ambience, maybe music, maybe music reverb, maybe dialogue reverb/perspective anything you can use. But there is nothing fixed, there is no law. There is no rule, it’s up to you to decide what to keep and where. No one is going to teach you that way if you keep this element in this particular surround area. Q: coming back to the rudimentary: what do you think ambience does to cinema? The element of ambience… A: see there are two types basically. One which you can see it on screen, maybe it is night so you are using night cricket, maybe light breeze or whatever elements you are using. The other type of ambience, which is not seen you’re creating that. In one particular film they’re just showing a building, some roads and all that. But you are using a train horn. It’s nowhere, a railway station, but you are using it as a character. And if you are actually using it in a proper manner, a proper way rather it should come at

9 maximum three to four times. But you’ll keep that in mind, they have used one train horn in that particular part and it really worked. But if you’re hammering it a hundred times no one will say. They’ll say, “We have just put it to create some kind of platform or railway station kind of a thing.” And use of ambience – now people they are choosing all these sounds like even bird sounds. Because I have done so many films, I have got so many tracks, some people don’t understand in which point of time, which bird’s call should be there. There are very few. They’re just putting the bird’s ambience, any particular solo birds. Very few people understand that and they place it accordingly to register it. Otherwise rest of the people is just putting it as a track. There’s another bird track, there’s a solo bird track. In reality you can hear it during that period of time or that geography nobody understands. So that is creativity. That is another kind of audience. You’re actually giving another dimension to the film. Q: what is the basic difference you find between the uses of ambience in mono and in surround while working with each of them? A: earlier we were using ambiences most of the time not to keep any silence in the optical track because the optical track was creating ground noise; in theater you could really hear that. To suppress that you were using those sounds like birds and everything, because rest of the things like dialogue, effects and music are actually occupying the entire space of the mono track. That is again a difference now, you have so many tracks you can really create some layers and make a kind of a feel out of it.

10 Anil Radhakrishnan (2014)

Duration: 00:22:53 Name Abbreviations: Anil Radhakrishnan– A; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: You have primarily worked with eight channels – out of which two or three channels were for dialogues, isn’t it? A: yeah. Maximum like four channels, three characters three lapels and one boom. But usually the seventh and eighth channel will be free because in a scene most of the time you have the characters but you don’t have that many dialogues. So you have the freedom of having the seventh or eighth channel for ambience. Q: what about balancing the boom and the lapel mike? How do you decide on the location? A: see basically it’s all getting recorded into separate channels. So I monitor a mixed track but the balance between the boom and the lapel is not that important if you do a multi-track recording - because everything is getting recorded in different channels. On dialogue you have the freedom of adjusting the level. Suppose you want the boom in this level and the lapel in separate. In dialogue if we just keep the boom in good level and if we just keep the lapel for the presence. But depending on the scene. Sometimes if it’s really noisy and you don’t want that much noise, then you keep the lapel a bit up, then reduce the boom. So while recording I’ll keep a medium level for the lapel. I don’t really do the balance between the boom and the lapel on location. Since it’s all recording on different channels so you can do that in the post. But earlier times when you mixed into a two track or something then you need to have a balance between the boom mic being a single track recording then you need to mix. Q: on location you have to mix, right? A: yeah, and you cannot have all the faders up. Now you can, even though the other character is not speaking, there also the fader will be up. Because it’s getting recorded in different channels, it’s not disturbing any other tracks. But earlier like supposedly three characters are talking they used to operate the faders according to , because if you keep all the faders up it’ll make more noise, it gets more floor noise. It increases, adds the noise to the track. So they used to keep all the necessary faders up. Nowadays people give, even I also operate - if a character is going out of the frame then you reduce the track or keep that out. But otherwise you keep all the tracks on.

11 Q: so you don’t need the production mixer anymore, right? A: you need a production mixer because in a scene sometimes there are dialogues, which will be very loud. Sometimes some dialogues are very soft. So you need to adjust those individual channels. What I’m saying that balance between the boom and a lapel is not very important. But you need to balance all the tracks. That level you need to take care of. Q: how do you maintain continuity between ambiences? For instance if you shoot in a day sequence, let’s say in the late afternoon, A: hm, Q: and then you record ambience on location dry, A: hm, Q: but that ambience primarily consists of production noises. A: yeah. Q: for example people speaking, camera handling, operator’s sound - those noises. A: no, that we control. That is not allowed on a sync sound set at least while we shoot. That all we have to control because those are the things we need to take care while we shoot. There should be a discipline on set. So all that unwanted sound we stop, we control it at least. But like you said, when the day progresses the change in ambience is there. The morning ambience is not the same as the afternoon ambience. So what we do is that, supposedly I record two tracks of the ambience in the morning also with that, sometimes I record room tones of different time. I record a morning room tone, may be as the day progresses I record a different time’s ambience. So towards the evening it’s like many different ambiences all together. We’ll have like more. So that time also you record a different ambience. And during the dialogue edit you have to put on the ambience for one or two tracks in dialogue edit, we used to do in dialogue edit. Not for the effects edit or the ambience laying, we select one ambience and we put it throughout the scene. So that will mask a lot of the ambience jumps between the... Q: ok, one ambience track continues, isn’t it? A: yeah continues. Q: for a sequence? A: for a sequence, for a scene. That’s why we record like a one-minute continuous ambience track. So you cannot just loop the small bit, you know that. So you take a 30 seconds 40 seconds continuous ambience, then you loop it and make it a continuous loop and if you have a continuous ambience for the entire scene you’ll lay that. Q: is that ambience placed in mono?

12 A: no, that’s also stereo. Sometimes when I record a room tone after a shot or something I try to record a room tone for all the scenes. Even though if it’s interior or exterior, I’ll record ambience and room tone for each and every scene, irrespective of whether we shot here yesterday or today. So if shooting here I try to record one ambience for that scene. Because sometimes you know someday - some construction or something is happening. So the sound maybe is different than the other days. So it’s always better that if you’re shooting a scene today just record the room tone of that day only. So that I record one with the boom and I use a stereo also. So the boom basically we keep it in the center, for the center track where your dialogue is also in the boom, so you’ve to layer like continuous center track ambience for the center speaker, and then you have a stereo that you lay for the left n right speakers. Q: and for surround? A: in surround you lay and make. Because on the dialogue editing stages you don’t really put for a surround ambience. Basically for surround ambience, the effects editor whoever is doing the ambience, most of the time different people are doing different jobs. Like one dialogue editor will do the dialogue edit and may be one guy who’s laying the effects and the ambience he’ll be doing the ambience track. But he’ll also you use some of the ambiences which we recorded on the location. Because he has also access to that file, whatever ambiences I record. But that will be one layer because he has to create the ambience using different layers. So maybe he has to take from some other library effects and he has to add some elements in the ambience. Because you want to get a character move for a space and he may add some elements in that. So he’ll put some elements in surround. So basically surround ambience is laid by the guy who is doing the effects and the ambience. We do for the left, right and the center. Basically to get a continuity of the ambience, when you watch a scene you shouldn’t feel that jerk in the ambience from one shot to another. Q: but you said you also record ambience outside of the shoot, right? A: yeah. Usually I keep a day for ambience recording. Q: where do those ambiences go? A: we all have the access. The dialogue editor will also have the access for the folder. And the effects editor who is doing the ambience, he’ll also get the same thing. So both of them will have the access. This guy basically puts, whatever ambience is in that daily folder, which I recorded, he’ll use it for the dialogue edit. The other guy basically goes through the ambience we recorded extra. Q: when the effects and ambience tracks are done by this guy,

13 A: hm, Q: all the tracks are done, do they go to the sound mixer? A: sound mixer, yeah. Q: and he decides which track to keep and how to route it, right? A: yeah. Maybe what happens sometimes like we record a camera perspective and we record a stereo boom track. So maybe there are some situations where you feel that somebody is walking and she is wearing a lot of jewellery. So we feel like that is four- directional, you can feel that it’s coming from her left. So then he’ll adjust the width of the ambience so that it won’t disturb you from the scene also, it won’t disturb you from the dialogues. All that things are taken care by the mixing engineer. Because that is the space exactly you hear all the final tracks. Like, the dialogue’s final edit and your ambience with your music, BGM. Because even though you have a reference to all that, maybe you have a stereo track, all the open tracks comes to the mixing engineer. Q: how much spatial information do you think of keeping in an indoor sequence, say for example, in this apartment? A: hm, Q: you are recording dialogue. Will you prefer to have not only this room tone as the ambience but also the reflections that’s already there? Will you prefer to record that reflection? A: yeah. That’s why I am saying that’s basically the use of stereo mics. This room has a reflection but that reflection you may get it in the boom only. Suppose you have a big space, like a big hall or something. So you need to have like a more reflection to give the space like it’s a big space. You know then you need to have a more reverb and if you record only with one boom you don’t have the freedom to increase and decrease the reverb only. So basically if you have another mic or a stereo mic or something which you basically keep for the reverb. Maybe from the camera axis, not on dialogue, you keep a little away from the character. So you get all the reflection and everything. So then you have the freedom in the post. If you want to increase and decrease. Supposedly in one scene in Dedh Ishqiya I did, it was a scene where one character, was outside the door and was inside the room. And Madhuri Dixit is not seeing anything. She’s just standing and she’s crying there. So then what I did is I kept a boom inside the room, I kept a boom outside for Naseeruddin Shah’s dialogue and then I kept a boom inside the house. Even though the door was closed I kept a boom inside the room. It’s like a big Haveli (palace) - it’s like high roofs and it’s a lot of reverb. Then during the post what we did, we didn’t use much of artificial reverbs. What we did, we

14 basically added balance between the outside-boom. You cannot keep only the inside- boom because you won’t be able to understand what he’s saying. So we did a balancing of the outside boom and inside boom and without adding any external reverb we got a very nice reverb with these two booms only. So sometimes I try to capture like these things from the camera perspective, even though the characters are outside. Because usually what people do is that if the character is outside and the camera is inside they keep only one boom outside. Because they say the dialogue is outside. But what we try to do is we keep one boom inside also. So we had the freedom to get a natural reverb of that space. Q: Were these practices not used before? From what I hear, it sounds very nice; but in earlier films we don’t hear these room tones. A: yeah. Q: we don’t hear the room perspectives; we don’t hear the room reverberations, never. Not even in 1990’s, late 90’s or early 90’s films. The first room tone we hear in commercial cinema is in . A: ok, I know. Q: in Dil Chahta Hi we hear room tone for the first time. We were never even aware that room tones can be recorded and used in cinema. This is now the usual practice the way it works. A: yeah. Now I think people want more of that natural sounding dialogues. You know if you do a sync sound film I don’t think it should sound like a dubbed film. For that you need to have this room feel. Because every space every room has a different sound, it’s not the same. So that’s why you’re doing your sync sound. Otherwise if every room or every space sounds the same then there is no point doing a sync sound. Then it’s only for the performance. Because when you do a sync sound then you need to capture all reververations of the room, that space. Q: hm. But sometimes the reverberation can be disturbing. A: yeah. Then we need to try and reduce that also. That call you have to take; whether it is disturbing your dialogue very much, or it is not. So then you need to use carpets and stuff to reduce the reflections. Q: and a sound designer then has access to all the tracks you’ve recorded including edited dialogue, right? A: yeah. Q: do you keep the stereo ambience in the center? A: yeah.

15 Q: do you record other ambience tracks beyond shooting? A: yeah. Q: the effects, which were recorded daily/maybe during the shoot, are also organized I guess. Do you also then record some Foley? A: yes. And maybe supposedly we shot the film and we edited the film and we are in the sound stage, then also you need some more effects for . You know you feel like you need to record some more effects then we need to go again while the film’s sound post-production is happening then also if we go and record some more sound effects which we feel like that, we need here some more. That stage also you have to go and record some sound. But that time you know what exactly you want, because you’ve seen the edit and then you’re going. So what we like, this is the edit and we make a note like exactly what we want to fill that place. So when go and record that particular sounds. Q: why do you need Foley? A: because one thing is that you need to have a balance between the dialogue and the Foley, if it’s recording on location – first of all it’s not a very silent room, so that soft sounds if you boost more than a point all the noises start coming. And the second thing is that they want an international track. Q: what does that mean? A: they want an international track in the sense they want a track without the dialogue and all other things. Q: ok. A: if you want to dub the film in some other language so then – but still what we do is - while we do the dialogue edit we have three or four tracks on the timeline, which are for the production Foley, production sound effects. So suppose if footstep, incidental sounds like keeping the glass or whatever sounds, what we do is we usually don’t put with the dialogue tracks. From the dialogue track you cut that and put it into different tracks. Because for a mixing engineer one needs to have it in a different fader. Because when you take these international tracks, music and effects tracks, then if you put in the dialogue track then all the Foleys get muted. Q: yeah. A: so then you need to put it in different tracks, but there’ll be production Foley tracks. So then during the mixing or the pre-mixing, usually pre-mixing, we need to match the production foley with the Foley, which you did. And get a good sound. Because otherwise the sound will double and all. Because little difference in two sounds, and you’ll hear two

16 sounds. Suppose a footstep you do a foley also n you have a production track also. But if there is a time difference between these two sounds then there’ll be a double, like two footsteps. Q: a bit of delay. A: yeah. So you need to match this production Foley with the Foley you have recorded. Sometimes it helps you. Like you have the production Foley and you need to have one Foley, you have to balance between these two and get a good sound. Q: are there instances of using only production Foley but no studio Foley? A: yeah. I don’t remember the film. Some film I did which had light footsteps on wooden stairs. But in the foley we did, we didn’t like it because we were hearing the production Foley. So then finally we muted the Foley, which we did in the studio and we kept the location Foley only. There are a lot of places we do like that. If we have a good location recording of effects then we keep that only. Whether it is footsteps or incidental sounds, we keep that. If we feel that we need a bit more then we add the recorder Foley. Q: does the sound designer then decide how much to keep volume-wise, and also which channels to send in? A: yeah. Q: which channels to send in terms of ambience, because stereo ambience cannot be sent in the rear channels, right? A: yeah, you can pan that also. Like if you have a different layer of stereo ambience you can assign only into the surrounds also. Q: I was watching and listening to Highway, A: hm, Q: and I felt that most of the ambience stays in front of me, just little bit like this - 120 degrees to 140 degrees in front of me, not 180 degrees. A: yeah. Q: sometimes in some very outdoor sequences some elements are coming in 180 degree, not even 360 degree. A: ok. Q: do you think that this is the usual practice or people keep something in the 360 degrees space? A: they keep some ambiences in – suppose you have a dream sequence. You need to have different layers of sound. So you need to keep different layers, like maybe water dripping, you need to have rain sounds, you need to have thunder sound. So then what they usually do is like, what we do is like we keep different layers in different position.

17 But always the prominence will be from the front. So you can’t hear that separate. But it’s there. It adds to the sound of that thing but you cannot differentiate like this is coming from there. But if you remove that you will feel the absence. So it’s adding to that entire thing but you prominently are hearing from the front. But it’s always there. For each n every scene there are ambience, which are coming from rear, which are coming from side. But it’s not very prominent that you can differentiate that this is coming from right speaker because you’re always hearing the prominent thing from the front. But if you mute this surround ambience you feel that something is gone. Q: so it’s an expanded kind of ambience, right? A: yeah. It’s not only one layer. Because you add different layers and create one ambience. So people will put some layers in surround and then pan it a bit to surround. But always prominent ambiences will come from the front. Q: voice and dialogue are always in the center, no? A: center. But sometimes you pan a little bit. Q: within the stereo? A: yes, within the stereo. Sometimes they put a bit in the surround. But not in the rear n all, a bit to the left surround or right surround. But not much. Q: in the second part of the panning is very elaborate, like lots of panning. A: ok. I saw the stereo only. So I don’t know. I saw it on stereo speakers here only. Q: the film, which is intended for surround, I think it’s better to watch it in surround. A: Gangs of Wasseypur? Q: yeah, both the films, also Highway, I wanted to watch it in Surround. A: I saw Highway in the theater. Q: did you like the film? A: yeah. I like the sound also. The ambiences were nice. Some of the ambiences were nice. Q: he has used different kinds of elements for different places. A: yeah. Q: like a peacock is chirping in Rajasthan but when you cross Rajasthan there is no sound of peacock - that kind of element. A: yeah, because in different places you hear different ambience.

18 Anup Deb (2014)

Duration: 1:14:15 Name abbreviations: Anup Deb – A, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

A: I think I have worked on magnetic for atleast 10 years and also in digital for almost seven eight years. If you ask me the quality part I think magnetic has got a better warmth compared to digital but the digital has got the facility like, you know, say in the digital you are working on a workstation and it is very convenient to edit it, make a copy, and you can transfer the file also, you need not to carry, even you are carrying it is a small maybe dvd or maybe a drive, whereas tape will be thousand feet tape, and one reel means there’ll be so many tracks, so physically carrying it is a minus point but it has got the better quality as far as the quality is concerned. Q: ok. A: Digital is convenient as far as the format, you can carry it easily, and you can edit it, rest of the other things. But still I would prefer to have that warmth which I heard in the magnetic, you know. Q: in a mixing desk you now work with a digital mixer, right? A: yeah, Q: is the platform comfortable to work with? Does it give a sense of flexibility than the pervious analogue mixer? A: the flexibility is definitely now-a-days with the digital console, it is more flexible, you can have n number of inputs in the console, whereas in magnetic has got some sort of a limitation you know, like specially in you know you can’t have more than 6 to 8 transport you know where each transport will carry only one track. Of course in Hollywood I have seen, they are having, you know, twenty thirty transport you know, but still working on the digital console with the workstation is, you can run two-hundred tracks, three-hundred tracks, and if your console it is a full-fledged professional console you can have n number of tracks you know. And it is very easy to work, all the things are very easily accessible, because of the digital console you can shift your channels, you know, suppose it is a big console you know hundred faders console you need not to go to the extreme end physically, you can call those faders in front of you or if it is a four layers console you can get access to any layers. There is no doubt about it that digital

19 has changed a lot you know, as far as the working convenience is concerned, there is no doubt. Q: does that number of channels give better quality of work? A: the thing is that you should know, you have the facility doesn’t mean that you have to have a hundred tracks. It all depends on how you can visualize your sound, how you are laying your sound. I have seen people who for one sound they will put ten tracks. Whereas, sometimes you don’t need to lay ten tracks for one sound. May be you want to show the producer that you know that you have made so many tracks LG. But most of the time I have seen you know I had to close down lot of things, which is not needed. Putting too many layers also makes the thing messy. Q: messy. A: it has to be very clean sound. Q: hm. A: if you can get it with the three tracks why one needs ten tracks. So it depends on how you are designing the sound, whether that many tracks were/are needed or not. Q: but in digital technology also you don’t see it – anyway it’s invisible, whereas in magnetic analogue era you could touch the tapes - does this make any difference? A: no I don’t think so. Q: yeah. A: Because (with) the digital you can see the waveform which is again very very convenient, you can judge the loudness of the sound you know, that this sound is very loud by just seeing the waveform, that the sound is source is weak or not, which is a big advantage. Q: but if you think of looking back at the times of magnetic media that you have worked with, what do you miss? At this moment what do you miss about magnetic media other than the warmth? A: I don’t think other than the warmth, the quality I miss much. Q: does digital technology give better qualities, for instance the dynamic range, signal to noise ratio and stuff like that? A: yeah that is there, Q: Head room? A: yeah Head Room is there and the signal to noise ratio is also good. And moreover it gives you more flexibility, which is a biggest plus point you know. Q: does this sense of flexibility offer a new kind of aesthetics, a new kind of working approach, and new kinds of method?

20 A: yeah you can improve your approach you know, earlier may be it was a limitation because of the less number of tracks, but here, like you know… I’ll give you an example, earlier we used to do these effect premixes you know, used to do the hard record, like footsteps, Foley, some major sound like car sound or action, so we used to premix, and then go for a mix. Here the advantage is you do premix, but if you want you can keep the things separate, you need not to hard record it. So in the final mix, you can take a final call whether that particular sound, if you want to avoid you can avoid. So it is more flexible. It improves the aesthetics also, like one song is on and maybe you know at one place you want to keep one sound which is not clashing with the music, but in the other place it is clashing and you don’t want to keep that sound. So that advantage is there with this digital format. So your aesthetic, your point of view, till the end of the final mix, you can have that option. It is not that now you can’t do anything. Q: ok. So you have choice of undoing it, right? A: yes, undoing it. Q: does it reflect on the kinds of work that are now produced in comparison to earlier works, for instance in the 70’s or 80’s? A: yeah, I think that since you have an option till the end you can make a choice. You can make a choice whether you want to go with this or you want to go with the other thing, you know you have more options. And at the end of the day, at the end of the mix you can see which option is working which is not, and you can change your ideas, which improves the complete aesthetic of your work. Q: and then there are a number of channels, which also come with digital technology - digital formats, right? A: yeah. Q: these channels - do they serve a major purpose in the work? A: you are talking about the channels in the console or channels in the workstation? Q: in the workstation. A: yeah you’re more flexible with more number of channels. Like you know sometimes what happens you can edit your soundtrack according to the shots. Q: hm. A: suppose it’s an extreme long shot, then it comes to close, then extreme close, so you can cut your track and rather than putting in one track you can have more tracks and shot wise you can cut the sound and put it you know. Q: hm. A: so that may be sometimes you know it comes and goes on its own.

21 Q: ok. A: you just set according to the shot the level of the sound, and it comes and goes. You need not to bother once you set that. Q: hm. But in the channels for the final mix, instead of stereo or mono, you have 5.1 and 7.1, A: yeah. Q: even more channels in the formats like Atmos? Does this adding of channels in the final mix give you…? A: it’s more flexible you know. That is my point of view because if you give me ten channels I’ll stick to that, you know, I will be restricted. Like, you know, certain things I want to keep separate and I want to take a final call during the final mix. May be with the music the sound is not going to work. Sometimes you know certain sound may gel with the flute. Or may gel with the strings when it is solo, when it is like playing an orchestra that same sound may not work. It becomes clumsy. So that option I have, you know. So that suppose I am writing my final music and things are separate I can take a call whether like ya know the car constant is working or not. May be you know, I see, may be certain phrases of the music, I can keep that. And latter portion I may take out you know, it’s not working. So that way you get more flexibility to how to use the sound, sound effects, along with the music or along with the songs. So if you have more channels things are all separate and you take a call during the final mix. Q: when sending the different effects and music tracks, for example the instruments, besides the voice and ambience in different channels – first in the two sides of the L and R, then in the centre, the rear and the behind - does this expanded space give you some sort of new kind of aesthetics? Does it force you to change your routing and your diffusion of sounds? A: see the normal procedure - normally when you’re doing the premixes and all, according to the visual you do the premixes. Q: hm. A: ok? How broad you want to keep, especially the ambiences and all. How the Foley should be you know mostly in the front. So once in the premix if you visualize the thing, if you match your visual and the sound, the placement of sound is perfect, Q: hm. A: that means your premixing has been done. But still your sounds are all independent. Q: hm.

22 A: if you want to increase the night cricket you can increase it! You want to decrease the night cricket – but your distribution doesn’t change. Q: ok. A: if you want to you can because your sources are all independent. Q: independent. And separate, it’s not mixed. A: it’s not mixed. So at any stage any combination you want you can have. You can change it. That is only possible when you’ve got more number of tracks in the workstation and as well as at the console also you should have more number of faders you know, so that you can keep things separate and take a final call. You know sometimes what happens you have done the final mix. But when you’re watching it you may feel that you know things can be tweaked down. So unless your source is separate you cannot tweak down. Q: do you work a lot with ambience? A: yeah. Q: how do you use ambience? And why do you use it? A: see again you cannot always go beyond the visuals. You’re often restricted to the visuals (on the screen). Q: hm. A: whatever you do, you have to see whether it’s working with the visual or not, first thing. And second thing is what kind of background you have. Q: hm. A: what kind of instrument music director has used, Q: hm. A: ok? So your ambience is depending on whether the music is there or it is not there. Q: ok. A: if it is there, what instrument it is playing? Q: hm. A: you know, it is a very rich music or very light music or single instrument. So whole thing is depending on the background. Q: background. A: what kind of instrument he has used. Sometimes what happens, may be background is not working ya know. So sometimes you remove the background and go with the effects, go with the ambience. It all depends on what sound is required in that scene. And mainly see again it depends on person to person, you know. Q: hm.

23 A: if I do something my approach is something different. The other person will be doing his approach – Q: yeah, of course. A: because the feelings differ from person to person. Same dialogue, same effect, same music but it’s ten percent mixing - the mix will be different. Because everybody has got a different feel. And unless you are into the movie, into the subject, into the characters, you cannot put a soul to the movie. See whether you’re playing with the effects, whether you’re playing with the music is immaterial. It depends on what is the scene required. But apart from that there is some kind of aesthetics, which is very important as far as the film mix is concerned. According to me it’s eighty percent aesthetics and twenty percent technique. Q: hm. A: of course your dialogue quality has to sound good, your effects has to sound good, your music has to sound good, your songs has to sound good! Q: hm. A: but, what to keep what not to keep, that is very important. Q: so the use of ambience primarily depends on whether there is music or not? A: yes. Q: does that mean you use ambience when there is less music? A: yes I use (more) ambience. Q: what does the ambience, in your opinion, do to the soundtrack? A: ambience creates the location where you are. Q: hm. A: whether it’s a village, whether it’s a city, whether it’s a day, whether it’s a night, whether you’re next to a sea. So it is actually identifying or underlining where is the location. Q: hm. A: and with this ambience you create that location. Q: hm. A: one should feel, audience should feel, “ok I am standing middle of the busy road.” Q: hm. A: busy street you know, and a lot of cars are passing. Q: hm. A: one is surrounded by the traffic and all. Q: hm.

24 A: or it is a very quiet village. Q: hm. A: quiet means there’ll be birds, there’ll be light wind. So it actually makes the audience feel, “look, you are here”. Q: hm. A: “you are in the village. Or you’re in the day mood, you’re in the night.” Q: hm. A: so basically ambience is very important as far as the film is concerned because it creates the locale. Q: ok, the locale. A: and your distribution of sound should be such that one should feel that, “I am there.” Which is very helpful in this Dolby Atmos. Of course I have not mixed any film (yet). I just upgraded my studio. Q: ok. A: but I think that it will be an extraordinary format in which you can create that ambience, that locale, much better than, I mean compared to 5.1, 7.1, that will be having hundred percent because of the ceiling and all, it gives more – Q: do the number of channels give more room for using ambience? A: yeah. Q: but ambience was also used in mono era – in the mono mix of earlier films. A: yeah. Q: also a few films there were made in stereo in the seventies and eighties also used ambience. Do you think that the amount of ambience used in those eras were quite less? A: because especially in the mono (era) you’ve got only one speaker you know. One speaker will be having dialogue, having effects, having background, having ambience you know, Q: hm. A: then a lot of things are happening at one time, and happening in the one single speaker. You can’t separate it. Q: hm. A: everything becomes you know little messy. So then that is the reason in those days they used to keep ambience very low. Q: hm. A: specially, when you have music. Q: hm.

25 A: you can’t afford to keep music as well as the ambience because it becomes very noisy. Q: hm. A: so always tendency used to be, “ok if music is there you know you just take out slowly ambiences and all.” But with this 5.1 or 7.1 or Atmos you’ve got more number of speakers. You can distribute it. That is the reason it doesn’t clash. Q: hm. A: and how to distribute it that is your creativity. Q: hm. But then, there were a lack of ambience in the earlier films. Do they create a sense of “not being there”? A: it was there, but nowadays with this format you can enhance that more. Q: ok. A: you can enhance it more. Q: in recent films we find a lot of ambiences used, A: hm. Q: is it because of the number of channels or is it because of a particular shift in the aesthetics? Music is really used lesser and lesser and ambience is used much higher and higher. A: if you ask me, my opinion is different because I am not biased. Q: ok. A: I am a re-recordist, I am a sound mixer, I am not biased because neither I’ve done the dubbing nor I’ve done the effects, nor I’ve done the background. Q: hm. A: now I am an unbiased technician. I’m watching the film; my job is to enhance the scene or mood. How it’s to be done is my call. Q: hm. A: But I don’t have any weakness for anything. Q: ok. A: so, if you’re not biased, then you can do justice to the film. Q: absolutely. A: see ultimately what happens, end of the day whatever you’ve got - five hundred channels, you’ve got seven hundred workstation channels, and you put so many things, ultimately it’s a human being who is going to see it, ok? And it is the very natural things you know, when we’re talking, we want to hear the dialogues. See dialogue is the basic (thing), because if the dialogue is not audible director won’t be able to communicate. Q: hm.

26 A: so the dialogue is very important. So you have to keep in your mind that my dialogue should not be missed. So now the scene is happening maybe in any location where it is raining, massive rain or it’s a noisy place, whatever it is. But end of the day your dialogue should be heard! Q: yeah. A: so I don’t agree that you work (only) on the ambience, or you work on the effects and forget everything. Q: ok. A: that is absolutely wrong. Q: yes. A: you have to see whether your dialogue is audible or not. Now after that you see what is required, what is not required. Sometimes you know it is there in the visual but you can afford to lose that sound, it’s not really helping, you don’t need that sound. So that call has to be taken by the sound recordist, re-recordist and see it’s his decision or he should be able to take a proper call. Whether I should play more on music or I should play more on effects. I have seen what you’re saying is right. I have also seen this thing, you know people almost kill the music and go on with the effects but that should not happen. Suppose it is an emotional scene and if you play more on effects you’re killing the emotion. Q: hm. A: so in that case you have to go more with the music. The effects are secondary. So that is the aesthetic call one has to take. So a sensible re-recordist will take a proper call; who knows how to treat the scene. Q: coming back to the dialogue: most of the films, not most but many films these days are recorded on sync. Did you change your working method in order to work with sync sound in relation to the dubbed sound, or dubbed voice? A: no. In fact I’ve done maximum sync sound films. The guy who is doing the sync sound eighty percent is depending on him. How good dialogue quality he can pick up from the floor or location, whether it is indoor or outdoor. And, if certain dialogues sometimes you know it’s not clear, you have to dub it, when you’re laying that dubbed track you have to see that the tone matches, the kind of mike you have used for the shooting the same kind of mike one should use for the dubbing. So that you maintain at least the tonal quality. Q: hm.

27 A: and when it comes for the mix, you know then if it is just a dub I try to do the EQ and level in such a way so that it matches with your sync sound. And then of course, you know while playing the tracks they should put the shooting location ambience in such a way that there should not be any jerk or any gap, whether it’s a dubbing part or whether it’s the original sync sound. So, all those things should be done by the guy who has done the sync sound. But sometimes, you know, if I find it is not done then I try to repair it so that there should not be any jerk in the audio. In the dub it is of course since it’s a dub it’s a very clean sound, so your headache is less. Q: hm. A: as far you don’t have to clean it, you don’t have to patch it with the ambiences and all. Q: do you prefer to work with dubbed sound over sync sound? A: See it all depends on what type of film. If it is out and out commercial, it is very difficult to manage with the sync sound. Q: hm. A: because, the thing is, your artist has to be very cooperative. During shooting if the line is not clear you know, director should come and help you. But in general I have seen, if it is a sort of an art film or something, you’re having a sync sound - I think it is fine. Otherwise if it’s a commercial film, sync sound has difficulty in working. Q: why is it difficult? A: it doesn’t work because first of all in big films, commercial films, they have stars. Q: ok. A: mostly you will find that because they don’t have time. They will not go for retakes for sound. They will say, “Ok we’ll dub it, why are you wasting time?” Q: hm. A: see it depends on what kind of artist you’re having. If it is an art film your artist are not very commercial. Q: hm. A: and you can afford to ask them that, “ok let’s go for a retake”, you know. And second thing I have seen, there are a lot of commercial films I have done, they start with sync sound but end of the day they land up with the seventy-five eighty percent dubbed. One more problem here in the Bollywood is the location will not be changed because it is noisy and you are doing a sync sound. Q: hm.

28 A: but in Hollywood they select the location according to that you know. If it is noisy they will avoid that kind of location because they know that I am not going to get a proper clean dialogue. And even you know, they take lot of precautions while they are making the set. The art director n all, the recordist, they do a lot of treatment and all. Because I have seen the movies you know it is sync sound but you don’t hear the footsteps, the original footsteps. How do they manage? Q: hm. A: complete Foley is done! Q: hm. A: so here it is a bit difficult you know having a sync sound for a big budget film. Q: in sync sound the footsteps, the other effects, the bodily effects along with the dialogue - they come with a lot of information about the place where it was shot, isn’t it? A: exactly. Q: if it’s an outdoor location, A: yeah, Q: then the room reverb will be added to the voice and the effects, to give the information about the place, outdoor place, let’s say it’s on seashore or it’s in the middle of a sea. So these sync effects, sync dialogues - they will come with lot of information about the locale. A: exactly. Q: do you like to keep them the way they are? Or do you like to replace them with Foley and dubbed voice? A: if it is a sync sound film? Q: yes. A: see if it is a sync sound film normally what happens is that the dialogue will be carrying all those effects because it is a sync sound. Q: yes. A: so you can’t take that out. It’s a part of the dialogue. Q: absolutely. A: Only thing is you do the Foley (may be) at some places because of the edit and all, suppose some effects get lost, you know. Q: yeah. A: you add from the Foley and when you’re doing an international track that time dialogue won’t be there. So as soon as you’re switching off the dialogue you’re losing completely all Foley effect.

29 Q: hm. A: so you have to do the Foley, to replace for the international track. See international track means dialogue has to be switched off. Q: ok. A: dialogue won’t be there, only music and effects. Since it’s a sync sound like we’re talking and we’re making this sound. Q: hm. A: so when you switch off the dialogue, this sound will also go. Q: absolutely, yes. A: but when you’re giving this international track for some other language, sound has to be there. Q: hm. A: so, you do the complete Foley sound and place it, level it, and keep it off. Q: ok. Separately? A: separately. When you’re making the international track, when you’re switching off the dialogue, at that time you have to switch on these effects. Q: hm. Will these dialogues be replaced by dubbed international tracks? A: yes, may be English or may be Tamil, may be Telegu. Q: ok. When it’s sent for festivals - may be some of the films are sent because international festivals only accept sync sound, A: hm. Q: will you then keep the original dialogue? A: yeah. Q: ok. A: because that time you’re sending the original, it could be , it could be English - it could be anything - the original thing. Q: when replacing the original recordings with dubbing, the information is lost about the place. A: yeah. Q: do you have to create that ambience? A: you have to create. But if your production recordist is sincere enough, he should record some extra ambient sounds from location separately, apart from the ambiences recorded during sync sound recording during the action. Q: hm. A: sync sound - when you’re shooting it, of course you’re getting that ambience.

30 Q: hm. A: but apart from that, one should record the ambience when the shoot is over. Every location, he has to record that ambience. So, when you’re switching off the dialogue, sync dialogue, those additional tracks you have to lay it, to recreate that ambience. Q: hm. A: so those thing also may be you’re switching off, you know, when your sync sound is there. Q: hm. A: so actually sync sound means your work is almost double. Q: ok. A: it is not easy. People think that if it’s sync sound, “my work is very less”. It’s not. It is the other way. Q: more work. A: you’ve got more work. For shooting you’ve to arrange all the security and the walky talky and all those things to avoid the noise. When you’re coming from the shooting, you have to give extra time to clean those dialogues. Ok? Then you have to see which of the dialogues are not working, is noisy, you have to patch may be ten percent, twenty percent, thirty percent, it all depends on how good your recording is. Q: hm. A: you have to do the Foley, ok? Q: hm. A: then when you’re making the international track you’ve more time and see when I’m taking out the dialogue, my additional Foleys or ambience is there at a proper level or not. Q: hm. A: so your work is more than double, in fact. So that is the reason many people still avoid sync sound. Q: ok. A: Especially in the commercial films. Because in commercial films you have to give the international track. Q: hm. A: because it might get dubbed in other languages. So you have to give more time, spend more. That is one of the reasons why people avoid sync sound.

31 Q: hm. But use of music means lack of use of ambience, right? As you said, if you use more music to underline the emotion then you use less ambience, because music replaces the ambience track - when music is less you’ll use ambience. A: hm. Q: let’s say there’s a situation, which is outdoor and you need to give lot of information to the audience that this is here. A: hm. Q: this is in the city, this is in Vile Parle, or this is in front of Infinity Mall and then you use music. That means a lack of the use of ambience. How to create the sense of place there? A: see it all depends on what the scene requires. Q: hm. A: in that case sometimes you’ve removed the music. Q: ok. Hm. A: or you underplay the music. Q: what does it mean by underplay here? A: it’s very low. Q: ok, very low - keeping the volume down. A: keep the volume down. You need not to play music always high. You can keep the ambience and music. But see what the scene requires. Q: hm. A: whether, music will be high compared to ambience. Q: hm. A: but with this multi-channel format you know, you need not to kill the ambience completely. Q: ok. A: you can keep it. But you have to see that it should not kill the mood. Q: hm. A: if it is a night scene, it’s an emotional scene, you can keep the night cricket, you don’t have to take it out. Q: ok. A: but the tricky thing is how much? Q: hm. A: so that the ambient sound, such as bird sounds should not kill the mood of the scene. Q: the sense of place and the mood,

32 A: mood. Q: are they different? A: it is different. Q: how is this mood created? A: see one has to understand what the scene requires? And whether I should go more on music or go more on effects or is there a delicate balance between the ambience and the music. Suppose someone has died. Ok? Q: hm. A: the guy, who has designed the sound, will put birds and everything. Q: hm. A: but, as a human being my thinking is if it is a death scene I should not keep any birds. Q: ok. A: because the bird sound will dilute the mood. Q: ok. A: so I can happily kill the birds. Q: haha, ok. A: and go on with music. Q: music. A: but if it is a normal scene, in that case I can keep a little bit of bird because that bird will not dilute the mood. So you have to be clever enough to understand what is required. Q: yes this mood thing is very interesting. A: it’s the aesthetics. Q: yes of course it’s the aesthetic strategy to take a decision. A: yes, to take the decision. Q: and that decision makes the kind of “sound look” the film has. A: exactly. What is working, what is not working. Q: hm. I am very curious to know about this mood thing, because in Indian cinema, there are particular moods that are created using music and sound. Can you elaborate a little bit on how do you create different moods, such as sadness or anger? A: see, like sadness or drama, anger, fear, sometimes it’s the melodrama, so every mood has got a different treatment. Q: hm. A: if it is a drama, you have to play on music, may be some loud action effect. Suppose someone is slapping, the slap has to be hit.

33 Q: hm. A: and play with the music. That time if you underplay the music and keep the ambience all decorative, it will not work. Q: is there a conflict between use of ambience and creating the mood? A: whatever is needed to enhance that scene, that’s what I said in the beginning, whether its effects, whether it’s only dialogue, sometimes only dialogue is strong enough. Q: yeah. A: you don’t need anything. So it all depends on what is the mood of the scene, what is required and how you’ll achieve to enhance that. Whether it is with the dialogue, whether it’s with the ambience, whether it is the music, or whether it’s the effect. Q: does ambience contribute to developing any kind of mood? A: yeah, like you know you are in the forest. Q: hm. Ok. A: you’re in the forest, mid forest. So that time whether you have the music or don’t have the music doesn’t make any sense. Q: it doesn’t make any sense. A: that is the time where, you have to have ample ambience to create that locale. Q: hm, yes. A: and there also you know if someone has got lost, and he or she is panicking, you have to select typical birds, solo birds to create that panic. You don’t need music. Q: hm. Also in a very dense city environment. A: yeah. There also again you know if you’re standing at the center of the busiest street you know, there’ll be lot of traffic, lot of horns, and if the visual is there you know like bus is passing, car is passing you’ve to put all those sounds. Q: hm. A: and the general ambience so that your whole theater is filled with the ambience. You don’t need any music. Q: yeah. That creates a mood of “being there” I think. A: yeah, suppose it is a very scary scene you know, like suspense, like Psycho and all, it is there, your ambience is there, your dialogue is there, your Foley is there, sometimes you have the music also. But you have to underplay the music, absolutely underplay the music. Q: hm. A: it is there but it’s not there. Q: ok.

34 A: to create that danger you know, see there are hundred ways of mixing the film or enhance the scene. But one has to be clever enough to understand. Q: understand, hm. Ok what about the romantic scenes? A: romantic scenes - again it mostly works with the music. Q: music. A: you cannot enhance the romantic scene with the ambience or effect. Q: hm. A: may be for a few seconds, but it will not hold. Especially in the Indian films you know. Q: hm. A: because we Indians, our thinking is different. If you take our lifestyle, our social requirements and how we’ve grown up with certain things you know, seeing certain things. So as far as I’m concerned, I take all those references, and try to put it in the film you know. Suppose I have gone into a restaurant you know. Q: hm. A: and I can immediately visualize the thing that if I’m in a restaurant, what should happen. Q: hm. A: even if there are fifty people sitting there, talking, but the thing is that it is a human being you know. If you got to a restaurant, if it is a crowded restaurant and we’re talking we try to come closer to each other, so that both of us can listen. Q: hm. A: and it is a human psychology you know, we try to avoid those extra noises. As if it is covered. We are focusing on the dialogues. Q: hm. ok. A: if you go to the restaurant, if it’s a little noisy, we try to avoid those things because we are focusing on our dialogue, on our conversation. Q: conversation. A: the same thing happens in the film. So at one point you know you take out the crowd and all those things, it is there, it is not there, that kind of balance. Q: yeah. A: because it’s a very personal talk. Q: yeah. So now coming back to the mono and the stereo and multi-channel: there is this question of distraction. I have talked with few other sound professionals - they are concerned about the distraction because now you have speakers, sources distributed behind your head in multi-channels. They are on the rear sides and sometimes even on

35 top of your head. So there is a big chance of getting distracted by the sound. How do you manage this? A: again you have to be clever enough to understand what sound and which place I should use my surrounds. Q: yeah. A: surround is there, it doesn’t mean that you use throughout the film. Q: yeah. A: surround speakers are given to create the locale. Q: hm. A: that is the main purpose you know, to create where you are. Now if you want to put certain effects, you can put it. Suppose it is a war sequence. You can happily use the surrounds. Because, in that case you need distractions. Q: hm. Ok. A: some firing is coming from there, some fire is coming from this side, some from the center back, you know, may be one helicopter is passing over it. So, that time you are not bound. That is the point, you should use the format fully. But, if it is an emotional scene, if it is a very delicate conversation, if it is a very casual scene, if we use the surrounds, we’ll kill the mood! Q: LG. A: so, according to me the speakers are there, but I should know how to use it. It is there, it doesn’t mean that you put everything in the surround. See one should not forget, when we’re watching a film, film is there in the front. Screen is there, picture is there, you cannot come back absolutely. Q: yeah, hm. A: screen is there, screen is not here! So it is your trick where to distract, where not to distract. Q: yeah. The screen is the two dimensional thing in front of us, and sounds are being placed in the surround. Do you think that there is a lack of sync between sound and image in the surround? A: see that depends on how you’re distributing the sound. Q: hm. Yeah. A: you can hardly come out from the visuals. Q: hm. A: you have to follow the visual but you have to see how much I can come out from the screen. So that I get a sense of surround.

36 Q: hm, yeah. A: I should get a sense of surround. Surround should not take over completely. Q: ok. But it can go a little bit off-screen also. A: See it depends on how much to go. That’s what I said, how much to come out from the screen. Q: hm. A: so that the focus remains in the front. But there is a sense of surround. If I tilt the sound completely, my visual is there sound is here, it will it will sound out sync. Q: yes. But in mono, there was no problem like this. A: because you didn’t have any option, speakers are there. Q: yeah. Yes. And in stereo we have two speakers on the two sides of the screen. Why has in your opinion this transition from mono to stereo to surround occurred? I mean how do you personally see it - this transformation from mono to stereo to surround? A: see, of course it helps the cinema; it helps us to improve our distribution of the sound. If it is mono then you don’t have any option, you can’t have surrounds or sense of surround or location. So here in these formats you are creating the location. That’s the first difference you know, you can create the location and at one time you can keep three four layers, which will not clash. Q: hm. Ok. A: like my dialogue is in the center, my music is, you know, in the left, right, left surround, right surround subwoofer. Q: hm. A: so subwoofer is the very major thing, which helps a lot because you can hear the extended low frequency. Like it is a thunder or it is an earthquake, you can create that heaviness, which you couldn’t create in the mono (era). Q: hm. A: because mono had got a limitation, because the optical sound had got a limitation from 8k to 80 or 100 or maximum you know, low frequency. Q: hm. A: so you had a limitation. Here there’s no limitation. Limitation means 20 hertz to 20k, a full bandwidth. So, you can use the full bandwidth. Q: hm. A: again you should understand how to use that full bandwidth. Where I should use the extreme low frequency, where I use the mid frequency, where I use the upper mid frequency and where I can use my high frequencies, extreme high frequencies.

37 Q: hm. A: so if you can exploit that whole range, your sound is bound to be good sound without hurting the human ear. Q: yeah. A: So my target always is not that it is a 5.1, 7.1 you know and you put this thing that thing, it’s not. Cinema is happening in the front, the first thing, you cannot come away from the picture, visual. And second thing, with this format since you’ve got an option of using the full bandwidth of the sound, you should have the good quality of sound. Q: hm. A: so this fully extended range was not there in the mono. Q: and in stereo? A: see, normally in the film there is nothing called a two track stereo. Q: ok. A: stereo means, like you know - Dolby came up with this analogue two-track. It’s called two-track because if you see the print, print is obsolete now, if you see the print there is there’ll be two tracks. One is the total left, one is the total right. Q: yeah. A: ok? But when you’re mixing or when the print is playing, you’re hearing left, centre, right, surround. Q: yes. Are there four channels? A: four. Surround channel is the mono one, because it’s a single track. Q: hm. A: whatever you play to the left will go to the right because it’s mono, there’s no left surround no right surround, but front, left, centre, right. So since physically it shows that it is two tracks, that’s why they call two track stereo. But actually it is a four-track stereo. Q: four-track stereo. Ok. A: otherwise cinema doesn’t have two tracks, acoustically two-track. Q: but then the rear is used for ambience or music, right? A: ambience. After that only this thing came you know, 5.1 digital. Then it is left, centre, right, left surround, right surround, subwoofer. Q: was there no subwoofer in the stereo? A: yes, in stereo there’s no subwoofer. They came up with the subwoofer to enhance this kind of distraction like some car crash, or something, which needed extreme low frequency, earthquake and all that kind of sequences you know.

38 Q: films like Disco Dancer and Shahenshah - they’re called stereo mix. Were they all made with this four-track stereo? A: yeah, four-track stereo but if I’m not wrong, those days there was no Dolby two-track stereo, which is called two-track optical stereo. Q: optical stereo? A: because I was one of the team members of Shahenshah, so that time we used to do the magnetic stereo. Q: magnetic stereo? A: That has got again left, center, right, surround, but on the magnetic stripe. Q: ok. Was it separate from the film sprocket itself? A: yeah. One is outside the sprocket, another is the inside the sprocket. So this one side is two-track, another side is two-track. Q: ok. Magnetic stereo? A: Magnetic stereo. Q: Did that continue until this four-track? A: until Dolby came up with the - I should not say Dolby. Dolby came up with this thing long back, when Bollywood first got the optical stereo, that two-track stereo on the print. Q: ok. Which film, can you remember? A: I think this was 1942 A Love story. Q: ok. That was the first Dolby four-track stereo, right? A: it came here. Of course that film was mixed in London, , I’ve met those guys. They mixed there and the first time we saw four-track optical stereo. Because it is optical, you can’t transfer on the negative and make a print. Q: ok. So married print is possible, isn’t it? A: it was a married print. Q: ok. A: that is the first time India got the print. It was mixed in London. Then I think Rangeela was the first film, which was mixed in India, again optical stereo. Q: optical stereo. Before it was magnetic stereo, was it separate from the film? A: magnetic stereo, yeah. Like the film Maine Pyar Kiya, and all those you know, has a magnetic. Each reel we had to transfer individually and running time. Q: ok A: Checking the tape is correct, it is sounding correct. If there is any dropouts in the tape, your audio will get lost there. Q: hm.

39 A: and I am the person who first makes the Dolby Digital in India. Q: which film was it? A: it’s called Daud, Ram Gopal Verma’s Daud. Q: Daud, yes. A: that was the first Dolby Digital mix. Q: how was the experience working on it? A: that was my first film. I had an idea since I had worked earlier for the magnetic stereo. I tried to do my best, but of course things improve with the experience you know. Q: yeah. Could you put a little bit of dynamics right in sound? A: yeah. Exactly. You now use the subwoofer, then use the surrounds, then keep the ambiences a little out - off-screen, you know, spread it and all those things. Q: hm. A: so that started. I had the idea because I did work on this magnetic stereo. So I’ve got some sense of distributing and using the subwoofers and all. Of course at that time there was no subwoofer in the magnetic stereo. But I had at least 60%-70% idea, how to approach. Q: hm. A: then of course after that I improved myself slowly. Q: so now you only mix for surround, right? A: yeah. I’ve been mixing for the last so many years. I have mixed 5.1, I have mixed 7.1, and now I want to attempt the Atmos. Q: yeah, Atmos. Do you adapt yourself to this transition accordingly with the number of channels? A: yeah. Q: Do you find any difference between 5.1 and 7.1? A: Between 5.1 and 7.1 there’s not much difference. In between there’s one format called Dolby EX and all. Q: hm. A: it didn’t work much. 5.1, 7.1 – there is not much difference. See even if the difference is 10% or 20% it’s not noticeable by the audience. Q: hm. A: and unless it is a noticeable by the audience, it will not matter. Q: do you think that Atmos is the future? A: Atmos is the future no doubt. But the thing is that, the producer has to give time. If you really want to do the Atmos, you need time.

40 Q: hm. A: and unfortunately Bollywood – LG Q: it doesn’t give time to sound people. Yeah. A: 98% films don’t give you time. They are are fixed. Q: LG. But what will the Atmos give extra to the audience? Is audience aware that there is a major new technological shift coming up? Will the audience only accept it the way it is? A: see frankly speaking I have not seen much of Atmos films you know because here we have got only two cinemas in Atmos. But whatever I have seen, it sounds very good, and those people use ceiling speakers very tactfully. Q: hm. A: see end of the day any format you take, but the mixer has to understand how to exploit that format. Q: hm. A: if I don’t know how to exploit that format, you give me any format, I won’t be able to create magic. Q: LG. A: and if I don’t create magic, audience will say, “Ok it’s the same!” Q: hm. A: what is the difference? So I have to see, I have to tell them that, “look, it was like this, it can be played like this.” Q: yeah. A: it can be decorated like this. So for me all the formats are really good. Unless I don’t know how to use the format you know, how to give the good quality of sound, I can’t blame the format. Q: yeah. One thing I’m very curious of: most of the recent films - I see in Europe mostly, in India it’s also I think a recent phenomenon, that young people watch and listen to films in smaller devices like smartphones, or iPad, or iPod Touch or other smaller digital devices, and listen to sounds by headphone. A: hm. Q: so as a re-recordist and sound mixing specialist how do you see that future when films will be more and more watched in small screen and how will you make your sound according to that? A: see that is the reason Dolby has come up with the Atmos. Q: why?

41 A: because headphone will not give you that kind of great sound, what you will get in the theatre! Q: ok. A: why changing from mono to four-track, from four-track to 5.1, 5.1 to 7.1, 7.1 to Atmos? So that they can bring the audience to the theatre. Q: hm, ok. A: so if my sound is not great I cannot pull the audiences in! Q: yes. A: so bringing different format is the reason! And one more thing: slowly like you know at home, people are having a bigger screen, bigger TV, ok? Q: hm, yeah. A: even you see the mobiles. Now people ask for a bigger one. Q: hm. A: rather than compared to the earlier, which came first, just a small one. Q: hm. A: but now slowly you see we don’t enjoy the small things, small mobile. Q: yeah. A: you can’t see anything you know. And lot of facilities, Internet, this and that, everything you know. So people’s choice is changing. They want to see the big screen. Q: hm. Big screen. A: at home we don’t like watching even the TV serials, or news on the small thing, we buy a bigger television. So if you give the audience a big screen with a big sound, they are bound to come. See we go to see English films, pay 300/400 rupees, why? Because of the great visual and great sound, which we will not get in TV! So Hollywood knows how to bring in the audience. So you have to do that. Your sound and picture should be great. People will say it’s not enjoyable at home, let’s go to the theatre. And that is the reason they have brought this Atmos. Q: and Auro 3D as well. Final question before I close it for today: Do you think of the audience when you mix? Do you keep in mind the audience who will ultimately consume or get entertained? A: yeah that is very important. Like you know I don’t know what other mixing engineers feel. But I feel when I’m working, that parallely I’m also the audience! Q: hm. A: because if I can’t feel the thing as an audience I won’t be able to do justice. Suppose in an emotional scene if I don’t feel it, that’s what I said 80% is aesthetic 20% is the

42 technique. If I don’t feel it, I cannot create that mood, I cannot make my audience cry. That feel, that flute is there or whatever instrument is there, it has to be placed in such a way. You’ve to create that mood, you have to create that anger. So, that comes from inside. That is my opinion. When I’m sitting there, I’m working - I’m thinking I’m the character on the screen. If these things would have happened to me how would I have reacted? Q: ok. A: suppose I lost my mother, I would’ve reacted. Q: hm. So you become the audience. A: I become the audience; I become the character! And parallely I become the audience also. Because, unless I feel myself as an audience, I cannot give the hundred percent. If I’m not crying my audience cannot cry. Q: ok. A: So aesthetics plays very important role. It doesn’t make any sense whether you increase by 10db or 20db or 50db or -30db. You’ve to see how it is reflecting, whether it is touching the heart or not. That is very important. If you can’t do that you cannot put a soul to the film. That is very important. Q: thanks a lot. LG. It was very good, very enjoyable.

43

44 Anup Mukherjee (2014)

Duration: 01:18:48 and 47:40 Name Abbreviations: Anup Mukherjee - A; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

Q: The first thing I want to know is: how were the film industry and the opportunities when you passed out of the film Institute? A: let me start from a little earlier. I went to the Institute in the year 1971. During 1969- 71, the war and other political movements were happening in West . This was a disturbing phase. I was looking forward to going to the premier film Institute. So I went to the Institute. What I realised after going there was that the vision had changed. This happened because the whole world opened up in front of me. I saw the French and Italian films and all the classics one after the other. Like the famous Russian film Battleship Potemkin etc. This actually change the philosophy of my life with which I had entered the Institute. And thereafter the teachers that we got where film stalwarts. In fact the head of the Department of cinematography at that time - at that time it was not the cinematography department but the motion picture photographic department -it is the same thing just that it was called motion picture photography. Mr. lai Jaiswani was there in the department who also worked in Hollywood. It was heard that he was an operating cameraman. And the others also mostly worked in Hollywood, Masters in their own field. They, along with teaching us the methods of working in film, also gave us an insight. So we realise that while learning in the Institute that this boundary is not enough. The things that we come to hear and think about hear. We would have to struggle otherwise nobody would recognise us. Nobody had a clue about how students would get out of the Institute and get work. A common process then was to join a studio and become an assistant. And spend at least 7 to 8 years as an assistant. And after this experience in audio he can start working independently. So what is exactly taught in a film school? What exactly can someone learn in three years? Something that we don't get to know in 10 to 15 years, because otherwise nobody otherwise recognises. So the challenge that I faced when we passed out was that I had to prove myself. What vision have we come out with? What changes can be bring? So the target that I had when I started working in the industry was to learn and try to establish a way of life and a philosophy of work. It could be either in the Bombay industry or Calcutta, because Calcutta is my motherland. Once when I was studying in the Institute and I happened to come back here, I watched the film then I realised that I could not understand the audio

45 of any film that I watched but later realised that it was an issue with the infrastructure. Slowly I realised that the infrastructure was not acoustically treated properly. It was all a mess. So I realised that the changes required which could either be qualitative or aistatic. Only what is not entirely for visuals and something else had to be created. And soon I graduated. The situation when I came out into the industry, Mangesh Je was there in the working in the industry. He was working at Raj Kamal Studios then. And then there were Kaushik Bawa and Ramen Chatterjee at other studios. And my contemporaries started assisting them. And they would have gone on to assist for the next 10 years. Being an assistant mostly meant tape winding and microphone placement and other such small jobs. They mostly did what they were asked to do even though they knew that it might be wrong according to their sensibilities. Life is all about these contradictions anyways. Now I would like to speak about my life. Though I passed out of the film and television Institute I did not know what television was. Q: hmmm. A: when I passed out in 1974 television had not arrived in India. In fact there were only two centres one in Delhi and the other in Srinagar. And third centre started in Bombay. So many people might have asked that since you have come out of the film and television Institute what do you know? Truly I did not know anything because we did not even have television wing by then. Only the name was announced. It was during our convocation that the television building was inaugurated. So whatever it may be, once I passed out I started enquiring with some of our seniors who are already working in television. So they asked me if I was interested in working and I responded saying surely. They'd informed me that though it is television work happened in film. Other than this studio all the outdoor shoots used to happen on reversal film or universal films and then went on for direct positive development with a separate magnetic tape, which was called sepmags. This is what we worked with. One of the advantages that we had was the fact that I joined television first and not the industry, some of the known faces were in television and the others were in the industry. I went there also. Some of my friends had already joined there. So the advantage that I had while working here was that I could experiment on a lot of things. Since time is a major factor in television it builds a certain kind of discipline. You have to keep the channel fed somehow or the other at the right time. For instance, if the news is at 7:30 the field has to be in sharp at 7:30. There was no other choice. And I would have probably been back at six after shooting that. Within the next one are the developing and the sound transfer; the editing has to be done and by 7:25 it should reach the telecine. So it was all about a one-hour. The

46 challenge of making it in such a short span without missing the perfection, the proper synchronisation with the ministers and a lot of other VIPs and other people, like for instance a small documentary can happen within this. So this gave me an opportunity to learn how to work fast and still maintain and present a good quality of work with all the hardship. Because in those times the cameraman had a light boy to help him, but the recordist did not have anybody. Like at the Institute they would have an assistant to hold a boom and we would have an additional three people while we did our job. Here it is completely self-made. Everyone has to deliver to themselves. So this was challenging as well. Even though what I did was to understand what television is, I also gained experience in work. Everyday there is work and the industry would not be able to provide me this amount of work in the beginning. Maybe seven days of work and then six months of waiting. This was a daily practice of work and a lot of experiments also happened. This is why I got the opportunity to work in television at different places for different projects. To add to this there was no mixing facility there, you had to do online mixing, en sport music recording with dialogues. You know? That kind of work! You are from the sound department and I'm sure you understand. And through this hardship learning happened and an individual vision was formed, and the evolution of an independent style. I've gone through a lot of hardship like for instance ones the sync cable between the Naga and the camera tore but still being the Prime Minister's coverage it had to be done. You cannot make it out sync in anyway. The only way and then the appropriate solution was found and executed. Doing this I was associated with the television industry for around 7 to 8 years. I also managed to take up a foreign training. It was at Malaysia, under AIBD - Asia-Pacific Institute for broadcasting development and ABU - Asian broadcasting union. Foreign trainers especially German and Australian were with us. We did an international news exchange program. After completing that and coming back what we saw was that the Indian television was not ready with that kind of technology that they had already adopted in Kualalampore. That is what made me wonder when it is going to come here. By then low band was already there and we did not know what low band was. Even though it was filmed in colour had come and to refine the work process mixing and other things were done. This made us wonder when it would come here. That is when I got an opportunity. NFDC film sector opened up in Kolkatta. That's where for the first time “rock 'n' roll” mixing and dubbing setup was established. In all of India to such setups started. One in Bombay Sea Rock and the other was NFDC Kolkatta. The earlier version of “rock 'n' roll” existed in BR studio. That was there when we passed out. One is to 1 ratio that is back and forth is about one time. These are said to be high-speed which is about 4 to 6

47 times. Why did I join NFDC? The hunger to understand television was already satiated. My actual hunger was for cinema, which took me to Pune. And I went to Pune through the competition. The selection would happen at 12 to 14 places and I got through from one of them. So that was my first target, film. The other target was an opportunity to work with the stalwarts like Ray, Mrinal Da, , . These were the people were working in Calcutta at that time. And among the young people who came were Anjan Ghosh, Goutam Ghosh, the man like Tapan Sinha. These are the people who were working at that time in Kolkata and the young people who came like , Buddhadeb Dasgupta - they were also working. Mainstream filmmakers like Biresh Chatterjee, , these people were also there. Amongst seniors Ajoy Kar and Salil Dutta and others were still present. So once it started what happened the advantages that we got with rock and roll – what we learnt in Pune was single track recording normally, in dubbing if there was 10 people in one loop all 10 artists were lined together and they were recorded simultaneously and doing proper placement for them. And also to simulate this whether it was outdoor, or whether it was indoor; if it was in the morning, or in the afternoon. The differences that were there for day to night, everyone had to do it together. But in rock and roll recording these method was changed and we could adjust time according to the artists availability and do it. Q: hm. A: this worked as an advantage for the industry as well, that all the artists were not required to come together. At first we were a little skeptical about the feasibility of this operation, whether at all it will work if the artists are not gathered together. Would we be able to match the tones? Or will two people maintain the same scale of expressing? If the recording happened separately there was a chance of this happening. And at the same time the probability is less because the other track will be played for him to listen and then he will deliver his own lines. And this was the advantage of this process. Then I explained to them that in case of loop dubbing, a 100 feet loop where 10 people are talking in a similar manner, after 2 hours the consecutive next loop will be playing, and the difference of time between these two and the expression of these can be different from each other. When the audio of the loops will be joined together for making the whole one sequence then it is possible to make it sync sound. It can go up and down. But that is not happening, as the artists themselves are conscious and they know what to do, so one who has spoken before will not again speak later. They fix their own individual expression. The advantage with this is whenever an artist comes he will get the other tracks on the headphones, he will get his own guide pilot track and then he can speak his

48 own expression. This change happened and gradually the industry also changed according to the new way. The system that was used in the earlier times, the process of re-recording all together which is now called mixing, for that they had 10 minute reels and they had to remember for 10 minutes only. Effects will come, music will come and there was a music mark in that. There was a marking system for the music. So we used to put on the music according to the marking. This didn’t happen in rock and roll anymore. The need to remember wasn’t there, we would mix till a portion and if that was ok we could continue in a flow, we could return to a point later for correction and again move ahead by punching in and out. These were the advantages that people started to realize at that point. This influenced the filmmaking a lot, I will eventually speak about that in due time. Q: this shift from television to cinema, and the use of the new equipment rock and roll are quite clear. But how did the work happen before rock and roll came in the practice? A: during rock and roll recording system, when the number of studios for audio post- production increased then obviously dubbing – now if we can speak of the earlier times then we used to record music live. Say for instance K L saigal is singing underneath a tree and a mid-long shot is being taken, there we would not be showing any accompaniment. They were placed at a trusted/safe distance, single microphone taking used to happen live. This process has come back now again. Now during the live recording where will the table player sit? It could be on top of a tree or the harmonium could be placed behind the tree, so keeping in mind the proper balancing of this the recordist used to fix the spot of their seating where this artist will still not be visible, and the song will also become beautiful to hear. Now this also evolved within some time because then the songs were taken/recorded on fixed cameras or maybe a group of musicians are playing flute and they are standing inside a small pond and playing the flute, this also happened at a certain time. What I feel for is the hardship they had done during that time and a change in that happened since the time the playback system came. The playback was more or less parceled from India, because in Hollywood playback wasn’t popular in that manner. The songs were recorded separately like orchestra is generally recorded and then it was shot. So once the playback system started that reduced the dependency quite a bit. Camera became much more smoother and moving at the same time, which helped or added in shooting various moments of the songs separately. So with the playback system, where the song was recorded prior and it was played back while shooting and the synchronized performance of the camera along with the playback without which it won’t synchronize, now I wouldn’t go into the detail of

49 the system that had to be adopted to allow this change. So according to the playback of the sing the artist would give the lead of the song, the song playback would happen and it would be shot from different positions and compositions. Similarly since the audio level increased in the studio locality, I mean the unwanted noise – as in, in signal to noise ratio the signal reduced and the noise increased – that didn’t leave any other choices other than going for dubbing to get the clarity of dialogues. So one thing was sorted that the dialogues were clearer. Because there the distance between the source and microphone didn’t vary. But again one responsibility of the recordist increased that he had to now simulate the time and the space too. Whether it was open air or inside the room, whether it was morning, afternoon or night. This slowly entered the process of dubbing. This means that a loop was created for every shot, whatever the shot length be. Say one sequence has 20 shots - each of the 20 shots will have a different length. One is, say 50 feet, another 100 feet, another might be 120 feet. Now the shot was cut and it’s first frame and the last frame was joined together. This was created like a belt, which would continuously run in the projector with a gap. Artist would rehearse with that, while that was on the artist would see that in the film – that was inside a bi dubbing theater where the film was projected, and along with the projection they would use the microphone and try to lip synchronize and say the dialogues. Now it might be found that after 10 rehearsals he has got used to it and then we used to go for take. At a time all the artists would be speaking at the same time and one or two microphones were used for that and that was recorded on another platform. This used to happen in optical recording also and magnetic as well. Now at times maybe after the whole tape was recorded it was entirely bulk erased and re-recorded again, or else it was kept. Whichever take is okay among one two three and four, that would be transferred for the final editing. I'm not going to elaborate this process much because you buy now already know it. So this dubbing procedure I just spoke about, this loop after loop, and 20 such loops together makes a scene. Once scene is shot at one time in one or two spaces. If it is a mis-en-scene two or three scenes like this will add up together to make a sequence. Now for this process the ear of the recordist played a very important role. His ears tuned will tell if the artist is speaking in the right scale. If there is any change in the previous loop and the next loop he will have to communicate with the artist. And after that, the tape would go to the editing room and the editor would match it and see if it is working. He would sink it by pushing a few frames here and there. After doing this if came back for the final mix. Apart from the dialogue track there was a few more additional tracks, mainly the synchronised effects and diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Diegetic sound

50 which we hear on screen, for example like when a car passes by that will be recorded separately and transferred and kept badly on those positions of the real and synchroniser were used one would be for the picture and the other four or five in rollers in the same gear and sprocket. Those four or five tracks in the same position where it starts in the film, which we call the clap mark. Now it is called the beep mark. From that moment on the distance of every track will be the same. Now when we're running the film the speed has to be matched with the car that is moving. And the positions would be decided according to these matching is and the dialogues also would be there. This was the effects track. And more effects were recorded and this was because since the dialogues are adopted they did not record any relevant effects. For instance tearing paper or shutting the door, sitting on a chair these were not taken. If it was live recording, automatically these sounds would have come. So these are generally dubbed effects. Now it is called folly, a term that came much later. Earlier we used to call it sink effects. So among these sink effects there would be footsteps and all other sounds that should be present according to the visuals. Only those we used to dub. And parallel to that there would be another track, which was the ambience. Ambience according to me is the most important part of the film because it is the lowest level of sound we are using. At the same time I believe that ambience is the magic that engages the audience with the film. So you also belong to that plane. You are one of those artists who are watching from a plane at a distance - one of those characters. This is my first point. Secondly it is to motivate them psychologically and take them to that plane which is also a tool. Like for instance with background music, which is not there in the image but later added by us. This is to create a thread between the director and the audience. The director tries to communicate with the audience and at places when it does not work out music is required. The case is different for mainstream films. I'm talking about cinema as a whole. So with the case of ambience night ambience can be varied, like the sound of crickets or some other insects and crickets might not be there as well. And this is how feelings come out of the film and engaged the audience. I think it is the ambience that is creating that effect. For instance if someone goes to the jungle the effect might still be in the mind. I've seen many famous films like this for instance La Strada. I can never forget the seaside shot in that film - the kind of sounds that I have heard, like the car moving or the sound of the bike. So whenever I'm using bike sounds in a film that tone that I try to achieve. At times I get it and at times I don't. So the ambience track had to be made. And then there would be one or two tracks of the BGM with cross fades in between. So this is how the tracks were prepared and for the final mixing which is also called re-

51 recording, which did not mean re-recording because of bad recording, it was really recording as in final mixing. This is the time when the life is given to a film. We have everything from the dialogues to all the other effects are properly balanced and the relationship between these elements is built over and above the music as a whole. Finally it is decided how the music can be dimed and that actually gives you the real life of the film. And that is how we communicate with because only static visuals do not make any sense unless you put some sound in it. After “rock 'n' roll” came though the process is same in the only change was we went from optical to magnetic. All the dialogues the music and the effects were all transferred from optical or photographic from which the print was created and then track was prepared. So a little before “rock 'n' roll” everything was done on magnetic tapes. The width of the tape was the same, 35 or 16 whatever the format. So if we had to use magnetic for “rock 'n' roll” we had a lot of advantages. We could go through each portion carefully and do it according to our timing and correct anywhere in between. So this happened during the nineties let's say. From eighties to about half of the nineties this “rock 'n' roll” era was on in India. I don't know about other places. I'm guessing it would be around the same time. But post-1996 the scenario started changing. I'm sure you are aware of that change. This change came almost like a tsunami. That is what I think. Q: my research area is digital technology and ambience. Your reference about ambience is going to be very useful for my research. I would like to get into the details about it slowly. But before that, I would like to ask, when was direct recording used before dubbing after coming of sound in the film post-1931? A: from 1952 I switched to films from television. Till about 1985 I got a few films, which were direct recording. All the films from the Assam belt had to be direct recording. There was no place for dubbing that we. There was a small studio, which was not properly equipped and acoustically bad. Q: during direct recording the ambience and the sync effects were recorded directly. But you mentioned that it was not enough to provide the simulation. Were the sync effects and ambience that were recorded during direct recording not enough? Was anything added later? A: no you cannot look at it this way. Let me make it easy for you. Tollygunge from the fifties to the seventies and thereafter has had drastic changes. Nobody used to go to the localities where the studios are located now. Like Kudghat and other places developed much later. These were calm and peaceful places. During those times wherever the shoot happened in the area the direct ambience remained the same. The vehicle traffic was

52 almost nil. The ambience that was present in the film, people did not notice much. The way we perceive ambience today that surround sound is the, in a monoplane if I put that much of pressure on ambience from the same speakers it might sound much more noisier. The noise element will become more. Q: yes. A: so the recordists were busy doing clean recordings. And they made sure that the ambience level from the shot to shot remained the same. For instance in a close up shot the camera goes closer and I take the microphones close as well and then it is a longshot and hence microphone has to be kept at a distance. Cordless mikes and lapels were not in vogue at the time. Okay? So what happens is both the ambience levels vary. Am I correct? Q: yes. A: and to cover up this jerk a bird track would be placed as a loop. This is just to distract the audience from the jerk, so that they can concentrate on the dialogues and other effects. This was cleverly done back then also. For instance it is dawn and the cock is crowing and other birds are also chirping and then say we enter inside a house or inside a studio. Outdoor was not always necessarily recorded outdoors. It is still saying in the era of colour now. For example in a lot of sounds that are there are studio recordings, which were recorded during the shoot in the studio and in the backdrop you can see the mountains. This went on for long. And these days we are putting the mountains in DI and chroma while in those days it used to be back projection or a painted background. Say when a car comes and stops that effect was recorded separately. Multiple takes were taken. I've heard from seniors that this happened earlier also. In the film Morutirtha Hinlaj, the whole of it was direct recording, not even a single dialogue was dubbed. This was made in 61 or 62. The famous soundtrack by Hemanta and mostly there were no dialogues, all recorded in the studio primarily. And the rest was in the Desert probably Rajasthan. We used to obviously choose these isolated zones and the shoot used to happen there, like at riverbank or someplace else. And then in the coming days the number of tracks increased. Earlier there were two or three additional tracks other than the dialogue and the dialogue would be there if there was dubbing. And then the mixing happened. With “rock 'n' roll” more tracks are available to use. In a single tape for tracks could be used on which we have utilised 8 to 9 tracks like in Padma Nadir Majhi and Antarjali Yatra. We have pushed a few tracks online as well from quarter inch tapes or cassettes or other sources. At that time this was really a hardship. The effects in those times like for instance that of a mountain crumbling down, or the banks

53 of Padma as long as a furlong breaking down in the river. The source of this effect was not available anywhere. There is no existing stock where you can get the sound of this crumbling of the bank. There would probably be stone breaking and stuff like that but not a bank breaking down into the river in stock. So we had to create that. In fact effects were created much more innovatively during those times. For instance this effect was created by recording sounds of maybe and wrapped in a carpet and pulled or four people jumping into the bath tub at the same time and stuff like that. So this implies that the brain had to work constantly to figure out if there were any other alternatives available. The guys who did such effects in Chennai also charged a lot. Say we needed the sound of a stone rolling, the effects guy would just roll the microphone on a table and create it. That was this innovative brain. Even the recordist had to be innovative to contribute. For instance if there was a high tension electric wire passing from about creating a hum they would plug in a Tanpura effects to it. This is how people use to innovate a lot of solutions. Q: what was the aesthetic difference between direct recording and dubbed effects from a sound person's perspective? A: the first difference is of perspective because perspective is very. After all dubbing is an extremely simulated process. I'm trying to simulate something different on screen with something else. What happened in direct recording for instance if a policeman is walking, microphone would be placed at the bottom for him and another one at the top as usual only to get the sound of the footsteps. The rest comes as it is on the large microphone. (…) Different directors have different perspectives. For example I will have to speak to Haranath keeping in mind his perspective. This is what you have to keep in mind while finding a solution. Q: have you worked with Satyajit Ray? A: Manik Da started working with “rock 'n' roll” for his film Ghare Baire. This was only postproduction work. I have heard about his work before and have worked with his son Sandeep Ray. Through several people associated with him I came to know that he did direct recording in most cases. Some sounds were recorded in the studio but the outdoor he did with wild dubbing system. As far as I've heard the picture was not shown. The guide track was generally recorded on a Nagra or some other recorder, so Ray used to play that and make his say exactly the same thing at the location. So he used to do rehearsals according to the guide. If there were any minor changes we would make it but otherwise he would make sure that he's got it perfect at the shoot. So that is why nothing much required a change later. But once rock 'n' roll came he did not follow this

54 dubbing procedure any longer. He did everything in rock 'n' roll. During Ghare Baire he found out that it is possible to see a reverse picture show on rock 'n' roll. Since generally you cannot see it on such a big screen he appreciated this a lot. He also started enjoying this process a lot. We did the dubbing of the whole Ghare Baire in just five days, which is almost impossible. He was such a perfectionist right from this shooting spot that nothing much was required to be thought about later. All we had to do was quality assurance. He was sure about the acting. Each day was given to fund main artist like one day and Swatilekha Chatterjee another day and another. That is how it was. Then we used to do effects. We did it so well that he was very impressed. We did effects and everything and did not leave anything behind. Even recorded the sound of combing hair separately, because this was unimaginable during mono. During Ghare Baire also it was Mono but the clarity of sound was entirely different. Some of his other films are direct recording but this film was entirely dubbing. None of the audio was live shoot. After that four of his films like were partly dubbed, and effects are also created. Then Sakha Prasakha, Agantuk and all these were done in similar ways. We also did a few films of Mrinal Da. Q: were they dubbed? A: yes, is completely dubbed. We did effects of and I also did the complete audio production of Antareen, including dubbing and mixing. It it was completely done by me. From Tarun Majumdar's Dadar Keerti I did a few films. So after “rock 'n' roll” came people started enjoying and a lot of film projects started happening in our NFDC studio. Q: why did Satyajit Ray move from direct recording to dubbing? A: no. Actually, most of the cases it was indoor and the acoustic quality indoor was gradually degrading. And it wasn't possible to do this outdoor because even if you don't see it visually cars would be passing in the background. The sounds are passing through the vegetation as well. And with audio you cannot block anything unlike visuals where you can make a boundary. But when it comes to audio you will hear Bonga's audio in Jessore! No passport is required there. So slowly as the studio acoustics were degrading, reverberation started increasing. So to maintain the quality the films were being dumped throughout. And even he could not physically do this anymore he went for part dubbing in Sakha Prashaka. He was in this film it was partly dubbed and the real audio was kept in other places. Q: so there was direct recording as well in that film? A: yes. Agantuk had the same thing.

55 Q: but his earlier films like had direct recording. A: more or less.

Q: I'm curious to know something about Satyajit Ray. He made his last film in 1992 when stereo had already come to Indian cinema. And in 1982 stereophonic mixing started, like the film Gandhi. A: where was Gandhi mixed? Q: wasn't the final mix in stereo? A: Gandhi was mixed abroad. Q: yes it was. The very popular commercial Hindi film Disco Dancer was mixed in stereo here in India. A: See, during those times stereo mix on stereo optical's were done by a few guys. You need a stereo optical recorder to record in stereo and you need a stereo theatre as well. If I make it and no one else can hear which is happening in a lot of cases, I'm giving highest quality output working on a Harrison mixer but the output is going through Ahuja amplifier or something like that, then what would you expect? Are we aware of what we should be doing? The chain of our whole production, from script to screen, do we know the required technicalities behind all this? And the kind of quality it should have? I think this is the main reason. With Tarun Majumdar's all in all the encouragement I did a four- track stereo for his film Path o Prasad. That was magnetic track. How did I do it? I recorded one track on the outside of the perforation on a 35mm and another track inside in the place of the optical. Two such on either sides - one track between the sprocket and picture and one outside the sprocket. And the same on either sides, which makes it four- tracks. They made this concept of force track stereo distribution. The playback was done on good projectors but the heads where four cassettes heads for each track. It was not their fault and the space is very less. After four rounds the surface came off. That was what happened in reality. We never think about the end product. I've imagined and thought about a lot of times how to take any real picture of the Earth. I don't know how I'll do it. Maybe, on a rocket or a tabletop. Now there is DI and CG and everything seems to be possible with it. But imagine the hardship in those times, what Manik Da imagined - imagine today's Goopy Gayen Bagha Bayen. How many kinds of magic did he create? What hardships did he go through to work on the optical? How many layers did we create? Q: in optical? A: yes.

56 Q: but, though he experienced stereo in his times, he never used it in his films… A: it hadn't come to India before 82. May be abroad. But Gandhi was made in 82 that I know because I was part of NFDC. That was down for an international market. To find a projector in India would have been possible somewhere in the mid-eighties. That is when we did Path o Prasad as well. Q: Manik Babu consistently did mono mix from beginning to end. A: he did not get an opportunity. He should get the space in the first place. He had definitely seen 70 MM films including Sholay. So I don't think he would have wanted to make a 70 MM film. Q: yes, I agree. A: the fact is that he knew his canvas and what he was dealing with. And with what space? If he really would have made a film like Close Encounters - he had written a script titled Bonku Babur Bondhu, he could have done it for this film. But that didn't happen. He fell sick around 82 - 83. When would he find time to do? After coming back he wasn't fit enough to do it again. Tarun Majumdar did it. I worked for Tapan Sinha's . At that time all the effects and the dubbing would happen here in Calcutta but the final mix would happen in Bombay. I reversed this scenario for this film. Tapan da said that I would have to mix. I told him, "If I am doing the makes I will do the dialogue premix as well." Most of the dialogues were dubbed here at my place. Only two people did it in Bombay, Pankaj and Shaban. So we got all the three tracks from there. It happened at Sunny. Those were bought here and I mixed the whole thing. A very important film as well. Q: was it a stereophonic mix?

A: no, absolutely not. Stereophonic in that sense came mostly in digital. I wouldn't say stereo, rather the use of surround sound, Dolby SR, Dolby Digital… Q: yes that is an enormous chain. But before that if you have to mention a difference of sound in Satyajit Ray's films, I think it would be the use of details. A: yes. He would deal it realistically. That is true. Mostly he would treat it realistic. And in cases where it went about realistic and say surreality came in it was treated accordingly, for instance in Bhoother Raja times and others. He elevated realistic sound to another plane in different ways with use of different musical elements and sound effects. That is extremely interesting isn't it? If you take Pratidandi for instance you will see this kind of treatment in one or two places like the dream sequence. Then the use of leitmotif - the bird comes and again the bird comes.

57 Q: and the use of ambience in Ray's films seems to be very rich. A: yes, very rich from the very beginning. I would say right from . That is what I have noticed. In fact we learnt from watching his films. At Pune film Institute watching film was a habit. Everyday we used to watch 2 to 3 films, like classics or current releases, important films, serious films, different festival packages used to come there. As a result of this a vision has taken form. As well as what used to happen in Bengal for instance in in that one train journey the transition from Banaras to Calcutta he did purely through music. Changing the folk elements he came into Bengal in that one train journey. This is how he did it musically. Maybe he could have even done it with effects with his imagination. I wouldn't say ambience. Q: to do it on ambience. A: but what used to happen in those days is that some of the sound elements, in Manik Da's case it would be mentioned in the script. Another thing is those that used to develop watching the film on the editing table and was noted that he would use or not use sound at that particular point. For instance in Rithik Da's Subornoreka or… What I mean is these are additions. For instance in Pather Panchali a considerable amount of sound was added later. Q: in 's films the use of ambience is relatively lesser. He seems to do a lot of experiments with effects. A: his style of expression was more direct and attacking. He would reach that space directly. In descending from the stairs, or maybe another film like , where he treated the film musically. We had our house on the other side of the partition. But it's not to their honeymoon today. So Ritwik da had a different style, and Manik da was more influenced by Hollywood, that's what I think. He had a realistic approach towards cinema, and to derive meaningful expression out of it. Q: so there was the transition from optical to magnetic, didn't that affect their work? A: Ritwik da didn't go to that position quite. He might have done that for Titas made later, I'm not sure about that. But magnetic was used by mainly Manik da. And later other people like Mrinal da, Tarun da, Tapan da and others worked in the magnetic era. Q: the flexibility of the magnetic medium or format, did not that effect the quality of work of these people? A: there was some influence in case of music because the musical instruments that were used before, precisely we used to try to find out if any instrument is there within 5K, we used to avoid using a high note bells, because in optical there's a chance of distortion,

58 because density varies. So this was one of the issues. So that way there was a change since everybody started using instruments of higher range. Q: yes magnetic can handle up to 15K. A: yes but provided it is reproduced. The speakers to support this kind of high range came much later. 15 K might be getting produced but we only hear a portion of the harmonics only. Q: and on the lower range, is it 30?

A: yes 30 to 35. Q: so dynamic range increased, headroom also increased, that's how the possibilities of erasing and overdubbing also increased, but how is this change getting reflected in the quality of the sound work? A: firstly you should understand how the theatre has changed, it wasn't only the change of the recording. Everything before was aligned according to the kind of theatre that was there. Same for the mixing as well. The moment we realised that the theatre quality has improved and and its speakers and amplifier systems have been changed, so that's how the dynamic range also has increased. Now a lot of people are trying to input a lot of elements, which wasn't the case earlier. Previously it used to be precise directions of putting something in a particular place for instance like a train passing, you can take the example of Saptapadi. In this film when the hero meets the actress for the second time and watches him through the mirror, a train passes by in the backdrop and the mirror shakes a little. So that's how it was precisely used. That the mirror will shake reason gets created for it. So this was thought off from the script level, that the dispensary cannot be a small village dispensary. That's why the train passed from behind. That was the idea. So if the film was made now then more ideas would come for the surround. Q: yes. You're right. Now let us come to digital technology. How have you seen the transition or experienced it in your own work? How would you elaborate on that? A: from my perspective what I can tell you is people like me who are neither very old nor very new, I have spent quite an amount of time in the industry and I think we're at the luckiest. We have seen the total transition happening. Transition from the old style, direct recording, loop dubbing, the mixing of those times then “rock 'n' roll” dubbing. Now it's digital, Dolby SR, DTS, Dolby Digital, and Dolby Atmos. So we are the luckiest! And what the teachers of our institute did actually was they helped increase the adaptability power of us. And they have instigated us to learn for the rest of our lives. So we went through that process so we still have the inquisitiveness about what's coming

59 next, why? Because I know my aesthetic requirements. Now, how much I can reach that is more crucial. Now I think that it is possible to go to the Everest because there is oxygen in the cylinder for sometime. Previously there used to be very little oxygen. So we have reached the stage now. Now from my vantage point I experienced all the changes, from optical or direct optical sound to magnetic, after Digital came it was quite a relief. What we used to think for so long can be reality now. Not only reality but achievable. Earlier sounds were produced manually now it can be processed. I'll give you an example. In the film Padma Nadir Majhi, to create the sound of a riverbank breaking I had to drag person inside a carpet and record that sound. No one even knows about it, because I'm informing you it can be understood. And people might not even believe it. But now in the film Uttara, towards the end of big boulder rolls down. This boulders sound I have created out of nothing because of this tool, the digital tool. I had a sound of a rolling tyre, which was flattened. I processed that sound and added a few elements with it and made that material so that it sounds like the boulder rolling down. Earlier you had to think of this process in a different way. Now it appears to be more realistic in the colour era. Earlier in colour people used to think that is right, because they didn't hear the sound of a boulder rolling. Q: but wasn't it possible to record the sound of the rolling boulder directly? A: now is the distance of the boulder is almost half a mile, then to follow the boulder and record the sound is almost impossible. Where is the LF element? You will only get the rubbing. You will only get the sound of the boulder hitting. You wouldn't get the body. Q: so that means direct recording is not the answer in cinema.

A: it works for certain things, like normal dialogues and stuff. But in case of enhancements there is a difference at times in the tonal quality. Direct recording is okay. A lot of people who make mainstream films they are more conscious towards the voice quality. If there is any difference in 's voice quality then he will become mentally upset. So to achieve his voice quality in outdoor might be possible but to do it throughout the film becomes difficult. Because mostly the situation is like that. To go for direct recording in requires a lot of infrastructure, how many producers will you find who will be able to afford that? In Bombay you generally see direct sound happening. But if a shooting is happening at a road junction and the road is blocked within 1 km radius with the help of assistants who are blocking the road and not allowing cars to pass, they are allowed to pass once the shooting is over, will we be be able to do it here? Will we be able to afford it? Those assistants will charge Rs. 15-Rs.

60 20,000 per day. This is apart from your recording equipment cost and recording engineer’s cost. No one will be able to afford this because there wouldn't be much return. They might be able to spend. Some costly films also happen, for instance the film Chander Pahar happened which is an expensive film. So how was this film possible to make? Because they had about 50 halls under their control, they could force the screening as well. Even if it was another producer they also could afford spending that much of money. But would that producer be able to run the film? I have a doubt about that. So basically making a film is not the be all and end all. You also have to think about controlling the machinery, which is very difficult. In recent times cinema hall are running under very few people. But earlier this wasn't the case. And even now myself and Tarun Majumdar would go to Purna cinema hall to find out the quality the hall is in because of film is going to get released there and we found that it was in terrible condition. The back of the baffle or speakers was open, and a person was sitting above and the show is running. Some work was happening on the speakers. The entire hall was naked and didn't have any acoustic treatment. And the sound was too disturbing and no dialogues could be understood. If the hall would be crowded than still it is fine, but otherwise not. So these were the conditions in which films got released earlier. Then Tarun Majumdar would go and tell them which things needed to be altered and that would be done. So if the total setup goes to a single person's hand whatever he says will be done. It is very good that Digital came. Everything is good about digital; we're really lucky that this kind of sound quality is happening now while earlier we would be dissatisfied with that. We never got what we gave. But after the digital another fear has cropped up. It is very similar to the multinational companies, I'm going to get lost. My existence depends on a few people. Q: but your name is going to be there in the credit list. That you have done this work will be registered. A: but it has to run, the film has to run, right? Q: yes it has to run. A: if it does not run then even if I have a DCP, or a DVD, then what? Now you tell me how much of archive value will we be able to maintain this way? How much is the durability of this? Five years? Every six months later changing the software, what will you do about that? So today you are doing a DCP, this DCP won't be readable after few years. Because some new format has come already. Like now you have a newer version of Mac pro. Half of the things will not work on that, what will you do? So to maintain this and keep it, in a way that the hard disk does not crash, one film will not be having

61 multiple copies. But the funny thing is in the analogue era, we can still see a film by the lumiere brothers. But have we seen a first digital film? Or can we see it later? That this is the first digital film made. Can anybody bring this out? It is very difficult. Q: yes it is. A kind of non-linear method is here now.

A: yes that is everywhere, even in editing. Nonlinearity is in an extreme situation now. Q: it is difficult to keep it chronologically. A: so this is a very difficult space now. So that's why I think that there must be some archival technique where there will be at least one analog format saved. That we're still doing, many times we are making a direct print from Digital, if we do it there is no print negative but there is a direct positive. So if we have that facility then it is still possible. Now if this was necessary to do that you have to keep an analog print other than your DCP that will remain as it is. Q: yes true. A: it will stay intact for years to come. I think that this should happen. Q: but this is also true that a lot of analog prints have gone bad because of negligence. A: but that is the problem of the individuals. If today such prints can be kept with proper temperature less than 5/6 degrees, they will not go bad. They went bad because we could not make proper arrangements to keep them. BFI is keeping them properly. How are they keeping then? They are taking the prints from our country, the bad ones, and they're repairing them there. They are taking the prints to the film clinic and making them fresh. And they are digitising from that stage keeping a copy. But what is the digitisation format? And how long will that survive? Q: yes, they will probably survive and not become degraded, but it might not be readable in the future systems. A: that's exactly what I mean as well, going bad does not mean breaking apart or anything. You would not be able to access it any more. A print can be accessed for about 100 years, but you will not get a conventional projector. The market is such that if you have a projector like that where will you see the film? So, back to square one.

Q: after the transition to digital do you think the use of ambience in cinema has increased? A: no the ambience actually is coming closer to the audience. Earlier on an average if the audience would sit in the middle of the theatre my perspective of listening from the speakers would be a minimum of 50 feet. A sound would come from a distance of 50 feet

62 from a mono plane. So when Digital came at first you are doing mono. I myself did it for the films Paromitar Ek Din, Uttara etc. the distance remain the same for these but it was much clearer the clarity increased a lot. Even the amplifier systems and speaker systems changed a lot due to digital. But the moment the use of surroundsound started, I only started this in Goutam Ghosh's film , which is the first Dolby SR film. This is where surroundsound was used first. In fact we knew then what to do theoretically but the feelings changed once we did it. The learning process started once we did it. A lot of experiments happened. Over a period of 3 to 4 films we figured out what experiments are possible and so on, like it usually happens. So with surroundsound wherever one is sitting inside the hall, the distance between that person and the surround speaker is within 10 to 12 feet. What the audience would hear from 50 to 60 feet, those became surrounded within 15 feet distance. Q: yes. A: so this means that, that person became enclosed within that space or range. It means that you are within the space of cinema. Now after this happened certain things had to be taken care of. It shouldn't lead to irritation. Q: yes it shouldn't be a distraction. A: you it was primary to see to it that the heads do not turn away from the screen. If suddenly there is a noise of something falling and the audience turns around to see, then the effect of cinema is lost. Isn't it? So one has to know to use surround properly. Any particular sound like a bird sound used in the surround in a loop should not irritate the audience. Ambience should be soothing. So from here the real news of ambience started and I personally think that it was an aesthetic enrichment. Q: is the reason behind this only the recording format, the wider flexibility from 20 to 22 Khz or the separation of the different tracks and channels? A: no, you can think of it as a whole. Since we got a miniature representation of the kind of sound we hear in real life. Even though it wasn't so perfect. It is not possible to get such a perfection also. Because the moment it went to surround 7 to 8 speakers would play parallelly. Q: yes. A: that is not something, which is desired. There might be some elements here, which have to be spotted at specific places. That is not happening, something overall is happening. But still just to fulfil this need one ambience could be created, let that be of a jungle or of Riverside or of a home. So we got a chance of looking for reality in this. Q: which was not there in mono.

63 A: this wasn't possible in mono, because it concentrated mainly on dialogues and few effects and music. Because people here in West Bengal are still going to see the picture they don't go for the cinema. Q: but Satyajit Ray has used much ambience in many of his films, in mono only. How did that happen? A: yes, that happened. You have to first see what kind of film is being made, what is the intention of the film and who is making the film? If you happen to see a film by Tapan Sinha, he was originally a sound guy, so if you see his film Ek Doctor ki Maut I have used room tone in those times. So he told me that I have almost completed the final mixing. So I asked him back how. Then he said like I have used different tones for different rooms, reverberations are also there, somewhere high somewhere low according to the size of the room and whether it's a bathroom et cetera. This I felt was very good; this was the real use of sound.

Q: in which year was this film made? A: this was made a little later around 87 or 88. Q: was it done on magnetic? A: yes, totally. Q: and it was “rock 'n' roll”. A: yes fully. So we started enjoying this process. So after that I have gone on to make about hundred films for sure on surround, Dolby. And in the Mono era I have done films over 250. So at that time I was observing the changes, after ambience came I also started experimenting and now I know how much to go and how much not to. In fact I think now we work much more as a psychologist for keeping the audience glued to the film psychologically. This has happened and after a few films only I will try and use Atmos in one of my upcoming films. Q: Will it be in Bengali? A: yes. It will be up for the international market. It will be an honest effort. See with me “rock 'n' roll” started in Calcutta, I only started digital and use of Dolby too, so I wish and expect that even Atmos will be started by me. Q: but is there a theatre supporting Dolby Atmos in Calcutta? A: that is not required. If Atmos is not there, it'll play in 5.1. Atmos will be played wherever it is present. I'm sure Dolby authorities are already thinking about it, as long as there is no theatre the Atmos will have no effect. So definitely they will try to upgrade the theatres. Probably day before only there was a seminar here, a representative from

64 Dolby had come down, someone named Vijay Vatak. So this is around only and I’m hoping I'll get it in the coming three years. If not experiment what is the harm in using it, proper use, to understand the depth and other things. I never thought that this experience would happen in this life only! Whether I'm getting unknown that is later. Q: LG. How will you think while working in Atmos?

A: I think that the thought should be given right from the script level, because it is better if the visual elements are all coming from a single reference. So that, I can make use of it later on. Even if it is not there physically hope it comes out through the dialogues, then also it can be used. Now let us think that there is a road, and lined on both sides of it are 2 to 3 floored house sits a track shot. I have already given it a thought how to play around with Atmos here. Here, the use of ambience, the use of discrete sound, something that will be used as object, for instance from one of the third floor of the houses a Beethoven is faintly heard. It stays there only, my camera is moving towards it. It slowly fades out after that. Again probably in the front on the left-hand side something is happening. That too remains at the same spot. Again there is another ambience at a lower plane, which does not have a relation with the earlier one, but still it is entangled with that one. This is just like we will see or experience in real life. I would like to simulate that, provided that the film was already realistically thought of. These things should be incorporated in the script, is somehow one of the short is not there then I'll be in trouble. Q: okay. So the first film you did on surround was Dekha. When you first worked on surround, this extra space or extra speakers that came onto your hands, while previously in stereo you only had two speakers, which was a little more than mono in width, now it completely came in your hands. How did you handle the situation? A: see the word design in our country practically is happening post Dekha. Till this film there wasn't anything called a sound designer for a film. Whatever I am doing as a sound engineer, and Goutam Ghosh as a director, we are sitting and deciding which sound will stay in which track, this is going to be used this way according to the script. So that's how we will place these accordingly. So slowly this turned into design, I don't know whether it was correct or not. Because whatever I had heard about design earlier, it was sound job only in Hollywood, it wasn't a sound engineer's job. You must be knowing about it. Then after that it slowly merged, because more than 50% of the editors work came back to the sound theatre, starting from the dubbed match to the track playing which used to happen in editing earlier in the analog era shifted here. Here the

65 opportunity is much more, more than hundred tracks easily can be used altogether. This wasn't possible in the editing room. And it was quite handy as well, since these are the times of copy and paste. So what are the things that you need to know to become a designer, whatever I used to think, very truly and honestly speaking the idea which I had before was-the things that we couldn't do before the rock and roll time, it was possible to do these things, I'm visually watching and thinking at the same time, that okay the grass is moving in front, there is a water layer after that which doesn't move, then the third layer is a wave and moves. But in mono we couldn't do anything, all we could do is vary the levels. Now in case of surround, now it's 5.1 7.1 and even 9.1, and there is Atmos. So everything can be kept in space now, it has almost come to reality. Even then since Cinema should be subjective, and I will only decide what to make people hear. Just like we hear only what is necessary for us, the rest we generally discard Q: absolutely. A: that's how we make use of it; it's just similar it's just similar here as well. It's not only about reality but also beyond that, it's also important to think how that will happen. That doesn't have any definition as yet. No one will be able to say which is surreal. From time to time reality or surreality will be created. From the point of view of the psychology if we get more tools on hand, like Atmos where we'll have 64 speakers in different places, in a single perfect sized hall. Hall sizes are not the same everywhere, so the speakers will be placed according to that and it will be totally controlled by Dolby professionals who will place the speakers according to their design and then we can go ahead. Because whatever we think there, it is not possible to bring it to reality otherwise. Now this will decide how much of stock I will be using. A lot of people collect sound from different libraries available online like BBC, they collect sound and use it for the film. Now this can be any particular discrete sound. But say a film is happening in the village of Purulia, will it work if you use the sound of a swamp belonging to that place? Yes this is happening. I've seen this in case of a Hindi film - it was a serious film. It was a sequence where Netaji had gone in Peshawar, so designer plays the sound of a peacock calling there. Now, whether at all a peacock is available in that geography on not, is not important. Earlier the director editor and the recordist used to say everything together to me, and my job was to do the mixing that's it. Maximum I could suggest minor changes here and there. But now it's different. Now if you want to become a sound designer, the proper use of soft test-sound in cinema, which is actually the ambience if you look at it that way. I mean that which is not on the screen, sounds that are beyond the screen those are responsible for creating the drama actually. That is where the aesthetics is building

66 up, unless you force and create something according to the visuals. This is what I personally think, I might be wrong. This is what I felt while working. Q: okay. A: I believe you also believe in the same. What I can conclude from this is, if you don't know sociology, our history, the geography, if we don't understand the natural characteristic of a place, then it is not possible for us to create that. For instance I may not be able to go to Antarctica, it might be difficult for most people, but still I'll have two work for a film which has Antarctica. If I fail to imagine in that case, then it is not going to work out. Even if you want to create a make belief scenario, you will still have to imagine it. And to do that, you have to study the place. For instance one of my films, Krishnakanter Will, the text is written by Bankim. It is the story of a zamindar family. Now what will be the ambience of the night during that time? What sound can be there? It is almost hundred - hundred/hundred 50 years before I'm talking about. Now if I am not aware that in those times the Ranaar used to be active, the security guards in those times used to patrol in the night calling, "Hushiyaar" If I don't know these things I will not place them. These are not on the screen; you cannot see any of this. The space is only created once you place that sound, I have placed the sounds like the runners passing by, and sometime later a security guard passes by calling loudly, maybe he comes back after a little while, the scene was long basically. There was a sequence of theft, which I had contradicted, the place where the security guard calls for awareness that's where the theft happens. Everybody was sleeping in that area. So everyone who saw the film told me that the use was quite appropriate. Similarly I got a national award for a film, it was called Iti Srikanta. Kamallata's activity of picking up flowers in the morning, where Srikanta comes and watches her, that's where I have used the sound of peacocks. This is because it is directly related to Krishna and and directly related to Kamallata, and peacocks used to exist in this area almost about hundred years back. This is what I did and after the national award the jury members told me, that the award came to me because I had given this a thought. Because normally know one thinks about ambience. And I am very strict about it, if there is no ambience I will not be able to design properly. Q: I would like to know a little more elaborately about the idea you have about ambience. You were mentioning in points but you couldn't elaborate at that time; what is the exact role of ambience in cinema? A: what I think is that ambience takes the audience to that space, helps to express the time to them and it helps the audience to become one with the film.

67 Q: okay. A: now what ambience will have how will be the design, it doesn't generally happen with a single layer, a lot of elements will be included in that. Let's consider a jungle, where there is a little open space, there we add a little leaves rustling sound and we also had a few discrete birds in specific positions in fact. The mush of a day cricket was placed constantly. There might be another layer added to this. Now in the balance which ones will have more pressure and which ones will have less depends on the drama happening in that space. There is no specific measurement for this; it comes when the other related sounds like dialogues are added to it. Right? Q: yes. A: in today's time, imagine "dada ami bachte chai", the place where the character expresses this, it is difficult to say what the structure of that would've been now. Q: yes perhaps. A: in the film , the car passes by such mountainous region but there is no sound describing that part. What we would've done now I don't know, we might have placed something there. The students who are I teach, I ask them to do sound design for the Odessa steps in battleship Potemkin. So while doing that you will figure out what made the cutting points in the silent era and what it is now, so what advantages and disadvantages are following after that. Since that place is quite complex. Q: the discussion we were having about extra space, an important question in my research is that - this transition from mono to stereo to surround to Atmos - this step-by- step transition and the increasing of the sonic space - how is a sound designer or a sound practitioner handling this shift in their own work? What is their perception about this shift? A: the first thing is everyday human beings are increasing their demands. They're watching the advertisement of a product and then immediately going to buy it. "What if I change my TV from 29 inches to 36 inches?" Now there are wall mounted televisions and the span of the TVs are increasing slowly in homes. Even the wideness of the cinema halls is not increasing the wall-to-wall projection length is surely increasing. IMAX is here with a huge screen. So the technology is developing because competition has to be maintained with the television, since both the mediums are similar. One is a small format and the other is a big format. But now this divide no longer exists. With the coming of digital era, the same thing can be shown in both the places in a similar way. This is because HD transmission is happening now, television output is coming in 5.1, and it is coming in theatre also. Now what is the basic difference between these two? Watching a

68 film in a cinema hall and watching a film at home on a HDTV in 5.1, there is a constant attempt to make these two experiences similar. This is where the experiment is happening. So that's why we're doing 5.1 and 7.1. Then even 9.1 is happening. Now what will happen I don't know, what else will come. Only the underneath of the legs is leftover, probably sound will start coming from there as well. Q: LG. A: I think that the technology is progressing and a lot of new thinking is coming along. Now how much are we able to aesthetically improve, to make the use of it better in the film, that is where the doubt still lies. Are we making a film of that volume or quality? Whether we are working with subjects of depth, or just any other light subject, the gloss in the films have been increased along with attractions, everything is very cosmetic, this is what is happening. But I still find this space interesting while working. Basically the kind of world we belong to the thinking the thought process et cetera, probably I get a replication of that only in this working process. And whatever is happening we have the film in front. Now after the film has been shot the postproduction is happening then. Now if a film has to be made in surround or Atmos then it has to be kept in mind from the beginning, starting from the writing of the script. Otherwise it will not be feasible to design. Even if you impose it in postproduction the results will not make a huge difference. I'm sure there can be exceptions. But I think a decision prior to production and a thought process behind it before the shoot, will help develop the project in a better manner. And what I think is normal people do not have much ideas about the sound. They don't have an idea of how the sound comes; they think that everything is recorded by the camera. And people who go to watch a film in the theatre, they thanked the theatre after the show and they think that the projectionist who is running the film is turning on various speakers at different times and that is how the sound effects are coming. Yes this is what basically people imagine; I'm talking about West Bengal especially. A film was made here named , where what happened with a lot of Foley artists, but I'd never came to know why your Foley artist would go insane. I never understood the story. Whatever. A designer might go insane keeping in mind the thought process he has to go through, but the Foley artist is just creating the sound effects. So definitely that character went mad due to some reason, but people started thinking that before this film there was nothing called sound in cinema, this is the general idea of people now. I came to know about this from someone quite famous. So what does this imply, sound happens just like that. So generally when the audio design comes towards the end of the film production generally the budget is not there which is required to make

69 the Dolby 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos and not even the time that we would have to spend in the theatre. By theatre I mean a proper mixing theatre, these are not mixing theatre's. These are these are just studios for track laying and basic premix. And many studios like this have grown. They are trying to give an output which when displayed in a big theatre is either getting lost or playing at a higher volume or something else is happening. There is no proper alignment or equalisation. Whatever it may be, some are successful some are not. So I think most of the experiments are happening on a superficial level, they are missing out on depth in some cases. I recently did a film called Ajaana Bataash. It was an imaginary script, the central character being a woman who fails to say the perfect words. She fails to say what should be said, but she thinks that she has expressed what needs to be. This is her psychological problem. Her mind says that she has spoken. But her colleagues said that she hasn't said anything. So in the course of film we understand that surrealistically her speech gets lost, a breeze from nowhere comes and captures her speech, and that is carried towards the trees in the jungle and stored there. Okay, so how are you going to express this in the film? I had to create this space. So this is an ideal situation for surround. And again when the trees return her speech, which comes much later in the film, so the trees speak in multitude and none of this sense of humour is created thus. Now this wasn't possible in case of Mono. We could successfully create a relationship between her thought process and the words, whether it was successful or not that comes later but at least we could try. Q: yes. Did not the films made during mono era have such kind of thinking about how we are going to use wider spaces? A: to use that from one plane or one speakers are kind of delay was used, that was required to indicate that it was coming from a distance. The location could never be spotted, the reference could be there in the dialogues like left side or right side roads. During the Mono era, thinking was totally different. Nothing as such was thought of which would be difficult to create or show at a later stage. Especially if the work was regarding audio. Words getting lost, words getting stored, and returning all is in audio. All these three are concepts in audio, and you will have to project this. So you need to create this kind of a space. So for mono it will be a different thought process. Like Manik da created different plane's four different ghosts. He would've thought differently if he was making the same thing now. I really feel sad about the fact that we did not get Manik da in present times. Q: yes I think the same way as well.

70 A: for I did not even get Tapan da. What could he have done in this era of surround? I would really want to see that. Even Bergman. Kurosawa still tried to do something like this in his film, Dreams.

Q: okay, filmmakers like Wim Wenders, who are making films now in surround sound and 3-D, some of them are saying that they will make films only in 3-D. They wouldn't go to any other format - this is their medium. Now he has made films in mono as well. A: if you consider my case also, Wim Wenders started working much ahead of us, and he's still there. So during our time we saw this film's and then we started working. So we only are unable to go below surround now, I can do a mono mix any longer. Not that I cannot do it, but feels like it is almost no work. I can mix a two to three-hour long film in less than two hours now in mono. Even till two or three years back a lot of mono mixes happened in the theater below us. There I would have sat at 6 pm to start mixing and the film would be over by 10pm. Then the director would ask me if I had paid attention. I would ask him in return if he got what he desired. I have given certain inputs and there was nothing else we could do for this film. The work will happen on basis of what exists. Say, we also wouldn’t be working for much longer now; it is for obvious reasons. Because there will be a fall gradually in our aural sensitivity curve. My listening condition may not be as good as it is today. That will start decaying post the coming 10 years. Then I might start doing something else, something from the creative perspective only. I am not sure about what will happen. Q: have you ever thought about making a film? A: no, I wouldn’t say I didn’t think. After passing out from the institute everyone has a wish of making a film. So I had the same as well. But what I think is I won’t be derailed from this until I am satisfied. And I am not satisfied with my work till date. The film I work on, after two or three reels I feel there are so many mistakes that truly I can’t see it any longer. So I stop watching. If asked why I didn’t watch, I say that I have seen it so many times that I am not liking it anymore, and there are so many mistakes. I feel bad myself. So probably that’s the reason why I am still working.

Q: among the films you have done, which ones are your most favorites? One is Ek Doctor ki Maut. What are the others? A: and I like Antarjali Yatra quite a bit, I mean my work experience, not the content. Then later there is not much good work actually. One film experience, if you ask me from the point of view of my work, then there was a film called Mandya Meyer Upakkhyan.

71 Q: okay. A: I tried to do something for that film, on Buddha da’s request. We did the entire dubbing on the outdoor location. Q: ok. A: the whole film. I asked him if he was sure about it. Q: but why would the dubbing happen in the outdoor? A: I’ll tell you. Have you seen Mandya Meyer Upakkhyan? Q: no, I haven’t seen that. A: if you can, then watch it. The whole film’s sound is outdoor. The fields of Purulia, people calling each other from different directions – like this. Q: wasn’t it possible to do this in sync? A: we didn’t have cost to do it in sync, which was a factor. It’s not that it can’t be done but who will do that? Most of the people fail to understand the basic requirement. Communication never happens properly. Anyway so what happened for that film was the director said that most of the situations in the film were outdoors, so if we would dub all that then it will look artificial. I asked him if he was sure, and that I would go ahead if he was sure. So we went ahead. He had a house in Mallickpur near Sonarpur. It is in the village. So there was a huge lawn surrounding that house in the front and back as well. So we packed the whole workstation along with the monitors, and we dubbed most of it according to time slots i.e. the day portions in the day and night ones in the night. So we put up a tent and kept the front open and did dubbing. The dialogues inside the car were recorded by the keeping the recorder in the bonnet of the car, so when you see the film you will realize that the audio is different, it is not regular audio. Not the usual crispness that we get. But still there is a field, there’s open air. All you will get along with the dialogues, when the characters speak you will understand that it is under open sky, or it is inside a room. So inside the tent we arranged for another room, which was indoor, and the outside was outdoor, this is how it was done. The footsteps were also recorded there and also there was a portion where the pushing of a car had to be recorded, so it was more or less recorded that way. So you can call this an experiment. So I had fun doing that work. A lot of people said that the soundtrack might not work n all, but I told them that they wouldn’t have to think about that. I have done direct sound as well. So the live sounds that we had done, we never discarded all that. And this is controlled condition as well. Here I can increase or decrease the distance between the source and the microphone whenever I wish. But we didn’t have that facility in the village tent. Ultimately I did the mixing in Bombay, at Sunny, which was Dharmendra’s setup. Aloke

72 did the mixing along with me. So he had seen the tracks already and had called 5 to 6 people already. He asked them to come and see the tracks, how nicely they were done. This is a fact. So I have done enough experiment, I at least tried different kinds. Now whether they worked or not that’s a different context. I have bagged a couple of national awards, probably they might have understood why they were giving me. My first national award was for Uttara. Then Bhalo Theko, and then Enough of Silence. This was a strange film. And the last one was Iti Srikanta. So Enough of Silence was a silent film that was given to me, which was about a sound recordist who was trying to record contemporary everyday sounds. It’s a strange subject. So from zero the whole films audio was designed. The design almost got constructed on its own. I was thinking and adding something, the film happened like this only. It was mixed in Kolkata. So this is all more or less. I don’t know how much this will help you.

73 Biswadeep Chatterjee (2014)

Duration: 1:29:08 Name abbreviations: Biswadeep Chatterjee – B, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

Q: Before this particular phase of your work, you have also worked in magnetic era – for instance with nagra and magnetic mixing and started with magnetic media, isn’t it? B: yes, see our generation was a very interesting generation because when we came in, at that time this whole back into technology of opticals was kind of going. So we just caught the tail of that. I mean actually we didn’t work on those. But we just caught the tail and we kind of saw it. But the large part of it has been analog, magnetic, solid state, electronics, has been the large part of our generation. And then we saw the coming-in in the early 90’s, of the digital format. So as a generation I think we are very lucky. Because we have cut the optical sound, we have cut magnetic tapes. And we are now working on the workstation. So I think we are a very lucky bunch, we have seen that, we have heard that. And something’s just stay with you. And yeah, as a generation I think we are just the lucky bunch. Q: so in a generic way, what do you find different in terms of not only the technology itself but also technology that provides for certain scopes, tendencies to choose certain elements that you finally are getting to, from optical to magnetic to digital, format wise, technology wise or the media wise? B: you mean what I am finding different? Q: yes, different. B: ok. To start with see recording in India has always been film oriented. So our training has been in the film institute in Pune, where we trained in sound engineering but it was focused more for films. It was more film oriented. But we had our little moments of music recording, location recording for films, and the only non-film recording was mostly the music recordings, music and song recording. But that too in India has always been for film. I attribute this to our colonial past. Because of our colonial past, what is happened is we have evolved in cinema, almost at par with the West technologically. So whatever cameras we were using, whatever recorders we were using, whatever editing machines we were using has been very much at par with whatever they were doing in the west, in Europe and the U.S. But we did not evolve so much in television. Because of our late entry, we entered into television in the 70’s. Whereas America and the west, they were already in television in 40’s. And we did not have an independent music

74 industry as such of this magnitude. We do not have an independent music industry. Which again was there in America, which was there in the west. I mean in the 50’s they had radios in their cars, they had independent music block busters. But our musical entertainment has been solely cinema. And therefore our technology has mostly been concentrated around films. So what I found was, my interest, though I did the sound engineering course in pune - which involved location sound recording, which involved film post production, which involved music recording to a certain extent and film mixing - I found that we were geared more towards film post production. So what had happened was, when I came to Bombay, I saw most of the songs that were being recorded. I am talking about songs because a large part of my career has been song and music recording. So when I came to Bombay I saw even the songs that were being recorded were recorded on 35 mm. So there were these 4 tracks 6 tracks dubbers, which were locked with several of 4 track and 6 track dubbers to get a multi-track recording. Now in our generation I found it a little over the top and expensive and very elaborate to have this whole set up just because we were recording songs for film. And it was a very expensive format. Whereas for song and music recording in the west you had multi-track recorders like 8 track half inch recorders, like 16 track half inch recorders, 24 tracks two inch recorders. So it would be very logical perhaps even more economical to get a two inch 24-track recorder to record your songs. Q: hm. B: but since it was being done for film and everybody kind of thought that you know you always needed to record on film, so that when you are playing back and when sync was a huge issue. That will be go a little out of sync because if you are recording in any other format. Which was true. But what we did was we used to record and then subsequently as in when you know technology started opening up the government got a little friendlier vis-à-vis input in machinery. So one of the studios that I had set up I had got a 2 inch 24 track recorder with the obvious surround Av channel. Now there was this question of how do we sync it? Like if I am recording on a 2 inch 24 track and if I am mixing it down onto a 2 track and they go back on location, they picturise the song and then they come back and they find the whole thing going out sync. So then what we figured out was that the 2 inch 24 track had to be locked to a constant, to something, which was to a crystal source, so that the speed was constant. So that we do not have any variations. So then we locked it with the steady crystal source at that point was a United recorder. The united did not have any functions, because it was a video recorder. But I had a video recorder to which I locked my 2 inch 24 tracks so that I could get that stability, almost

75 like a crystal. So that’s how we recorded songs. Now that we figured was a cheaper way, quality wise it was much better, and it was not so elaborate because you’re playing 35 mm full coat tapes. And you are locking some 7-8 machines together, some of the studios had that 7-8 machines together and you’re multiplying your tracks, with four tracks into 4 dubbers or 6 dubbers, so that’s how they multiplied the tracks into 16 or 24 tracks. And that was a very elaborate one and that used up a lot of tapes. But the quality was very nice though, because the film dubber’s would move at 24 frames per second, which was almost 19IPS, Inches per second. Now the higher the tape speed was in recording, the better highs work. So we had an option on those multi-track recorders that were recording at higher speed or at standard speed. Like in the nagra. So you had 7 and ½ or you had 15 IPS, 15 inches per second. But then we had to strike a balance and you know economize on tapes, so more speed means more numbers of tapes you are using. So you had to be careful about how you kind of utilize that. But what did happen was we did our recordings like that and it took a while for people to understand that even though the studio was small, you are compensating the volume of the studio with the number of tracks. So that generation before us, unless they saw spaces they did not realize that you know, they thought we should have a huge space, we should have a lot of musicians together and that’s how you can get the whole quality. And we can get like power and volume. You know it should sound big. So one tried to convince them that, “Look you can do that to get multi-track recording.” So a large part of your time was trying to convert the then seniors into thinking that look multi-track can do this and these kind of processing can give you that sort of an impact that you are looking at and probably better. But subsequently the newer generation then started coming in and then they started adapting the new technology at that time. So that’s how we kind of started, that’s how our work flow then started being a little different, we had to adapt ourselves to the current ways of the industry. So if you had 24 tracks in your this thing, the need was for having an automation on your desk. So either what we used to do was we used to have like 2 or 3 guys sitting on the mixer and you know riding the faders at whichever point say the strings are coming here there is a run of the strings coming and you need to increase that and then bring it down again for the others guys to come in. Now this whole thing had to be choreographed physically between the music director, myself and the arrangers sitting over there, and that’s how we kind of would work on the thing. Also what was happening was later then I got automation for my work. That was a new concept. Like you could automate your faders, you could automate your EQ’s, you could automate your mutes. And all this I am talking about is the linear days, the analog linear

76 days. So that’s how we used to work. And when once the automation started coming in then it was a question of economics as well. I remember one music composer coming in and saying: “look if you can automate the mix then we can work faster.” I said on the contrary. Because what is happening is because you can automate the mixer, you are going to take more time. Because you will have 300 rehearsals, but you will have that one perfect take. So you will not let that go, so that’s how we started working and they started getting hooked on to this fact that you know you could go to every bar and every beat and work on the mix. So that came as a huge help to me. A lot of the then engineers, they started complaining with faders and you know you don’t get that feed and all that, I kind of attributed all that to mechanics, I mean, I would rather concentrate on the program, on the finesse of the program rather than the mechanics of the whole thing. So that was my point of view. Then subsequently digital started coming in, linear digital, tape-based digital. So the tape based digital started coming and then you know the cheaper digital model started coming and the people were not really very happy with it including myself. Which later I realized was not the fault of the digital recorder, but the ADDA conversion. So if you had cheap ADDA converters, then obviously the kind of sound that you are used to you is being compromised. Slowly they started developing on that. Now what was happening was we suddenly jumped into digital. Again comparing with the west they had a very linear growth in terms of you know first they went into than analog, then multi-track analog, then more number of tracks in analog and that’s how they were developing till they came to tape based digital. For us it was a sudden shift, while we were recording on 2 inch 24 tracks and all that, suddenly the machines like the A-DAT and the high 8, the modular tape machines started coming in. So, again we had to adapt to that, because that was proven to be the current rage and you know it was doing good things. It was easy to lock the musical instruments with them, so all that was happening. How we used to trigger from our recorder, the programs would then come to the studio to program, and we used to trigger them with MIDI. I used to have an SMPT to MIDI converter interphase. So my SIMPT that I would record on the tape would trigger the MIDI signal to the musicians and they would be hooked up with each other with MIDI clock, so that’s how we used to record and that was the way of recording. Then of course when the workstations came and the whole thing changed, the whole workflow changed. But today what I am seeing is we are all speaking the same language. Thanks to the workstations, thanks to the computers that we are working on. So everybody around the world is more or less working in the same way like we are. The way we make our sessions, I’ve had people coming from LA, coming from Europe and I

77 have also been in to those places and I have seen the way the people work, it’s not very different from us. Of course, I mean technologically we are almost at par with each other. They have the time and they have the budgets and they have a broader distribution, therefore they have all that. For us we have somehow kind of evolved and made ourselves, you know tailored our methods of working to our requirements and our industry outlines. So today I think we are speaking more or less same language. But there was a phase where it was distinctly different over here. Conceptually the song recording itself was very new and very different from what they had in the west. They had discontinued that, they had films like My Fair Lady and Sound of Music, you know they had musicals. So this whole synchronization thing, the whole playback thing, it was there. I mean it’s all there, if you’ve seen Singing in the rain and stuff. So we stretched that, we carried that and we are still carrying that with us. That’s something unique for us, we need a song and dance ritual in our films. So therefore because of the technology today and because our work culture has changed, our perception has changed, and I think we have evolved, we are coming out with fantastic quality, earlier it used to be an issue, “how can they get that quality and why can’t we get that quality.” But today I think we are generating some of the best tracks in the world. There are people who are coming here, I have recorded the strings section, I have recorded the violin section for people who wanted to take this music with them over there and produce the music further for example in London. They wanted a distinct Hollywood string section sound. So then a lot of crossover has started happening, a lot of interaction musically has started happening. So now we have opened up a lot. And today thanks to the, net thanks to broader networking, we are almost on the same page with people working all over the world. So earlier our only window to the outside world was our library and the journals that were subscribed in the libraries, when we were in film school. When we were in film school MIDI was still a theory. So we read about MIDI, but we got a chance to work on MIDI when we came into the industry. Q: how is it quality-wise? Some people are saying that there is a degradation of sound from the analog era to the digital era. B: no that is very subjective, I don’t see that. See what has happened is because of the digital I am getting some extremely clean of lows and I am getting extremely clean highs, which I could not get in analog. Analog gave me fantastic vocals, percussions, some light solo instruments, I love those on analog recordings, the violin section. So for me it was a combination of both these that you know created that whole sound. So we were so used to that kind of quality, you know we were so used to the analog type of

78 sound, that we perceived that as good quality I would say that. This was an alien quality so it was disturbing when you had something, which was reproducing such clean sound. So I am perceiving that as noise, or I am perceiving that as you know a drop in quality or a compromise. Which was not true. People are very happy with whatever is happening. The digital recording platform has evolved further. We higher sounding frequencies, we have higher the bitrates now. So that is not an issue anymore. However I do miss the analog mixer. A good high-end analog mixer in what I miss when I am recording. People have broken that down to channel stripes and they have made mic squeeze. They have made you know good analog compressors - big companies like SSL and MIEV. They have come out with these things where you could not, suppose you cannot today afford or they don’t even manufacture a large analog desk unless it’s special and made to order. By and large it’s these modules that you are buying and you’re lining them up and recording in them. So yes a very good quality mic and a very good quality analog compressor is very welcome. Because that stage is always going to be analog, the stage where you capture on mic and the stage where you listen. So I don’t think we are gonna go out of that for a long time. Q: how was it different texture-wise? Was magnetic media different from digital? Not only the texture, but the dynamic range or the signal to noise ratio and then, beyond that, the sonic texture that you capture. B: see the texture is what you have in your mind. I mean apart from the technologies that we used to work in those days, our perceptions are changing, I am a different person today. The stuff that I mixed ten years ago, will be mixed differently today because that is not a constant, we are changing every day. Our reproduction systems are changing, I mean our sound reproduction systems are changing, our speakers, our monitors, our home theaters, our home music systems, consumer music system they are all changing. So we are getting a new kind of sound. Q: hm. B: There are software’s and plug-ins, which are coming out, which are trying to simulate an analog you know sound, there are plug-ins which are trying to simulate certain microphone sounds. Since we have heard the analog sounds, since we have been there and done that, I think it still requires time to get to that level. That simulation is for me is still not up to the mark. Q: you said that the level was much better, of good quality.

79 B: no I am talking about the simulation, I am talking about the plug-in that I’m trying to simulate, like your voice. Now if he can simulate your voice, since I have heard your voice, Q: yes. B: you know if he is mimicking your voice it’s very close to how you are talking. But it’s still not you for me, because I’ve heard you. I have heard Kishore Kumar, but if somebody is going to sing like Kishore Kumar, he is probably mimicking him well. But then I am still not getting that Kishore Kumar. That is irrespective of god or of bad quality it’s just that it’s not the same. That all I’m saying. But I have no regrets, I am liking certain situations where you try and simulate that kind of recording, that kind of reverb, that kind of times in the films that you are working on when you do want to create a situation where it’s a 60’s recording or a 60’s scene happening, then you are trying to simulate that with plug-ins and the kind of mixers that you used to use in those days. So when it comes to period setting in a film that gives me a chance to kind of work on that kind of sound. Q: so the simulation shows that there is a need or people are missing something. Like you said, you miss the analog mixer. What is that particular element that you miss? B: see I have worked in that new digital mixers that have come out, I have worked with them, I’ve recorded with them, and I’m talking about highend digital mixers. I was missing that warmth, I was missing the thickness that I would get in an analog mixer. It’s not for tape mind you, it’s not the tape that I am talking about. It’s the electronics that I am talking about, that is what I was missing, that is what I am missing today. So it is that warmth, I think it is that punch. It is very difficult even technically to describe what I am missing. Q: ok. B: because that kind of punch that I would have when somebody’s singing or when somebody’s playing a musical instrument, when I am using a digital mixer I am not getting that kind of a result. Probably because the mic pre-s were not adequate, or the electronics are different. But I am still missing that very frankly. But that is only to capture on tape, once I have captured on tape, once I have recorded it - we say still capture on tape though we are recording it digitally. But once I have done that, then I don’t have an issue, then the final mix I know that I have got that. So for the final mix I don’t need that mixer then. I can work within my workstation. There are certain things that you miss sometimes also, yes it is the reverb in it, the signal processor. There are some wonderful plug-ins that have come out, which give you very good reverbs and very

80 good delays. But I still miss a lexican or a TC electronics reverb, N 5000 or I would love to have a B, the reverb unit over here. So these are the some of the things that you do in this. But you just have to work your way a little harder to try and achieve that, because you have that sound in your mind, so it is not impossible on this, it’s just that there are so many probabilities that you can definitely come out with a sound that you are wanting. Anyway it’s a question of economics, so if I do buy those elements, my client will not necessarily pay me extra. Q: hm. So it’s not necessarily an upgrade or a qualitative shift from magnetic to digital, just the platform got changed. Question would be whether it got better or it got different. Do you think it’s got better or it got only different? B: better is very subjective, different is a safe word I would say. See it’s different, I mean if you hearing a Frank Sinatra, if you are hearing a Mohammad Rafi, it’s very different from subsequently you know what you hear in terms of today’s recordings. So it’s different, even the compositions are different. Even there is a melodic structure as it was in the 60’s and the 70’s, so that whole melodic structure sounds a little different, a little old. That had its beauty, but today if I were to compose a song that you know composing a style that was there in the 60’s and the 70’s, it would have that very typical 60’s or 70’s kind of a flavor. I mean, it would be different, today - the compositions are different. The way they think is different. The way the younger generation thinks is different. They think non-linear. Q: but very technically speaking, analog opticals would have 78db headroom, while magnetic recording has higher headroom, depending on the material itself, may be 90. B: optical had about 30db headroom. Q: yes, practically speaking. So increasing in headroom, in digital you have 120db headroom. B: you are talking about dynamic range? Q: yes, dynamic range. So, this shift in dynamic range is getting clearly better. B: yes Q: this dynamic range and wider headroom are not yet something betterment? B: of course it is. Q: But how is it reflected in the work? How is it reflected in the kind of recording produced in these eras? B: you know when I was new in Bombay, when they were recording a song, I used to wonder why the base guitar is just standing over there. Because ultimately in the mix you can’t hear the base guitar. There was so much put inside that, so there was no

81 proper base. I mean at large part of that I would blame the arrangement, they had the bassist standing over there, but the bassist hardly, you know you could hardly hear the guy. What we were trying to do was we were trying to squeeze everything within that, in 40db dynamic range in optical. So what was happening is the arrangement became more elaborate. You know the arrangements started getting more complex. But technically we were still there. We had not evolved technically, so meanwhile many instruments were coming in. If you hear the 50’s and 60’s recordings, Indian recordings whether it’s regional or whether it’s Hindi cinema whatever. I found those were very clean very good recordings. I found those ones to be really nice. Why because it was minimalistic in terms of arrangement. One tabla, one dholak, one mukar, or even if it is a slightly western kind of an arrangement it was simplistic. It had a double bass, it had some clarinets, it had wind, it had little strings, it had a chamber kind of a feel. It had the voice so, that was not very difficult to fit into that whole 40db dynamics range. But in the 70’s and 80’s personally I found the quality of recordings started getting poorer. You know because what was happening was a lot of other instruments started coming in, the keyboards came in, the various of tones key boards came in, people wanted to have more guitars, you know they wanted to imbibe all in their recordings in our Hindi films you know they wanted the rock guitar, they wanted drums, they wanted Latin percussions. So our Bollywood was a combination, was a hotchpotch, was a combination of Latino music, our own tabla, dholak and you know Indian music, western melodies and harmonies. So it started and we started evolving as a genre which I mean people say Bollywood, but we started evolving as a genre without realizing it, because it was more populist. So the technology did not permit, you know people were still coping with how to arrange all that and yet you know be heard. So when magnetic came and when the dynamic range started getting better then we started hearing things. In the music industry we could hear the music in cassettes. So we could hear a lot many stuff in our tape recorders. But then again in the film we couldn’t hear that because in film it was one mono speaker and it was still that 30db dynamic range. So that became another issue. So when we were recording for non-film stuff, we were usually more happy with that, because we knew that we could hear all that being reproduced. But the moment it went to film, again we went into a depression because you know all that got squashed and the way it was you know people tried to give a very high compression and squeeze all that into a narrow dynamic range. Sometimes more often than not it would distort. And suddenly that distortion became distorted violin, distorted percussions – people started liking that you know, that suddenly became the sound. And which we as a younger generation in the

82 80’s were like bewildered with you know. I have had an instance where the composer said, like from the popular studios in those days, “no I want strings sounding like that.” So I would say that, “but those are distorted.” He said, “I want that sound, distorted or not.” Fortunately our generation, when we came in and the composers and the creators of our generation also started coming in, then the sound started changing and we started evolving. But thanks to the dynamic range getting bigger we started getting ya know more adventurous with our arrangements. We started hearing things. And then of course when Dolby stepped in then we were more than happy because that 30db fatwa was gone. So now we had unlimited dynamic range. So we could practically have anything. Then we had to be careful because how you would ya know decorate your track, and arrange it within the right proportions, so that it is heard like it should be. Q: you said that the digital technology offered extreme low and extreme high. So do you find the recordings produced are doing justice to the headroom available within that wider range? B: see what has now happened is our hearing range between 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz is covered. I have nothing to complain about. Earlier it was not matching. I mean I couldn’t hear anything in the opticals ya know, I could hardly hear anything below 50-60 hertz. And it would taper down. And a similar thing went into the highs. So I missed those highs, I missed the clean sound that we hear. For me what I hear is what I want to record. I mean it should all be there, because I have a hearing range of this frequency, of course. I mean theoretically its 20-20 but still our hearing is far superior to what was being available on the analog tape. So the digital coming over there has fulfilled that. You know that constant hunger of wanting to hear certain frequencies? Q: hm. B: so people started exploring, people started experimenting. People started making music with extreme lows and subs and stuff like that. Interestingly what used to happen was since we had such a narrow dynamic range, people didn’t know that they actually missed that depth and missed the low. So they would try and compensate that with volume. So the moment you walked into a film studio, which was blaring a Hindi film song you had to run out because it was so loud. People thought that if you played loud it would sound like full. But that was not it because when you have a whole frequency range from your good lows to your highs you don’t have to hear that loud. Because you are getting everything, it’s a balanced track. Then you would rather say that please tone down. Even today, some of the guys who are used to mixing in the analog, whenever there’s a song, they crank up the volume. And I have seen people getting so

83 uncomfortable that they walk out during a song. Because they are going with that mindset, they are trying to pack everything in so that it plays at a decent volume outside. But you don’t have to do that really anymore. Because you are producing the lowest frequencies, you are producing the highest frequencies. So I am getting a full track, so I’m happy with 85 to 90 decibel volume, I don’t have to crank it up to 100- 120db to still try n feel that power. So with digital what is happening is because the entire range is being reproduced I am getting a complete sound spectrum in my ears. Q: when we shift our discussion from music recording to other kinds of recordings - film recordings, like voice, sync effects, and ambience, do you think that you can draw a parallel between music recording and the other recordings? Did they also develop from optical? B: see music is much more complex in terms of frequencies, because what does happen is when I calibrate my speakers, I listen to a song ya know, because it produces that low frequency. A dialogue probably would not produce that low, or it would not produce that amount of high that you are looking at. So a dialogue has its very small narrow range. And similarly for certain effects. And ultimately from music when I shifted to sound design – I still mix my songs, I still do my music – the whole sound design to me is like a composition. It is not just laying effects tracks. I have dialogues, I have Foley, I have non-sync effects, and the way I arrange my tracks. I don’t know it somehow comes to me that my whole effects track arrangement layout is also very like music. The effects tracks for me, the ambience tracks, and the atmospheric sounds are like the pad-tracks. Then you have your dynamics, you have certain things moving, you create those dynamics with all the other effects that are coming in. Q: what does “pad-track” mean? B: like in songs you have a harmonic pad, for example. Q: ok. B: so you have these pad-tracks, which are giving you like a fill, like a cameraman says fill lighting. So this is kind of giving you that fill. So my atmospheric sound is more or less like that. So when we’re talking, when we are outside, there is an atmospheric sound. And that atmospheric sound changes with the location in the film. So you are trying to create that. And the rest actually depends on the film, on the director. So now if he gives me that space then there’s a lot we can do. Q: yeah. When you look back at the films produced during optical era, magnetic era and digital era, do you think that this use of atmospheric tracks like ambience - the use of

84 ambience, was more or less homogenized or has it evolved itself following the technological trajectory? B: see again coming back to our dynamic range and our complete reproduction these days, I’ll call that complete reproduction because we hear everything today. So our films sound design has become naturally much more complex. I can hear virtually everything in that. It’s like our brain, it’s like how I perceive. Like both of us are sitting and talking, now there’s an air conditioner sound happening, there’s somebody fidgeting in the background and there’s somebody clicking on the mouse, there’s a distant noise in the corridor that is happening. But our mind is the mixer. So what is happening is it’s giving a lot more focus on our dialogue at the moment. And subduing every other effect and that is what you’re trying to simulate artificially on screen. Unless somebody bangs open the door, that’s when you stop your conversation and you look around. In film if you’re doing it, it is mostly intentional, to take your attention somewhere else. So you’ll have to be careful, like you don’t bring up the other sounds that it tries and interferes with the dialogue, which at that moment is information. Or you don’t have a song and a dialogue track playing at the same time - because you don’t know what to concentrate on. Should I concentrate on the song or should I concentrate on the dialogue? I should not have a popular song or a popular piece of music playing over there, behind a particular scene. Because that piece itself will be a distraction. Like you cannot have a Godfather piece playing behind. You cannot be that ignorant and just put a Godfather’s theme behind a particular scene. Because as an audience I’ll wonder why Godfather has suddenly come in. Then you are trying to find a connection between what you are watching on screen and Godfather. Is the director trying to make a statement? So these are some of the things. For example, in one of the student exercises, the guy decided to put one song in the film. He did not know it was Hotel California. So I asked him, ‘Is there any reason why you put Hotel California? Because that’s an iconic song, I mean it’s a cult thing now a days.’ He had no clue that it was a popular song. He was not exposed to that kind of music. But then suddenly attention shifted from his film and went into the song. So how you arrange and what you arrange, first of all depends on the kind of film you are working on. And how you will treat that particular thing. So I think we are getting more complex in India as well. Our whole song and dance ritual is slightly, becoming minimalistic. A lot of alternative kind of filmmaking is happening, a lot of different kind of cinema is happening. And we are slowly getting opportunities to, ya know, show our effects, show dialogues ya know. Putting elements into the film, people are becoming much more perceptive. The younger generation has understood, they know what good

85 sound is, they know what good sound design is. They know what good camera work is, they know what a good film is. So you can’t fool them. Q: between 60’s and the late 90’s most of the films, generally speaking, almost didn’t use any ambience. But post-2000 we find in the popular mainstream context, more and more films are coming up with a lot more elaborate use of ambience. B: In mainstream I think one of the best sound design I have seen is in the film called Sholay. Watch that film over and over again. There’s a lot of intelligent sound design that has gone into that film. Q: But Sholay was an exception and not many films followed the path of Sholay. Sholay was specially done and with a particular sensibility. B: what I’m trying to say is that there were films that had this thing. Everybody sat up and noticed Sholay. But it was never that the ambience track was not there, the ambience track was there. There were ambience tracks, there was this night cricket, there were the birds, and all those things were there. It’s just that we didn’t know they were there. You know when people watched the film, they only knew the and the actress. They didn’t know that there’s a whole industry behind that. They didn’t know that there was a director to start with, let alone the technicians. They went and saw . Q: it was from a mono source we were listening, so very music-oriented storytelling was happening at that time. B: see that entirely depends on design. You know there had been cases where like the music is probably doing better justice, and there have been a lot of cases where I’ve had to remove all the music. Because it was distracting, that’s is entirely dependent on the film, on the story, on the situation in the film. Q: but with the invention of this multi-channel surround sound and all these things, people have started using more ambiences. B: see let me tell you one thing, a mix for me is irrespective of whether it is mono, stereo or in surround. When I am mixing a film or a song, I want to hear something. I want to hear everything in the right proportion. It does not matter very frankly whether the source is a mono or a stereo or a surround. The mix should not be compromised or the mix should not be different. The soul of the mix cannot be different. If you’re mixing a song you cannot treat it differently because it is surround. I don’t want people to sit there and look sideways and do this because ya know then it gets into a gimmicky space. I want to feel. My whole thing is that if I am hearing it in mono I have a certain perception. It’s a good mix. But if I’m hearing it in stereo I’ll get a little more width. If

86 I’m hearing it in surround then I should still be concentrating on the song. I will feel a little more relaxed. Like instead of sitting in a tight chair I’ll spread out a little and sit down. But I will not be distracted, I should not be distracted by a surround mix. Q: here I would like to underscore what you said, to get relaxed. What do you mean by that? B: no relaxed in the sense I’m talking about basically space. Or I’m talking about a figure of speech that you’re going to spread out a little. And you’ll hear it in the larger perspective. It’s like you have a small thing that you’re looking through, but suddenly if you open the curtain and you have this large window, which is giving you the whole view you will perceive that differently. As opposed to you know peep into the whole scenario. So if somebody draws the curtains and opens the windows out to you, you will not try too hard to concentrate on what you’re looking at, what you’re listening to. It’ll all come to you. So that mix of yours, when I’m playing it off a telephone, today the phone is a mono source, so if I’m playing it off this I should be able to hear a correct mix inside my telephone, when I’m watching a YouTube video or watching some kind of a thing. Then when I’m hearing a song or when I’m watching a film on this I should get a decent sound on this. But when I’m listening to this I’m not expecting, because I’m just taking information and I’m looking at somebody’s video or somebody’s music video through a small screen, which has its small source. But the mxi is not compromised. A good mix, whether you’re listening to it on your phone or in your music system or in your home theater or in your public theater, the mix should not change culturally. That’s what I mean. Q: so two questions come up with this. One is, as you mentioned a bit about the mono, stereo or surround spreading out of space, how do you see yourself adapting to that expanded space, how do you design? Did you shift your work method to fill up those spaces? B: see because our hearing is 360 degrees, our hearing is three-dimensional. So when I’m having a situation where I’m able to reproduce the sound like that then naturally I will feel much more liberated rather. But you should be careful as to what you’re putting in your surrounds. Like I was trying to tell you that there are certain sounds, which are happening behind me when I’m talking to you. But I’m not turning around every time. Why would I turn around? If it is bothering me I’ll turn around, if it is getting louder and attracting my attention I will. If suddenly somebody calls me from behind I will turn around. So I have certain things that I don’t like to put in surround. I don’t like to put dialogues in surround. That is a huge distraction, I don’t want people to turn around and

87 say, “oh, where is that coming from?’ Like if somebody is shouting at me, if somebody is calling out and if the character is behind the camera, I don’t want the voice also to come from behind the camera saying “here I am”. Then everybody turns around to see, that’s a huge distraction. I would rather diffuse that quality and make it sound more roomy, but the source will be from the front. So that will not take away my this thing. So you have to be very careful as to how you design your tracks. Earlier when stereo had happened people would put the tabla on one side, put the voice on one side. They would have drums on one side and Beatles would have voice on the other side. They were experimenting with the new format. So it was very interesting. Like ya know “look, here is this and here is that.” so it was interesting. So you had the tabla playing here and you had the voice singing here and it was stereo. But today I think we can’t really do that. It seems very basic, or it will seem almost juvenile if we start with that sort of a thing. But that did happen with the surround, when the surround came in. they did out in a lot of information, I have done it and I have realized how miserable it sounds. So it is that sense of balance and that sense of proportion that you should know where to curb. You should know where to balance it right. So that, I am not distracted from the film - from the story. I cannot have certain elements in the surround, which will keep disturbing me over there. So you’ll have to be very careful. If it’s an intense scene I cannot have something happening over there, some noise happening over there, which will disturb me. Yet if I’m trying to create some dynamic situation like a movement, or like an animal which has suddenly scurried away, or like if I enter a church or I enter a large building, I can have a pigeon flying by and going over there. Now that almost makes me sense that musty smell, it almost gives me that whole realistic thing about when I enter, it kind of becomes dramatic at that point. You’re giving space. You’re establishing the fact that there are pigeons in here. You’re establishing a set in audio. Q: was that possible in stereo? B: it was possible. It was possible irrespective again of mono. You could have that in mono. Q: but then the pigeon would be in the center only, or maximum on the two sides. B: yeah, you process it that way. If I had a pigeon flying, suppose that’s a room which has RT of 5 seconds, and if I give that pigeon an RT of 5 seconds I can give that illusion that it is distant, it is in that room. As opposed to the source, which is the dialogue, which is in the foreground. I can create that in mono as well, of course I can. Q: but then what are those extra channels doing here?

88 B: they are distributing the sound like it should in a theater. The very reason why people started coming back to the theater, I think, is because of surround sound. Now I would love it. Of course it will be a very good experience if the jet plane flies over my head and goes away. I mixed the first Hindi film, to be mixed in native Dolby Atmos, the new format. It was Madras Café. It provided me that I could play around with my soundscape. I did have helicopters flying over my head, speakers on top and we had speakers around. So I did have helicopters blaring and exiting. All of them are flying above. When an explosion is happening I did have a debris fall from top all around me. I did move when the camera showed a Bazooka being shot, or a rocket launcher being shot – did have that impact of the guy falling. So that film provided me that scope to do that. Q: what do you think as a sound designer this particular practice will do to the audience? B: They are very comfortable with it. But again I’m saying you have to be very discreet. You know if people say that it’s great camera work or it’s great sound work then you’ve lost him. You know it’s like you walk into a restaurant, you shouldn’t remember the waiter’s face. You should remember the service. Q: still when you are doing these works, you are designing and you are mixing, you are always thinking of the audience who are going to watch the film. B: I think of myself first. I am the first audience. If I don’t like it chances are you will not. You will see that in your case also. If there is something that you like chances are there that others will like it. If I myself don’t like what I’m doing chances are that the others will not like that. That goes for a guy who is making a film also, that goes for a guy who is creating anything. Because what is happening is if I’m watching a film, and I’m not liking what I’ve done then there are a lot of people who will understand that ok it’s not working. You have tried something and it’s not working. So I have to be happy first, I have to understand first. I should not turn around and do this when I’m watching a film. Q: I am basically trying to understand what does this particular aspect of surround do to the audience, to his or her perception or experience. What does it do compared to mono or stereo? Is it something enveloping his or her senses or something more? You said that, “we feel relaxed”, I would like to explore that statement. Why do you think that way? B: why did we evolve from black and white to color? Black and white had its space. We saw those films. People were happy seeing those films. Those were wonderful films in black and white whether it was Satyajit Ray, whether it was Ghatak, whether it was Guru Dutt, whether it was Raj Kapoor, they were black and white films. And they were

89 entertainers. People loved it, people danced, people sang. Why was there a need to evolve out of that? There wasn’t a need to evolve. It was a great thing when you could see color. It was a great thing when you saw the sky was blue and the heroine is wearing red and the hero is wearing blue, whatever. So when I’m looking at color, when I’m looking at all that, it is a feast to my eyes. It’s something, which I have not experienced in film. Why am I changing my “dubba” television to an LED or n LCD? Why have we evolved to HD, high definition? See slowly what is happening is when this change in technology visually is happening, audio wise also. Ya know we are at 70mm picture, why? You could watch on a normal standard format. But why was this need for Panavision? Why was this need for a broader this thing? That your horizons have spread out, your perception is opening up. Same goes for sound. So when I am having such large canvas in front of me, how can I not complement it with sound? Q: ok. B: so it was only natural. Even sound was kind of spread, there was this need. You had a huge screen, you had 70mm but you had that one mono source. Q: do you think that psychologically it is contributing to the comfort of the audience, a sense of comfort in the experience? B: we still have house fulls today. Q: if somebody has seen the film in surround sound that means when they were made to watch a film in mono they might find it very inferior as an experience. B: Yes it will. But what happens is you are conditioning yourself. Your mind is conditioning. When I am watching a film like it should be watched, if I’m sitting in a theater that is my ultimate satisfaction. I have not been able to see Gravity, because I was busy in a project. I would love to see Gravity sitting in Dolby Atmos and perceiving that whole experience. Tomorrow Gravity will come on television. I will listen to it in my headphones. But I will miss that experience. I will get my information, I do get my information in my phone. I do see a few clips, I do see a few films on this. I do hear a few songs people mail me on this. But definitely it’s not going to be, because my mind is conditioned. So I know what was the information, what was the intention. But if you tell me that, “no you have to judge the quality out of this and then tell me”, to an extent I can do that. But it won’t be the ideal way. Here my quality judgment would be, “look in this limited source I can hear precisely everything and in the right proportion. But this would not be an ideal way of watching”. Somebody said, “Oh you can download the film and watch it on your phone or your computer.” You are not going to be satisfied. Of course there’s this whole other thing about taking your family out and together watching

90 a film n all that. That’s another thing. But perception vis-à-vis cinema for an audience, if you ask anybody, “did you enjoy the film in the theater or did you enjoy the film on television?” he is going to say theater. 90% of the chances are he will say, “I enjoyed it in the theater.” So there’s no discomfort factor over there for the audience. Discomfort happens when it’s a bad film, if it’s a badly made film, which includes all the faculties of filmmaking. That is where discomfort happens. Then they feel deprived. Q: in Europe I see that more and more people are watching films, experiencing films on headphones and smaller devices like mobile phones, iPads, and iPods, iPod touch. But in India we have so many mobile devices and people are using them for communication – I think at one point of time Indian audience will turn to smaller devices too. B: what do you mean one point of time, they already have. Q: yes, they have. So do the sound designers think of this particular digital realm of watching or experiencing films on smaller devices? And if they are aware of that, do they think their design also need to cater to that end? B: when I am mixing a film I am mixing with an ideal theater in mind, and my mix should have an ideal balance vis-à-vis a real theater. Q: hm. B: if that is right, you play it on your phone you hear it on television you hear it everywhere, it sound more or less the same. There will be certain losses for example, in broadcast you have a little losses in the highs and stuff. But by and large culturally it will not sound very different. If they have provided with all these facilities, they have also provided you with volume and tone control. So if you are watching that film in your living room or if you are listening to that song in your living room, and you are equalizing your amplifiers as per your taste, so you have that facility, you have that flexibility of going and increasing the highs or reducing the lows vis-à-vis your room or vis-à-vis your listening environment. It could be your car, it could be your room, it could be your computer, and it could be your headphones. You are setting it as per your requirement. Q: do you calibrate? B: you calibrate also as per your requirement. Q: coming back to use of ambience in films, in your opinion, what does it do to the film soundtrack? If ambience is used or not used, will that make a difference? B: It’ll make a huge difference because there will suddenly not be one soundtrack. You will miss something in the whole film, you will need an ambient track. When we are talking, when we are moving around, have you ever been to a very quiet place - like an anechoic chamber? I have not been in an anechoid chamber but I have been to a very

91 quiet place. You know what happens over there? You tend to lose your balance and you tend to fall down. Why? Because there’s no ambience, there’s no point of reference. When I’m sitting and talking to you this room has got one particular treatment. When I step out into the corridor there is another kind of a treatment over there. So when you are closing your eyes your space is being defined by your hearing. You are defining your space. Your mind is getting conditioned. You walk into a church and a blind man can tell you that this is a very large area because of your delayed reflections of your voice. When you are stuck in a very tight closet for example, somebody locks you up in the closet you have a different response. Somebody locks you in a bathroom, you will have a different response. So your point of reference is the ambience around you. You are simulating that. You are artificially trying to create that ambience. There is no silence. Even in the film when you are creating a silence I mean there’s something, there’s some element that you’re putting over there which is being perceived as silence. It just could be when you are walking into a hollow cave. It can just be a water drop somewhere. Now that water drop will draw your attention. It will give you that feeling of absolute silence, but it’s not really silence. You have a slight wind blowing in that tunnel. All your relative sounds are lower. That way you can create an illusion of silence, it’s never really silent. When you are sitting and watching a film in the theater there is almost a 35db noise happening all around, so it’s never really silent. But your mind tells you. When everybody is watching a film and in spellbound silence, there are other sounds happening everywhere. But your mind is now focused on that sequence of that particular film. Any moment this thing can appear, any moment the killer can come out. Any moment the gunshot can happen. It’s psychoacoustics. It’s your mind playing tricks. So when you are creating an ambient track it depends on what kind of ambience you are creating. Is there scope for stylization? Is it giving you a chance to stylize certain things? Q: in recent films we hear more ambience - it’s a very unquestionable thing that in recent films we hear more ambience. There might be reasons as to why people are using more ambience, but I would like to ask you whether you find it giving “relaxation”. So, do you think that with the wide range of ambience, audience feel more relaxed? B: I am not saying that. I am absolutely not saying that. Q: ok. B: it’s like from an economy class you’re sitting in first class. But you’re travelling on the same flight. So you are just having a comfortable journey. That’s all I am saying. And ambience in particular has nothing to do with this. It is the entire soundscape, or the entire film experience. We being sound professionals will always you know focus on the

92 sound elements. We will always try and read in between the lines. But for a regular guy who is watching a film he is perceiving it as a film. Even when I am watching a film ya know I just want to go and watch the film, I just want to see the film, I don’t want to go and see sound, I don’t want to go and see camera. I want to go and see the film first. When I am reading a book I am not looking at his style of writing, I am first of all reading the content in it. So I am going to see the content. And how best can you make it soothing for me. Ya know how you can make it a very good experience for me. Q: ok. B: it could be soothing, it could be a complete experience. That would be a more right way of putting it. How could I find a complete experience? I can find good camera, good acting, good direction. If I’m watching a film I want a good story to start with, everything else will fall in place. Q: now a lot of people are redoing sync sound. B: yeah. Q: so do you think that sync sound is changing the sound design? You were doing firstly dubbing in the films, now you are doing the design very differently; so how do you see sync sound? B: see the kind of sound that I get in sync sound it’s very difficult to recreate that in dubbing. Thanks to sync sound ya know, I am getting natural good sound. Just the way it should sound, I am getting a very realistic sound. I am getting rains ya know, I am getting texture, which, if I were to create in dubbing, will be very difficult. Though we have to do it, ya know sync sound films also have to be dubbed. But I have matched dialogues, I have matched situations seamlessly. When you are dubbing you have to be very careful. If you are dubbing a character, and why do they say that it is sounding artificial? It is sounding artificial because if you are not dubbing the person in the right way it will be artificial. It will sound artificial. So when there is a situation when you are sitting on the platform in a railway station and you are talking to somebody next to you, how would you talk? When you are dubbing it this is the way we are going to talk, this is the way we are going to communicate. But when you realize that there is a whole load of activity happening behind you – there’s a locomotive, which is creating noise behind you, there are coolies shouting, there are people running around – then what happens is you will automatically raise your pitch, so that you will want to hear yourself above the din. So you have to dub like that. You have to make sure that you are taking your environment into consideration when you are doing a dub. Otherwise it is going to sound

93 very fake. Because then I have to reduce everything else to accommodate you. Why does that “Chanachur wala” sound like that? Q: he has to be heard. B: when he is selling his “Sing Dana or chanachur” (peanuts) you are putting filter on his voice. Because if he has to raise his volume above what is happening, which is easily 70- 75 decibels of sound in a railway station, you will lose his voice in two hours. So he has devised a plan where he has filtered his own voice. And it’s cutting through the dim. So you have rolled off one particular frequency and you are boosting one particular frequency, so that in that whole low mid heavy environment this high frequency is piercing and you are turning around to look at it. You are hearing him. So you have to create that in dubbing, which is hard work. It’s not impossible but its hard work and it can be done. But still I mean the kind of the natural thing that you get in sync sound is definitely far better than to be able to recreate. Because of you have to recreate like that it is possible in dubbing, but it will take you much much longer. Two weeks of dubbing shift is not enough for that. But sync sound definitely and it captures the location, and it captures the way you would talk in that location, and it’s very difficult for many actors to recreate that thing. Many of the actors don’t even understand pitch. So if you are telling them to speak in high pitch, he shouts! He thinks it is volume. Q: how much information do you keep in your design when the sync soundtracks are coming in? Do you clean the noise or you would like to prefer to keep a certain amount of ambient noises in the voice? B: it’s very important to record room tone at the end of the day in the particular location. That room tone is very important for all of us. I have to clean the sound to a certain extent because there is information is the dialogue that should not get compromised. So your dialogue level should be above your existing noise level. So it’s very important that you have your dialogues clean in order to be heard basically. So I prefer to clean my dialogues as much as possible and I always fall back on the room tone and the subsequent sounds that we kind of layer. So it has to stand above all that. Q: so if it’s an outdoor sequence, then the room tone will not be there. But there will be – B: you are talking about ambience. Your room tone becomes your street tone. LG Q: yeah. So you’d like to keep that room tone? B: You’ll have to. Q: even after cleaning the voice?

94 B: you have to because again that’s defining your space. You are shooting next to a seashore. You will have that sea sound, you cannot not have that sea sound. Q: but then again you add ambience. Why do you do that? B: because what is happening is on location when you are shooting, you are shooting in one focused area in that entire vast space. So when you are capturing the dialogue sync sound is basically capturing the sync elements in the film. The walk, the action and the dialogues. So if I’m capturing a sound I have to create a texture, I have to create other sounds as well. I have to create other layers as well in order to make it sound complete. So that particular area may not have that particular sound. I may require a huge sea wave. At that moment it is not there, but then I have to give that impression, so I have to create a sea wave. And just to give it a little feel I want to have a distant ship horn. I want to have a few gulls screaming. So I want to put these elements. So that takes you to that particular location. It can create a kind of nostalgia, it can create a mood, it can create you know an environment. So you will require so many tracks. You will want to extend your canvas. You have this much, now you just want to create that whole space for them. You are just extending that. Q: so then it doesn’t become just information, it becomes able to probably giving sort of a feeling that it’s present there. B: no information I am talking about vis-à-vis dialogue. Q: ok. B: when somebody is communicating, when I am saying, “hello, how are you?” it is an information, “I am fine. Where had you been?” “I was at the police station. Or I went to this sort of a hotel.” You are giving that information by way of dialogue. So if there is information coming from that dialogue at that moment that information is more important to me than everything else. But when I am sitting and when I am thinking or when I am shooting in one particular room and I want to make it sound like it is near the seaside, I have to create a seaside. So if I’m shooting in a set, I’m not necessarily going out. Or if I’m shooting here I want to make it sound like I am in London. I am in Westminster. If I am in Westminster I will hear the Big Ben every half-n-hour. I will hear the traffic, I will hear the boats on The Thames. But I don’t have the budget to go and shoot over there. So I am shooting in one particular room with and English wallpaper behind and my London library playing the soundscape. So I am artificially creating that. Q: but when you look back to the 70’s or 80’s, most of the films – just take some examples: may be like Deewar or Dharmatma or Qurbani or films like that – which don’t give any sort of what you said. There is no room tone first of all, the use of ambience is

95 minimal - it almost comes down to only bird chirping and nothing else. So we have consumed those kinds of films, we have got entertained. How do you think that in those films ambience made a role or a lack of ambience did make a role? B: If you look at it the filmmaking process also, they were quite simplistic. I would call it simplistic by today’s standards. They were very good stories, and the scripts were very good. So that’s why we went, they did extremely well. But if you are looking at craft of filmmaking, I don’t think I would be too happy with that kind of a craft. Today I would not. Q: ok. B: and that’s definitely not the way, I would have thought in a different way. It all depends - it was exaggerated. I mean every time a guy hit the other we had this “Dhishum” sound for god’s sake. Q: LG B: LG. that was sound design in those days. So it created an impact. There were people who were called to do all these sounds. So it added to the drama you know. But back in the day I mean that was the way it was. Q: the particular group who would keep on playing that. B: yes. And the shouting – people did try out all those kind of things. But they tried in a different way and not necessarily with ambience and things but they did try with sound. They did try and create stuff, they did try and play around in whatever way, whatever effects it had. But it was way too simplistic compared to today.

96

97 Dileep Subramanian (2014)

Duration: 01:13:48 Name Abbreviations: Dileep Subramanium– D; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay– Q Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: I am curious about your coming to sound. D: ok. I finished my graduation in Chemistry. Q: hm. D: it was very strange. I did work for two years in a paint production company as a Junior Executive, you know producing paint. There was no connection with cinema whatsoever. And being Tamilian and being from Bombay, you know that whole immigrant pressure is always there, you know the being middle class, is always ya know for you to get a job and do something constructive. In cinema was like miles away from anywhere. It so happened that my mother wanted me to study a little more than BSc Chemistry. She was the one who kept encouraging me, “why don’t you apply here, why don’t you apply there, why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that.” So by that time I had done the whole circuit. IIT, IIM, SAT, CSAT, SSAT and you know all these various examinations and tests and everything was over. And everywhere I was like not successful. So she said ok now this is another option, have a look at it. But by that time I was two years working. I had only worked. So she said now it’s a good time to go, if you want to go n study further. So I took it up. And I had no clue. I appeared for the examination and I cleared in in the first time. Maybe it was aptitude, maybe it was something that clicked within me. From that moment on I was part of this process of filmmaking. And why sound? Because I had no idea about anything else. I knew about electronics, I knew about chemistry, I knew about physics, maths. I had no idea about camera, camera work, visual arts, ya know. That is an evolved kind of field in itself. So I just gave up on camera. And I gave up on editing because I had no idea what was that all about. And direction was like way beyond me because I had not done literature, I had not done even amateur dramatics in school or college. So this was the only thing that was left for me. Then I moved in here, I did study the course and I finished the course. So once I got in I checked with various professionals who happen to be friends of or relatives of colleagues of mine from the paint company. So it was like walking into peoples home and saying, “I’ve got this interview letter, what do you think I should do?” And sure enough they had all heard of this or done the course, one of them had actually

98 finished the course in sixties. So he was very encouraging. But typically Punjabi and laconic, the only thing he said was, “karlo, bhuke nahin maroge” (Do it. you wouldn’t starve to death). Which was a prophetic word but I took it up at that level. I didn’t give it much thought basically. So that was how I came to this to be a part of this process. Q: did you come to after you completed your course? D: yes. I came back to Mumbai. Since I had a home here I just continued living in Mumbai. What happened was when I came out of the film school 90% of Indian cinema was being post-synched, dubbed. And it was not a very exciting time. 80’s, late 80’s and early 90’s, between 70’s and 80’s somehow we’ve made the worst kind of films in this country. It was trash, it was commercial, it was dominated by stars. It still is in every which way. But even the technical finesse and sophistication was completely lacking. You’re working with mono. World was moving to stereo and Dolby Noise reduction system n stuff like that. And we were still struggling with mono tracks and it was like a really very messy situation. So if your friends were actors then you would get work as a sound engineer. Not that you are breaking the bank or making a dent in your budget or something like that, nothing like that. Even the most successful ones who are reasonably well to do, they were not super rich, even rich by any standard. So all said n done it was not a very professional atmosphere. So I opted to do documentaries, which my friends were doing. And I did smaller films like NFDC and stuff like that. So my film school friends were working so I used to work with them. Because it was a sense of satisfaction of being treated as an equal, of being treated as a professional, of being treated as somebody who knew his job and who has done the same course or a similar upbringing to theirs. So they never looked down upon somebody’s work. So it was like always an equal partnership. So it was very rewarding, documentaries were very rewarding. To this day I consider my best work in terms effort, in terms of the amount of stuff that I have put into a film and my involvement with the characters n stuff, to be in my documentaries. You know at that stage it was a really wonderful experience. To go through all the documentaries that I did and for the reason I did. And I fortunately or unfortunately worked a lot with Channel Four, at that time BBC & Channel four. A lot of their documentaries I did and at that time video was just coming and so we did video as well. Some documentaries were shot on film, some on video. So twelve years I did documentaries, a lot of documentaries. And then being in Bombay, at that time television had just come in and it was taking root. So they were starting serials, they were starting game shows that were like the beginning. So the first few game shows on television, or the reality shows that are called now,

99 Q: hm. D: all of these were done by me. They called me to do them. Q: hm. D: and weekly programs or news or financial coverage’s and interviews with CEO’s, and you know we used to do these kinds of things. It used to pay well but television was to throw away. You know one watch, and nobody watches it again and it’s not for posterity, nobody is gonna watch it ever again. So eight years of television happened. And eight years of rigorous television – from 7 in the morning to 10 in the night – every day. And I formed a lose partnership with my associates from the film school. So it became like a lose network. So anybody who wanted to hire us, hired it through our company and all of us would take our share in that. So one would go here, one would do that shoot, one would go handle an MTV shoot, one would handle a UTV shoot, one would handle a daily soap. So it became for eight years like a club, ya know our sound guys were running to provide crews that were constantly required to do sound. So we had a fixed formula that this is the equipment that is going to go, this is video, this is serial; this is coverage of the news. So we had worked out everything like the equipment required and the kind of people that could handle which. And a lot of people who are now in this field have come with us and been a part of that process. Q: and then you joined cinema, isn’t it? D: and then in 2000 what happened was, around the late 90’s, this television began to take huge toll on my personal health. And it became very boring. And what happened was television channels also realized that it was cheaper to hire somebody on a monthly basis than hire crews daily. Q: hm. D: so like MTV got an in-house crew. Like a Channel V got an in-house crew. All these guys, we had started off with them. Like for UTV for their daily soap I had a person on a monthly salary. Q: hm. D: that was an option, but he refused to take that. I’ve done two years of work, so I know what professional life is and I know what pressures or what frustrations a job can have. So I didn’t want to be a part of that job, so I never did. Then for a good six months or something I just sat at home, wondering what to do. Because no work was coming. Q: hm.

100 D: and all our associations that formed were all broken up because everybody had gone their own ways. So it was a challenging time. In 2000 I started doing feature films again which were dedicated to doing sync sound. Q: ok. D: ok. So by that time this whole movement had come back in sync sound. Initially I had a done a lot of sync sound work during television and before television the documentary work, and also the short films with people like , like Shyam babu. I had done Discovery of India, which was all sync sound basically. And it was shot film. Q: yeah. D: so the experience of cinema was there, it was not as if we were not shooting anything in cinema. So it came back in a big way in the industry, it started off again in 2000. And the cinema guys who had come from some kind of a film training background were all doing sync sound. So I did a whole lot of those films. So it became quite a rewarding experience. Then I by chance moved into commercial cinema space with Yash Raj’s Hum Tum, which was one of the first ones that I worked on, a commercial cinema. So there it was like a whole different ball game, dealing with artists, dealing with you know, egos, various locations and various stuff like that. So that was a different challenge, which I started and I still continue to do to this day. So that has been my line of work basically. Q: why did you prefer to work with sync sound? D: I’ll tell you something. You are telling a story. It is not important for the audience to know the process involved. It’s immaterial. But at the heart of a story there is always a credibility issue. Fundamentally if you can convince people that you’ve done this, and you’ve done this you’ve shot at that plane. You’ve physically fired a gun at that plane, there is no gun in your hand, there is no plane that has fallen out of the sky, there is nothing that has happened. But if you’ve managed to convince somebody through sound, through picture, through your expressions, through whatever, you have narrated a story. Q: yes. D: if you’ve convinced the audience for that moment you’ve narrated it. I maintain that 90% of the so-called stars in India have a certain factor, which is a credibility factor. That people believe what they are doing, they are popular because people actually believe in what they are doing, they don’t watch it as a spoof. Q: yeah. D: Shahrukh Khan’s mannerisms maybe whatever, Salmaan’s maybe whatever, I am not taking moral lessons from them. I’m saying on-screen they have a quality of credibility, which is essential to convey your message. And what helps immensely in that process is

101 sound - and at a very sub-conscious level. What happens that the moment you dub it with somebody terrible you know ideally, here you are acting, you are dubbing, so people know your voice, people associate your voice with your face and they go with it. Or you find somebody who sounds similar. The trick is to find a Bachchan clone! Q: LG. D: why? Because he must be as credible as Bachchan. You see? Q: yeah. D: so what we are sub-consciously aiming at is the fact that we need to connect with our audience. It helps immensely in the process if you can shoot in sync. I am not a terrorist and neither am I an Extremist who’ll say, “this or nothing! Aisa toh nahin hota” (this doesn’t happen). The best of films have huge parts that are dubbed. But that is not for anybody to know. The process has been attempted and a different process has been taken up. But the point is that the end result has always been credible. That’s why that cinema is successful. Q: hm. D: that’s all. Q: credibility. D: I learnt a bitter lesson in Rockstar. I dubbed Fakhri, she is a professional dubbing artist. And I kept telling myself that we are going wrong. We tried three or four artists, including Nargis herself. It broke my heart to see that the audience had no connect with the central figure of your tragedy. Only because of the voice. Mainly because of the voice. Q: was Ranbir’s voice his own? D: his own. And 90% of it was retained in the film as it was on location. Whereas her voice was completely replaced. Q: do you think that’s the reason people couldn’t connect to her character? D: it’s one of the major reasons that people couldn’t connect and not yet subconsciously forgiven Nargis Fakhri for that. Q: LG D: I’ll tell you this, there is a disconnect. If you see a film that is non-synchronous, out sync, you’ll watch it for some time. Nine out of ten people won’t be able to tell you what is wrong. They will not tell you that the sound is coming early or the picture is coming late. Technicians will not be able to tell you, who work in this field. “Kuch toh garbar hai yaar” (Something is wrong my friend). You know it is at that level. It strikes you but at a

102 very subliminal level, that there is something going wrong which I can’t put my fingers to. You need to find the reason, and you can’t find the reason. Q: hm. D: the next one is defiance. “Forget it, I am not watching this shit!” Q: LG. D: I am not interested in that damn story. You know, that is what happens. Q: even though in post-sync - in the post-production stages, the face and the dubbed voice are synced together? D: they are perfectly synced together. There is no technical issue, nobody can tell it apart. But for some strange reason they realize this face is not this voice. It is very weird that nine out of ten people will catch up. “Yeh kuch toh garbar hai yaar. Yeh joh bol raha hai na, yeh sahi nahin bol raha hai” (Something is wrong here. What he is saying is not sounding correct). Q: hm. D: it’s not as if dubbed films are not successful. They are enormously successful. So my thing is that it’s very strange. I wish to be a part of the process that helps cinema be credible and be coherent rather than ya know fill something in somewhere and walk away with the money that I am going to get, not that it’s a large sum. But ya know in my conscious I should be happy that what I have done is harder and what I’ve earned is hard earned and it is deserving of that payment. Q: not only the voice, then it comes to - let’s say - sync effects or Foley effects. D: Foleys and sync. See at a large level what we are doing is we are manipulating emotions. So there’s a dichotomy here. When I say that it has to be credible, it has to be credible. Q: hm. D: but at the same time the story has to lead into a direction that the director wants it to go. Q: hm. D: if he wants it to go to a dreamy space so it has to be done. That is his vision of that story at that moment. If somebody is in pain and he is screaming maybe he cannot put that scream, maybe he’ll mute it under the music but that’s a creative call that the director takes at that time. Because he wants his story to flow in a certain way. Q: hm. D: now these are the devices, which were being used to manipulate audiences’ emotions. Q: hm.

103 D: this is a lever we’re using. So make no mistake that we are manipulating them. But at the same time what can be manipulated, what cannot be there’s a very fine line. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. And the results are only known later on. That is the magic of this medium. Q: now coming back to the technology: do you think that the digital technology has helped to revive sync sound in some sense? D: digital technology has revived cinema sound as it is now. Revival of sync sound is a by-product. Digital technology has helped revive cinema and the process of making films completely. And we are reaping the benefits of that as a by-product. Q: hm. D: main thing is how well has the digital cinema improved the viewing experience of the audience and experience of the audio enormously. And it has given tools in the hands of people who would not even have considered shooting a movie, filming a story. It has made that medium affordable and made it a popular thing. It has become more technical, fair enough. But everything has become more technical. Getting into a bus and buying a ticket has become more technical. What used to be ya know one conductor with a punch card and issuing a physical ticket now comes out like a machine, like a ticket vending machine, which is connected to a central server. So everything is connected. Everything has become more complicated. I’m not judging that. I’m saying that it has put the tools of cinema in the hands of people who are dying to make things, dying to have their voice heard. So as a result everybody can do it. And so be it. This is what it should be always, it cannot be an elitist outlook to art or you know to a medium. Q: absolutely. D: which was like a huge issue. Film is expensive, the cameras are expensive, the whole process had become so top heavy. “Ke woh film dega, hum kharidenge dus hazzar rupay ka, usko hum load karenge shoot karenge” (That someone will sell film, we will buy it for ten thousand rupees, then we’ll load it and shoot the film). And all the time the ten thousand rupees are ringing in my head. The moment I switch on the camera all that is gone. It has truly liberated people, especially the filmmaker. We are mere cogs in the weed along the way. Q: perhaps that’s the outcome of digital technology as a different kind of recording media. But quality wise what is the specific difference between magnetic recording and digital recording media?

104 D: I’ll tell you. Magnetic recording was ultimately reduced to optical. So in our technical term called dynamic range and headroom, what we used to get was a very limited response to what we recorded. Q: hm. D: and if I remember my earlier films, we struggled to make one thing heard at a time. It could be only the dialogue. Or at a critical point if there was no dialogue and we felt that “Ah! Now is the opportunity!” - let’s somehow bring this clothes rustle into the picture. And then post that if something happened then you still have a little bit of a space when you can hear a couple of his footsteps. Ya know muted but slightly it’s there. So that we get a feel. So that you subconsciously establish one item at a time, because the medium was unable to handle all three things at the same time. His voice, the clothes rustle and the shoes. Q: hm. D: so you’d hear one. If you heard all three then probably you’d miss out on the ambience. So it was a very limiting experience. Because ultimately we were working on optical, which is what cinema prints were all about. So now with it moved to digital even the prints have become obsolete, so the way I am moving straight from the mix room to the viewing room with simply as waveforms loaded onto a hard disk. That’s it! Q: LG. D: so it has become a better experience overall hugely. And sound moved earlier to digital domain, picture domain has come recently. Sound had already gone digital a long time ago with the advent of DAT’s. Q: and in terms of multi-track recording? D: correct. When it went digital it went multi-track at the same time. There were analog multi-track, but they were not portable machines. But the real truly digital early multi- tracks became portable. Q: hm. D: the professional equipment started becoming portable. It started with two tracks, stereo as usual. Then four, then six and eight and so on. Q: coming back to the elements that are included in film soundtrack, D: hm, Q: I’d like to know about your idea of ambience. What do you think what does it do to cinema in general? D: when I spoke to a mixing engineer he had a completely different point of view, which really flattered me. And it frustrated me. He said, I’m talking about commercial Hindi

105 cinema, a brilliant thing. He said, “Woh producer mere piche baitha hai, music barao music barao bolta hai” (The film producer is sitting behind me and constantly asking me to increase the music level) - because he has paid for the music. Q: LG. Hm. D: and he feels that is the selling point of the film. “Director bolta hai story nahin sunta hai, dialogue sunna chahie na, toh kahani aage barega na? toh sound designer mere bagal mein baithke bolta hai, ‘ambience barao ambience barao!” (The director says that the dialogue should be heard, or else how will the story go forward? And the sound designer sitting next to me says increase the ambience!). Q: LG. D: he is a south Indian mixing engineer, a good friend of mine. So I told him, “toh kya karta hai tum?” (What do you do then?). “Mai yeh teen fader teeno ko de deta hun”’ (I give these three faders to each of them). Q: LG. D: “let them fight it out amongst themselves”. And I said, “what is your take on the ambience”’ “aare kya hai, wohi traffic, wohi chiria” (Come on my friend, the same traffic and the same birds!). It killed me, because after all the trouble that I go through to put the correct appropriate ambience in to fill, ultimately he reduced it to the fact that it was traffic and birds. That’s not the point. Spoken word is also spoken word in every film. But the way it is spoken, the way it is done, it’s telling a different story. So I’m saying the ambience might be the same world over or you know for a country it might be specific to a state or a region. Q: hm. D: so as long as we are true to that and we are playing with that then it’s fine. I am willing to accept again manipulating audiences’ emotions with ambiences and with incidental sounds if room permits from this oppressive press of the music that we are facing. Q: but if there is no ambience, like in the 70’s, 80’s? D: yes there was no ambience. You see a film like Ghaayal. A very big filmmaker made a film called Ghaayal. If you’ve seen the second half of Ghaayal, they have completely done away with the footsteps and sync effects, they’ve removed it, kept only the dialogue and the background music. Like if somebody punches somebody that “Dhishum” is there. But apart from that everything else is missing. They have kept this clean off all this irritating sounds according to them. “Nikaal sab, kya karne ka idhar” (Take them all out, they’ll add nothing here). LG. so somebody must have taken that creative call. And

106 it’s very unnerving. That’s why I think our cinema got a bad name in the 70’s. We started getting a terrible reputation! Q: LG. D: for using Zoom, how ugly was the usage. Q: LG. D: I mean it’s not an elegant device at any given time. But to use it like we did it’s just terrible! It’s very spoofy almost, ya know. Q: an apology to cinema. D: haan, yeh bahut kharab hai (yes, it’s very bad). Zoom became something to adjust the frame with. Q: but recent films are involving more ambience, it’s quite visible (and audible). Many films… D: yeah, many films. That’s a welcome trend. Basically it requires courage from a director’s point of view. See what happens when the pressure is too much on anybody who is directing in India, there’s a lot of money riding on it. So everybody wants a certain failsafe method. Q: hm. D: and I keep telling them that it is better to have a good ambience track than a bad background track. So a bad background is going to harm your film. A good ambience is going to enhance your film. And even if your background goes missing somewhere I don’t think people will notice. But it’s like an addiction. What has happened is that we hire people to do background. And for the want of a better word they do wall to wall coverage. So whatever you need from it you keep it, and the rest you remove it. What happens just because it is there, you keep fading in that fader. But if it is missing, then your mind starts working in other directions, as a director. May be it’ll be nice if we can hear his bus interior, as it is going along Bombay’s traffic. Ya know it will probably help the actor’s mental state or a little bit more. Ya know if he’s really frustrated looking for a job n sitting in a bus. If I am going to put music it doesn’t carry his frustrations to that level as much as maybe that traffic sound and the bus sound would at that moment, it treats properly n harshly. It’s an oppressive city. So you should get that sense of oppression. I’m just giving you a crude example. But that is way it is. My vote would go in favor of that. But it doesn’t really matter because the mixing room is a political atmosphere where everybody has a vote. Q: yeah.

107 D: And it’s literally war. Somebody wants something heard, like he is right. These three elements are always at loggerheads with one another, the producer, the director and the sound guy are constantly at loggerheads with one another. It is very rare that they work in time limit. And when they do the results are obvious. Q: I’ll just mention what I learnt in Denmark. I was talking to Lars Von Trier’s sound designer, Kristian Eidnes Anderson. He told me that before going for shooting Antichrist, Anderson and Lars Von Trier went to the location together, stayed there in a tent for a week and studied the location before going for shoot. D: hm. Q: so that’s the kind of collaboration they do. They kind of work in tandem. D: yeah, that they do. That kind of tandem work I had done with one Rockstar, where Imtiaz Ali was really painstaking in spite of a couple of wrong decisions that we made, about Nargis, her voice and this n that. But he took the call that a rock concert that this man is playing should sound like a rock concert, never mind if the music is by Rahman. If people are screaming, they should be heard. Q: hm. D: and like ya know in a rock concert you hear people’s screams more than the music at most of the time. I said that element should come through. And in surround sound. Q: yes. D: you should get the feeling of sitting in a stadium. Q: so you literally recorded the whole performance? D: yeah recorded. But the problem was the moment you record the performance the leak of the performance comes into the applause. Now the performance we are going to do a fresh track laying, and remove completely and keep only the applause. That kind of filtering is not possible. Q: hm. D: so immediately after the shot I had to set up the mics in such a place and go with the audience again, the whole emotion, without the music. Q: ok. D: so if they were clapping to a tune, switch on that tune, switch if off, Q: ok. D: and hope that they keep time. Because you keep an assistant director or somebody who is wearing headphones and has a cue on the headset. Q: hm. Ok.

108 D: but this process is painstaking. And then when we ran through the film a lot of locations were not under our control. When we ran through the film again n again we had a session of say, of about ten days of only crowds. Q: ok. D: in which I kept a layer of crowd which sang in tune with the song, after all it’s a good song, I can’t have audience singing out of tune. If you sang “aaaa” the audience would repeat ya know. So I had one layer of the audience, which was actually chorus singers who came to me as a crowd. Q: ok. D: they do without music, with only this cue they recorded after his voice. Q: ok. D: so they were more or less in tune. Ok, not too much in tune, then it will be caught out as music. Then you do that, then you have another layer which is slightly more out of tune, regular guys like you and me who cannot sing, so you give them headphones. Q: hm. D: and then third section was just general cheering and all of the crowd. Q: ok. D: so each song took three layers to do, so it took a long time to finish this. And through the process Imtiaz was extremely patient. And he understood what required to be done and he supported me right through it. That was a good experience. So I am saying that kind of collaboration is sometimes possible with the director. Sometimes it’s not possible. Q: now coming back to technology again and multi-channel surround sound. D: hm, Q: earlier films were mono; then few films were made in stereo. And then Dolby came with noise reduction and more standardizing stereo; then surround came. D: yeah, correct. Q: how do you see this transformation from mono to a bit of stereo and then surround sound? D: a relatively short period in the history of cinema. So what happened was at that time when the changeover was happening, we were still struggling with the technicalities of the process. By the time we move to the next, Dolby SR and you know one more improvement, 5.1 then 7.1, then now Atmos. So this improvement happened relatively quickly in my career you know I’ve seen all three stages. Track lying in the sense that laying of ambiences and laying of voices became more and more complex. So the post- production work involved started simultaneously being done in computers. What used to

109 be physically done by tape or by editing or cutting tape or something like that, now started being done digitally. And then the number of tracks on the digital machines started proliferating like there was no tomorrow. Because with the increase of computing speed, it’s a very sharp curve, if you see the process of evolution of computers. It’s a very sharp curve n we are following that. Basically because we are interlinked completely to the microprocessor and the computer industry. Q: hm. D: the faster they process the audio, they process the data how do you also get processed back that much quickly? Q: yeah. D: so the rise is analogous to the computer industry. Absolutely! Where my first computer was 8GB and I was like really happy. 8 GB nobody even looks at it, it’s in a pen drive now! Q: LG. D: that is the difference. And my phone has more computing power now than my computer had when I started! So I am saying one day will come when I will pull out my phone and say, “sound ready!” Q: LG. D: you know that’s not far off. LG Q: yes, of course, music composition is already done in iPhones. Composers are using iPhones for composing. D: composing, hm. Q: but this expansion of space in terms of channels - how do you see it? D: that’s good. I feel that it gives me better fidelity, a real life experience. Ya know if I watch a race film, a car race film ideally which is very sound heavy like rush. It’s beautiful to watch in surround sound and to watch in multiple channels. You know once you watch that you wouldn’t even be able to watch it on your computer screen, or on your laptop. Because the whole joy of that film is the way you feel the proximity to the cars. So your cinema experience has now become more and more reflective. So it’s wonderful to have, more the merrier. I am all for it. I am saying more channels here, whatever you’re doing it’s ok, but just don’t make it gimmicky. If that’s ultimately what you are using it for, if you make it gimmicky it’s not going to work. Meaning if it draws attention to itself, then the whole experience is now collapsing on its own head. Q: yeah. But how to make a balance, like if you’re so distracted?

110 D: I’ll tell you. The best sound is something that is never noticed. The best picture, the best camerawork, best story when it’s being narrated you’re a part of it, you don’t feel out of it. The moment you feel out of it you’ve already lost the battle. Q: LG. it’s a very Hollywood type of approach that the technicalities, the craftsmanship should be invisible. D: yes. D: I completely believe. I mean in most of the cinemas the craft is always subliminal. Even the new wave cinema never pointed to its craft. Except maybe a Brechtian technique of you know referring to the audience. But that was done for a purpose to break the audience out of that shell. Q: hm. D: you know the alienation technique. But that was for a purpose. But even then after that they would leave you to that devices of the cinema. I completely buy the fact that – what are we emulating? We are trying to show a story and we want to get into that story. So it should remain that, that spell should not be broken. In fact the interval breaks the spell. Q: LG. D: That’s my problem, if that’s too long the interval actually breaks the spell! Q: yes. Some theorists have argued that Indian cinema is cinema of interruptions. So every time there is some sort of culmination is happening – D: there is a song or something. Q: or interval. D: yeah, I never understood that. Song is something that ya know you might say it’s culturally very acceptable to our audiences, that song is there everywhere in every aspect in life. But it’s never that way an integrated song that ourselves so much that storytelling has to have a song, that’s a very weird concept. That is something I think that the westerners have not yet accepted. So they find that very distracting and disturbing. Q: yeah. Coming back maybe again to sync sound - it provides more information about the space where - D: correct, it does. It’s more true to the space, yeah absolutely. Q: but then sound mixers or designers clean the voice. So when they clean the voice, some of the information is lost. Isn’t it? D: no. I am saying that this cleaning process, or the process of any kind of manipulation of that recorded track has to be done with a great deal of judgment. It cannot be a

111 standard process. It is not that I put in my audio here and I get clean dialogue there. That defeats the purpose, completely. What am I doing? Is it possible to say, whisper ‘I love you’ into a girl’s ears in a local train, and still be audible to an audience of 400 people. Is it possible? I am saying not possible. Ok? Is it possible to see somebody in the dark? That’s not possible. Q: yeah that’s not possible. D: But we make it possible in cinema by creating an artificial darkness and by lighting up that person in such a way that it appears he is in the darkness. The same thing goes for this. It appears that he is sitting in a crowded local and whispering. Again the question is of the balance. How credible or how well balanced is your approach? Is the train noise too low for a crowded train? Q: yeah. D: is the train noise too high, I can’t hear him saying this to her? Is it too dark, I can’t see the fellow? Remember Rambo when it came? We saw it on VHS. Couldn’t make out a thing in the second half, it was completely dark, First Blood. We couldn’t see anything. Only when he lit that match inside that cave then it became “OH!” (Expression of exclamation) Sylvester Stallone is sitting in a cave. The whole of second half was almost lost on us because we watched it on VHS. Q: yeah. D: so this is the thing that cleaning is a tool. How well you use it and how appropriately you use it is what is bothering you in a particular location. Is this ambience appropriate for this? As long as it is appropriate. I shot a film called Gundey. In Kolkata, in Maniktala fish market. And Maniktala fish market you can’t afford to have actors whispering to one another saying whatever sweet nothings. So Maniktala fish market, my aim is to get the – forget the dialogue – I want not that fishmonger behind the main actor. He is selling fish to that lady. I want his dialogue. Q: ok. LG yeah. D: that should be clear. This I can replace. Q: yes. D: in a manner that it will be never be seen as being replaced. That is my specialty, so leave me to do that. But I won’t get that fishmonger again in Bombay. With all my resources I will still not be able to get that man who speaks in that hoarse voice, (attempts to emulate the voice) like that you know. So I can’t get him. Q: LG. Yeah.

112 D: So my job is to record all others perfectly who are going to be unavailable to me later, but are priceless. Which is what I did. I put mics in every corner of that market and recorded everybody on multi-track. Q: definition of noise in cinema can vary D: it varies from person to person. It’s very subjective. A lot of people find everything noise. I am saying is it appropriate to the scene? If it is appropriate to the scene I’ll accept it. And audience will also accept it. Like in Syriana there is this classic scene of this man, the informant talking to I think it is Clooney only, and telling him about something and he chooses a location where waves are crashing onto the wall, on a wall like a jetty. And he chooses that location so that they cannot be spied upon. So if you understand the context and you understand the auditory space that they are in, the noise of the waves is acceptable to the extent that you’ll have to strain to hear his lines - that is the aim. Q: yes. D: I would have lost that scene, they would have lost that scene if they had dubbed it clean. And removed all the sense of waves and just kept a feeling that there are some waves crashing on this. No the idea is that it should overpower his dialogue. He has come to that place so that he cannot be spied upon. And it is being shot with a camera angle, which is really long, long shot. And they are like specs in the distance and you’re straining to her his voice. It’s a wonderful scene. See it once. Q: in which film? D: Syriana. ’s film. Q: ok, yes. D: about the politics of oil. Q: hm. D: nicely done film. You’ll struggle to recognize George Clooney. Q: LG. D: yeah. That’s a wonderful quality that some actors have. Q: now coming to ambience again: in multi-channel more tracks are involved, more tools you have to use ambience and other tracks. D: yeah. Q: so when ambience is used in mono, even though there is a major lack of ambience in the dubbing era of cinema - when we come to multi-channel sound or surround sound: 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos, you can use a lot of ambience. D: correct. A lot more.

113 Q: yeah. But how can you do that in terms of enveloping the audience? D: I’ll tell you. What happens that now visually your whole field has opened up. So you can feed something on the left, you can feed something on the right. You can afford to keep something behind, not too obvious. But if somebody went out of frame and closed the door and it appeared in the right rear or the left rear it would still be accepted. But that kind of freedom was not available. Because there were only these speakers in front and they had to either deliver the dialogue or these effects, so now we have opened out the medium. So as a result of which you can individually treat sections of the screen and assign audio, Q: yeah, D: to sections of the speakers corresponding to that physical space. That is two- dimensional. But it is giving you a space of three dimensions by the way it is shot. I’m not talking about 3D films, I’m talking about normal 2D cinema. You can follow the space that sub-consciously it projects. Q: but one thing, about the off-screen space – D: hm, Q: before surround there was stereo or mono with primarily screen oriented sonic space. D: mono. Q: sound was always behind the screen. So it was connected to the visual. D: yeah, correct. Q: there was no off-screen space as such. D: no. none. We were very limited. Q: but then it was expanding a bit, like in stereo mix we are going to the corner of the screen. But when we come to more surround, expanded surround we expand the space itself to include more off-screen space. How does a sound designer manage to keep the attention to the screen or on the narrative while handling those off-screen spaces? Because there is major chance of audience becoming distracted D: left, right, yeah I understand. We follow actually a standard rule of thumb that almost always the dialogue is coming from up front. Q: yes. D: ok? But the reverberations of that dialogue are always spread in whichever direction we desire. Wherever, which part of the screen that artist is seen. So what happens that there is a feeling that he is maybe on the left side. There’s a feel that he may be on the right side. By simple moving the space not necessarily his direct sound wave but the

114 reflected sound waves if you can place them in such a manner, that it gives you a sense of that space. It still is true without distracting. This is I am talking about dialogue. Q: yeah. D: now with these dialogues coming from the main speakers your other speakers have become free to have ambiences. But there’s always a rule of thumb that this dialogue is your story career. Unless of course something is said none at that point. So the effects have to be secondary. So they are sufficiently muted in comparison to the dialogues. So that balance has to be achieved. That is the whole mixing process where we don’t overwhelm the audience with this surround. Q: hm. D: it should hardly be noticed. It should always give a feeling of the space without actually drawing attention to itself. Q: yeah. But in that sense Atmos or the Auro 3-D… D: the mixes have become very tough, they have become difficult processes. Because the judgment involved has become more and more sharp and more and more fine. You know in terms of – that balance has to be achieved correctly. But it tends to go wrong, it does go wrong a lot of times. I am not denying that. Q: two final questions. One is: I am very curios, because in Europe I see a lot of people, younger people generally, are watching and listening to films on smaller devices. Like iPad, iPhone D: correct, I completely understood. Q: in India there is an immense amount of mobile users. D: correct. Q: and at one point of time cinema will be watched mostly on mobile phones, maybe with headphones. At the same time mixing is becoming more and more complicated, more and more complex sounds are involved and created, many layers of ambience for example. How will a sound designer, or a sound technician or a sound person think or adapt to that particular transformation? How will you mix your feature films for smaller devices? D: I understand. See saree is ‘Benarasi’, which takes years to make. Q: hm. D: At the same time there will be chiffon, which is printed and which is made in a mill. Both are serving the same purpose. Q: yeah.

115 D: so I am saying that there is a mix, and for these devices what we call a down mix. It doesn’t mean anything derogatory, it just means that a down mix is supposed to accommodate most of the stuff that you’ve put in your main program, Q: yes. D: without compromising too much on the main story because it is now limited to his headphone or the two small speakers, or whatever the device he might be using. So there is now a whole industry, not an industry there is a whole process in place at the very mix stage, which caters to – now this is going to become a ringtone. So what am I supposed to make? This song is going to become a ringtone, what am I supposed to do? I am supposed to convert it into a format that is acceptable on a phone and put it on the net for download. Ok? A classic example. Q: hm. D: I can make a CD. CD is a wonderful stereo mix of the song. But ringtone is not that. Q: yeah. D: it’s a down mix of that song which is available as a ringtone because of ease of use. But it no way detracts from the main product which itself is the song. Ok? Same thing with cinema. If you choose to watch it in theater – I’m sure you won’t enjoy Avatar on a mobile phone. Q: LG. D: there is a certain experience that has to be – it’s a conscious decision. And watching cinema is also a conscious social decision, that you choose to sit with three hundred unknown people in an enclosed space hoping to enjoy whatever is being put out in front of you. There is a certain sense of giving yourself up to something that is been transmitted to you. It’s not a roaming around in the personal space, which a Walkman is. Ok now Walkman is a crude example, let’s say a headphone. It’s like eliminating the surround and I am in my own space. There are two different aspects. Watching it in the theater, I think you’re being more receptive. Here you are being more exclusive. You wanna avoid as many people as possible. Q: yeah. D: correct? So the two mixes have to culturally reflect this. Q: yeah. So will you think of a different kind of mix for that? D: yes it is a different mix, and it is a compromise, always. Whatever be the range of the medium, my mix will always be compromised whether it’s being heard on smaller speakers, tinier speakers, because it is meant for a big theater. But how much of that fidelity I can maintain in a smaller set-up is my skill as a mixing engineer.

116 Q: yeah. And finally I would like to ask: when you not only mix, when you go for sync sound recording, then you come back to a studio to mix it and you give a final out, do you think of the audience? And how is your relationship to the audience? D: I always put myself in the audiences’ chair. Q: ok. D: always. At the script writing level I put myself in the audiences’ level. And I’m one who is thinking, does this dialogue make any sense to them? Forget what I’ve recorded, my recording is secondary. Is the content sensible? Is what is being said, is it necessary? If I find that it is not necessary, I am the first one to tell the director. I think it is been done n dusted. I think now it is time to move on. He has already said this in this part of the film. So script wise forget my dialogue, I am just a tool. Is it necessary? My whole thing is what is the audience getting out of this now. Q: yeah. D: and I’ll always consider that. Because the moment there is a disconnect I know the repercussions will be fatal for the film. Q: so in that sense do you like to please the audience? Do you like to entertain the audience? D: no. The story should be conveyed. There’s a lot of disturbing visuals and disturbing sound, people are screaming and there’s blood spurting. That’s not pleasing. Q: ok. D: that’ll disturb you. Whatever will be the story I must convey that to the audience, and they must get it. I am not saying it will be pleasant or unpleasant. It might be thought provoking, it might not be thought provoking at all. It might be just a song and dance routine. But they should enjoy that song also. They should feel the pulse of the dance. Q: but the sense of the place to be specific, would you like to give him or her the sense of place where the film is based? D: yes, absolutely. If it is shot in Chhattisgarh I have to make sure that I get the essence of Chhattisgarh. I am not putting a caption there, saying they are in Chhattisgarh. Q: LG. D: how can you do that? Q: using which tool will you do that? D: there has to be some sound, there has to be visual of course, which is area specific. But sound also has to play a part. See when we shoot abroad we can’t put local traffic. Even if it is only traffic I have to record for a movie I would rather go out n do it abroad. It’s a huge cost to the producer, but what I am saying it is essential for the film. That’s

117 why I said take a recording engineer along with you when you shoot a film, for Christ’s sake so at least you can get me the appropriate ambiences of that space. Whatever be your budget constraints, I’m sure an ST bus stand is something that I cannot re-create. Q: yes. D: A state transport bus stand is something I cannot re-create inside a studio. It’s virtually impossible. So an ST bus stand is an ST bus stand. And I must get that space in the sense of that space, the people, the way they speak, the kinds of sounds you hear, the “Chai-wallah” (tea shop owner), the people spitting, you must hear that. People getting of the bus, straightening their bags, talking nonsense, discussing other schedule, bus schedule. You must hear it. Otherwise the sense of that space is never going to come through. Q: and if that sense of space or place is not there? D: then there’ll be a huge disconnect. It’ll be like a film shot on a set which has no reality left to it. There’ll be a huge sense of disconnect. I am not saying most films that have disconnect are unsuccessful or successful, I am not discussing that. But what I prefer is to have some kind of a connect. Like I saw this (film) Aankhon Dekhi. I loved the film. ’s film. And he is a lone warrior. He’s been at it for so long producing his own stuff, releasing his own stuff and raising money for the next one. Shooting and releasing without compromise, which I think is great. Because it speaks volumes of somebody’s personal commitment to tell that story, which is essential, which is the crux of creativity. If a painter started painting everybody would become like a wall painter yaar (friend). That’s not the point. He paints what he likes. And audience chooses to like that because they see something in it. Q: would you like to generally make a comment or a statement about your work, and the kind of work you have been doing, or the kind of work you would like to do? D: I feel that culturally we must evolve from this culture of loudness that we are getting into. Q: absolutely. D: more speakers do not make more volume. Ok. It means a sense of space but doesn’t mean overwhelming sense of volume. I am paying for more speakers for Dolby licensing. It doesn’t mean that my program has to be louder. And loudness does not attract attention. Beyond a point loudness fails to serve its purpose, it’s counter-productive. The difference between out mixes and the western mixes is entirely cultural. We keep the dialogues at a certain level, and we keep the music underneath that at a certain level, which is unacceptable in any part of the world. In large parts of the world it’s

118 unacceptable. And to me, I wish to bridge this gap, not educate our audience. Maybe even if it means doing two mixes for two different regions keeping the perspectives, ya know sensibilities in mind. My work has to reflect what the audience expectations are. They have to be connected to the story whether it’s India or whether we are going to the U.S. I would prefer a mix that is of a different sensibility. Q: yeah. D: there is no ego involved in it. The moment you have ego in creativity saying, “this is mine, I have done it” – director has done it, you are adding to it. Ya know we must always remember that. Q: but this is also true that a new breed of sound designers, who have come from film school, have raised this bar; they have struggled hard to be heard. D: they need to be from the film school. Q: ok. D: I am saying like directors have come from – non-filmschool directors you know Sujoy Ghosh of Kahaani? Q: yes. D: they are not schooled filmmakers; a lot of them are Ad filmmakers. A lot of them have never studied cinema. Some are actors who have picked up the camera. So there is no hard n fast rule in creativity. Anybody can be a singer, if he has it in him. They can become a singer, and if they sing well they will be accepted. Q: but what is then the reason for the better quality of sound? D: no, overall audience awareness has improved. It has hugely improved. What has happened is that even multimedia or normal computer speakers have become of a higher caliber and quality. A headphone from a phone is giving you better quality, than you ever got. So the outputs have become more n more sophisticated. So the tools in people’s hands have become more sophisticated. So they expect better quality. So that has raised the bar by itself. Q: yes. D: and at the same time it is showing up glaring errors as well, if any. LG. Q: so I take a call at that note. D: ok.

119

120 Dipankar Chaki (2013)

Duration: 01:09:54 Name Abbreviations: Dipankar Chaki – DC; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay– Q; {…} Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

DC: In 1998 we were using high eights, ADATs. We have those initial systems, which just came in at that point, which was basically the spectral. The first version of pro tools had just been launched, pro tools 3. Q: hm. DC: It was running on audio media cards. Tape machines were still running at that time at some places, you know twenty-four (24) track, Q: hm. DC: tape is still active. And even Sound Forge was one of the major mastering softwares at that time in small independent studios in India like the smaller studios using cards and all those things, 2 track. So that that is the time I actually got into doing my sound engineering. So we were more in the analog transitional phase. And then the whole birth of digital and ya know digital started coming. I have worked on tape also. Q: hm. DC: I’ve worked on 24-track 2-inch tape. And to edit and to work with those things, it was a completely different experience. LG Nagra. Q: Nagra. DC: thereafter slowly the whole thing moved more digital. Things simplified, things became much easier to manage. Q: do you now work with digital technology? DC: yeah. Q: completely? DC: (overlap) entirely. Yeah. Entirely digital technology in the post side of things but in the source side of things - I mean when the microphone, which we are using when we are coming to the recording platform, in that chain we have some analog equipment like pre-amplifiers or these you know solid state logic’s own pre amplifier EQ’s (equalizers) or some valve pre-amplifier. So from the microphone to that and then from there it comes into a very good stage. Q: hm.

121 DC: from there it goes into the software. Then it’s completely digital. LG. There’s no analog at all after that. LG Q: did you work with optical or magnetic recording before? DC: Magnetic recording actually was just out when I started. Because when I started even then there was that big government studio that was located at salt lake, I am forgetting, what was the name? Q: Rupayan! DC: Rupayan. So at Rupayan still then the Magneteks were working. And they were still doing songs and stuff on the magneteks and I still remember that Chinmoyda was there and one day I went to meet him and they were still working like that you know? LG Q: LG. DC: LG so they had these very old consoles, I got very flabbergasted there. Q: LG. DC: very old consoles which had built-in compression and EQs and they had knobs. All those knobs were being used to roll in the Magnetek, rewinding the Magnetek enacted sound-effect and playing once again. And you know Bengali songs were mixing. But I miss that whole thing, I guess it was too elaborate and you know the smaller studios, which were just surviving at that time they were very happily flying with heights. LG. Q: heights? DC: two heights. Yeah, locked to each other and sixteen tracks of audio, and then you keep submitting and developing a recording. Q: in 1998? DC: around that time, yeah. Q: ok, so – DC: no to answer the question once again, optical yes, optical because we used to convert our sound into optical, Q: hm DC: for Dolby. Q: yes. DC: so that’s how we did a lot of optical. Q: married print? DC: married print. Yes. Q: yes, optical. DC: yeah.

122 Q: but did you find it’s different working with optical than digital? I mean from the point of view of quality and texture. Did you find optical recording limiting in some sense, even though you did in the last stage of the film? DC: optical to some extent has certain parameters which kind of limit you with the way you mix the film, the whole EQ of your film. Q: hm. DC: which means even at the lower end, even at the higher end, and even levels. Because if these things go a little out of the necessity of the optical platform, it starts getting disturbing the audio, which means distortion or, Q: yeah. DC: these things start coming. Q: like the head room. 800 hertz to 8000 hertz. DC: correct. Q: not before and not behind - that’s I find quite limiting too. DC: yeah. Q: do you find working with digital technology opens up more creative options? DC: I think creatively yes. Sonically may be no. Q: why? DC: because sonically what is happening in the digital domain is, being a domain user, Q: hm. DC: and working everyday on you know tracks and audio and you know, like mixing film music or background score or effects or songs, what I feel is that what I really lack, because I have worked with tape. Q: hm. DC: so what I think what we are constantly trying to achieve in the digital platform is, we’re trying to emulate a sense of saturation, through compression and through other ya know kind of products like maximizers and stuff like that. But essentially all of this is basically falling short of that little thing which we had in analog naturally, Q: ok. DC: which was saturation. So that saturation which we’re missing out, that we’re constantly trying to bring it in by using these things. So we’re you know packing it up nicely, ya know the compressors packing it up nicely, the maximizers packing it up nicely. They’re putting in a little head room so the punch ya know is active. So I mean entertainment audio is very much related to punch. Like you have to feel it. LG.

123 Q: the point is that in analog formats you had a natural kind of quality of sound, which you lack in digital technology. DC: yeah. I feel that is a huge loss because analog means from my experience as a user, which is completely my own theory ya know, I don’t know if others will agree, when I see or listen to digital in its own way I see a brilliant kind of a transparency on the upper side. 16k right down to 2k, 2 and a ½ k, even 1k. Q: hm. DC: like up to 2k you have this amazing transparency in digital. Q: hm. DC: which is like absolutely pristine but right down from 2k like midrange, Q: hm. DC: and the whole behavior of mid-range, Q: hm. DC: is very different. The quality of mid-range information and low-range information that is there in analogue, is very different from the digital platform. Q: ok. Interesting point. Hm, that’s right. But another point is that in digital technology resolution is higher. It’s giving you more head room - like digital technology can give you up to 120 db, while optical recording had 78 db. Magnetic recording had 98 db. In terms of db, in terms of head room, you’re having more head room, then why do you find digital recording limiting? DC: I think it’s also related to sourcing. Because it is not entirely- if today I record something, which has got all those qualities in it, I would probably not have so much to discuss in post. Which is why I think what we’re always missing here the point is that, that probably the mix starts right at the source. And how the sourcing is done, the quality of the sourcing, and the entire nature, texture, the imaging of whatever you’re sourcing, Q: hm. DC: if it is pristine, then even at digital post I don’t think many questions come up. But I think that is where we kind of lack. Q: yes. So in terms of comparison between these formats, digital and analog, you prefer analog quality-wise? Or? DC: I think if we had options, we would probably basically settle for a hybrid setup, Q: ok. DC: LG, well, which would have the best of both worlds. LG.

124 Q: so now going to the more specific thing. How do you define ambience in film sound? Why ambience? It is because my focus is primarily on ambience. I’m actually developing a focused research in the use of ambience in cinema and media art, DC: hm. Q: from the point of view of perception and cognition. DC: hm. Q: how do you define ambience in film sound? DC: it’s a very interesting question. I think it is one of the most primarily important things in my mind. Ambience can play many roles. It’s basically - can I elaborate a little bit? Q: (overlap) of course! DC: ambience according to me plays many roles. One is to use it when there is dialogue. Two, use it when there is no dialogue. Ok when there is dialogue, the way we use it, what we use n how we use it and the level at which we use it, and when there is no dialogue, the same thing. And ambience is also married to silence. So how do we basically understand the interplay of levels versus silence? And also it is very important to understand the element of experience while we’re at the middle of the sound stage ya know how we’re effectively constructing the experience which, the master is the film. The film is the thought. Q: hm. DC: and I think the ambience is an extremely artistic aspect of the film sound where it is probably one of the most behind-the-scenes thing which is constantly coloring up the whole aspect of the whole treatment of the film. And the way, the style in which you wanna tell the story, and the story. So this is according to me how I see ambience, how I define ambience. It is a very integral part, as integral as music. And I love both. Q: hm. DC: and part of the whole construction of the experience. Q: but do you think that the quantity, level, and volume of ambience have changed over the years? And throughout this transition from analog to digital do you find that in the use of digital technology - in the digital domain, the quantity of ambience is much higher than the analog era? DC: yes I think this a very good question. Because this is something we keep noticing when we’re watching the work of others, when you’re doing the work of our own, especially with the creators or the directors, who would generally have their comments on how they want it. Here I want it really high, and you can’t hear anything, here I want

125 it really low, absolutely very subtle. So may be what they also mean by saying these things is not only the level, but the nature of the ambience. The ambient track is not something, which is showing itself too much. But it does hold the image of the sound stage. And it keeps that image going even in silence. Like otherwise there’s a digital silence, which takes out slightly out of the suspension of the disbelief. So even like tones like ya know completely dead room tones or very dead ambient tones where we’re using even like generated stereo tones, just to keep a continuum of the sound stage. Q: hm. DC: and maybe there’s it actually silent but you won’t even realize it unless you stop, hit pause. Maybe you’ll think the theatre sounds different! LG. So that way. I think yes there has been huge level changes because there are a lot of movies in which the ambience level in the digital platform have come really up. Also because with the formats changing now, which is 5.1, and Atmos, we can pan ambiences. And depending on which position in the theatre we are sitting, is how we’re experiencing the ambiences. So like the design of the 5.1 tracks is also very inherent to the ambient experience, versus the way you’re sitting in the theatre, because my dialogue is in the center track essentially, I mean not moving around too much, my music is probably between the LCR and a little bit from the surrounds. But my ambient tracks definitely have a certain spread in the surrounds, which in equation would be around sixty-forty when compared to music. So the sixty that I’m using in the surrounds is what would be very important to think about if I would consider a person sitting on the last row left hand most seat, for whom it’s the longest distance from the center, and ya know for him, the picture and the sound stage is actually very far away. So if he hears something from here, Q: hm. DC: he would actually feel disconnected. Q: hm. DC: to the whole action of the suspension of disbelief. To keep him conjuncted to that 2D space which he is looking at, that here is the picture here is the sound. What is happening here? LG. Very sharp sounds can disturb him so much you know. Ya know behind the head it is a big acoustical disturbance to have anything sharp coming from the behind. So we’re also trying to ya know constantly think of modifying what we work with to ensure that we do not disturb the audience from the main objective of experiencing the film as a film. And not hear sound as the sound but also always as a part of what is happening in the film. So this is I think the space we’re all in ya know. Hence it is also slightly different for different people. So some levels up, some levels low. LG.

126 Q: but stereo or monaural mixes had ambience. However, ambience was not spread out, it was in the center, I mean center reposition speaker. That could make a lot of difference, right? DC: yeah. Q: what according to you is the difference - if the ambience is in the center and if it is in the surrounds or rear speaker? DC: It’s a phenomenally important question. I mean it goes back even to the point of the design of the format. Q: hm. DC: ok. I personally think that the movie is in front. Q: hm. DC: it’s on the screen. And the sound is coming from the screen. Stereo fails to some extent because the pseudo-center drops. Because we have done stereo mixes on theatres and, it sounds good but ya know it’s nice to have that center which drops because the two speakers are a hundred feet apart. So LCR is something that really works for me. I am a very LCR person. I believe that LCR is something, which will essentially be the perfect mid-point of old school and new school. And it also gives you that conservative freedom to throw things out where you need it. So I mean the way I look at it is that instead of using surround for the whole film, or using sub, it’s better to use these aspects as projections for moments or for particular situations when you want to project it, then you use that whole aspect of surround and sub. Just to you know like, to go bigger with the sound, you know like for a flash like (sound effect) “whoosh!” There’s a big sound, which takes you off from all sides and goes down the sub, that’s a big thing ya know. Whereas when the film is going on, when the whole thing is happening, it is pretty LCR. I mean just maybe a little thing on the side, just to kind of extend the left and right a little more, so that there’s a slight sense of enveloping. But the information essentially is all Q: within LCR? DC: stereo. Yeah. Q: but when surround comes, when there is kind of compulsion to mix for surround because nowadays everybody wants to have it in surround, because multiplex, theatres are also full of surround, even some with Atmos, 7.1 of course. So when you do that mix, do you find it’s opening up more creative options or throwing more options to actually make you a little bit…? DC: absolutely it’s another brilliant question. It is absolutely a creative call.

127 Q: creative call. DC: we have nothing to do with this on the format side of things. It is a creative call, now you’re working with a director who understands space, and who understands the construction of the space in the image and the space of the sound. And how these two designs fit in together. This whole development is happening by the way at mix stage. Because when we’re doing the first draft of the mix, that is when our films real evolution is starting. And from there we’re correcting a lot of things, packing things up, opening things out, and so you try to work on certain situations in the film, which need to be a certain way, maybe it’s working, no it’s not working, let’s try this or try that out. So those things are going on. But it depends on the content. I honestly think it depends on the content if a guy who’s making a Bollywood movie would want the whole mix to be a certain way. If that guy is making something very artistic and he really doesn’t care about you know people who are gonna watch it, he will do it his way. If there’s a person who really wants to construct some kind of a sensation or experience through or in his film in certain parts, or he wants to string it up in a certain way he wants to keep that as a treatment of his film, then he will do it like that. For example, I will tell you, like in a standard Bollywood movie the sub-woofer EQ is going to have a boost on hundred. Like what we usually would have for base management, we’ll have the sub-woofer carrying a roll-off. So we’ll have a roll off from a hundred twenty and here under we’ll have a roll-off from about twenty-five hertz or thirty hertz. So we know that we have a decent sub-pack situation. But for a Bollywood mix, after this EQ there’s gonna be a small- little rocket over here. That rocket is going to be a boost at hundred. Which is very strange, I mean why would you wanna do that? But they want to create that forced ya know a forced impact on people with ya know additional hundred and loudness and like, if you’re not hearing, if you’re not listening, I will shout so loudly that you will not hear anything else but me. Ok that is one theory. The other one is that, “ok let’s not do that. That is a little extreme. But let us do something where,” -- because that’ll be for money you know. We’re spending money on surround sound, if you don’t hear surrounds why should we spend on surround sound?” Q: hm. DC: so let us hear some surrounds. “So what are we gonna hear?” if you tell the director, “look sir, your movie doesn’t have much surround activity scope because there are two people talking in the room. So he’s like: yeah they’re talking in the room, but you know you can make it feel like that the audience is inside that room!” so we’re like, “ok, let us try n do that.” So we are basically extending the space of the room.

128 Q: hm. DC: then for these movies we are probably not working with ambient tracks so to say but we’re working with reverbs. Q: reverbs. DC: so we’re emulating reverbs, which are basically working as reflections for surrounds, which are basically creating a sense of extended space for the LCR. So we’re not sending ambiences to the reverb, instead I’m taking the room tone and I’m sending the “send” of my room reverb up. So it is kind of packing up from the sides a little bit. Hence, there is no spike, there’re no drops, there’s no peaks. So peoples are not really understanding that they’re really listening to reverbs. But there’s a sense. That is one thing. The second thing is dialogue. Even for dialogues, ya know, oh this guy is in the car, so you know like “inside the car”, you know like that feel. LG you know he’s in the hall, like stairway. So all like a huge amount of reverb programming. Just to keep that thing going. So this is the reverb, which we’re working with spaces. Now we have the reverbs, which we have for the say music or EFX n SFX. And then we have the sub-activity. So we have to keep all the reverbs in the sub-activity, you know. If the sub gets eliminated we also have to see from where, at the crossover point, the low end of the reverb is getting cut. Q: hm. DC: and where the sub is meeting. So that has to be believable, because the sub is dry. And ya know the other guys are - so to EQ the reverbs. So if you see Shabdo in the theatre, Q: hm. DC: you’ll understand what I’m saying. Q: ok. DC: and so it’s a lot of thinking you know. It’s a total one on one case. So the director says something, but we essentially don’t listen to the director, all of what he says. We do our thing and present it back to him. And then he might have one or two suggestions, or he might agree with what we’re doing. And, you know, hence the whole thing of - the Bollywood, the midsection and the other section, which thinks LCR. Q: LCR. DC: movie on the screen, sound on the screen. (BG noise). Q: do you use ambience yourself? DC: yes. I actually go and sample ambiences myself. And then I bring them back and I have softwares’ to basically tag them for metadata. And you know when we use it in Pro Tools sometimes we use this software called Sound Minor, which helps us choose the

129 section of the ambience. Then we can also pitch the ambience. Then we can import it again to Pro Tools. Q: what purpose, in your opinion, does ambience serve? DC: the ambience actually-- Q: if it is not there? DC: I can give you an example. Q: hm. DC: it is very hard for me to elaborate on this because I think it is a huge thing ya know to kind of explain in a few words. It’s absolutely unexplainable in words it’s so big. It is very simple. Let us just put on the dialogues of a film, shut off the visuals, put the dialogues for the film and watch the film, and you hear the film. So we essentially are watching or hearing a film where we are not seeing the picture and we’re hearing the dialogues. Versus, we have the same thing and we open up the ambience tracks. Q: hm. DC: so it immediately gives us a reference of where we are, what is the mood of the situation, what is the magnification in which we are, like the sonic zoom, such as, Q: perspective? DC: yeah, perspective. It is also giving also a certain sense of the details of the space. And the movement of the spaces, ya know like from one space to another to another, in storytelling. Q: in storytelling? DC: Yes, in storytelling. Q: so, you want to say that the narrative space, which is represented in the film, might be a developing set. But it’s talking about, let’s say a bedroom, but it is actually a set. But it’s the narrative location, right? DC: yeah. Q: so you need to emulate the ambience of the bedroom. DC: yeah. Q: including maybe the neighborhood sounds– DC: absolutely. There’s a film I might have a copy of, it’s banned. It’s a film, which was made in Bangladesh, which was banned. This film is actually very important for me because, this is the film in which I went completely off the traditional norm of ambiences. Q: how? DC: So this basically is the story of a locality. Q: story of a locality?

130 DC: Yes. There are two women in this locality who are political leaders. Basically completely emulating the Bangladesh mood. The localities favorite sport is Kabbadi, which is the national sport. There is one policeman in that locality. The children who live there are going to a school to study. And there’s an issue with the school’s existence. Which is meaning that the future of the country, the kids, ya know their future and everything is in jeopardy because the school ownership is the issue. And hence this issue was like the “talk of the town!” Now eventually what happens in the film is, while the usual fights n brawls are happening, suddenly one morning something magical happens, when all the evil is gone. Everyone becomes good and they embrace their fellow ones. And then there’s no unhappiness left in the world. The policeman lost his job since all criminal activity is over, the lawyers lost their jobs as well. The policeman and lawyers then onwards started thinking skeptically about their survival, and even a change of profession. That was the situation. So the entire film has an extreme dark sarcasm. It was banned because there was one character who did both the women in different make- up. LG and actually both of them looked like the two ladies of Bangladesh, Q: ok, ok. DC: LG, that is Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia. Ok, it’s a film called Nomuna, by this guy called Enamul Karim Nirjhar. Q: hm. DC: for this film, we had complete freedom to play around and experiment with ambient tracks. For instance, in a situation where two men are conversing, in Bangladesh inside a house, in a room painted blue. They’re wearing cotton Panjabi’s and talking about locality politics in Bangladeshi language. But there we have used spaceship sounds as the ambience tracks. Q: ok. DC: ok! Like (sound effects enacted) all these sounds are heard. Q: LG. DC: so that is the whole fun, that the minute we are getting out of what really happens n we’re getting into another space which we’re creating, which is film sound, which helps us tell the story, which is the bonding between imagination and reality and surrealism. That is the power of ambience you know like, and that you can keep creating in situations where it cannot be that sound, but you can still forget. LG. Q: I want to mention of an example that I just remembered, where there is no ambience at all! DC: hm.

131 Q: there’s a film called Chowringhee. DC: ok. Q: it is based on a story by Shankar. I don’t remember whose direction, featuring and Mr. Chatterjee..? DC: Soumitra Chatterjee? Q: no, Shaswata Chatterjee’s father. DC: ok, Subhendu Chatterjee. Q: yes. In the opening sequence of the film, the two of them are speaking at Maidan. But there’s no ambience of Maidan. Lots of cars are passing by, but we can’t hear any of them. DC: hm. Q: so in that situation we’re still following the narrative. Do you find it problematic if there is no ambience in a sequence like this? Is it any hindrance to follow the narrative? DC: no, I don’t. Q: then? DC: see because we have to understand that- we have to also look at theater, “Jatra”. You know in Jatra, we have a set. Q: hm. DC: You can see a ship at a distance. Here, on this side the captain of the ship and the cabin crew are conversing. You can’t hear sea sounds mostly, but at times they’re added. But such a situation you see in theater right? Like where you know like the theatrical representation is like that. Q: hm. DC: I think, in the kinds of cinema that we see, do, ya know there’s a lot of cinema, which is especially Indian cinema which has a lot of take on theater. Q: hm. DC: and theatrical treatment, you know, because it has essentially evolved, Q: ok. DC: mainly out of that space you know. So ambience in that context is very different. Q: yes it’s a very valid point. Yes of course. So it’s kind of a line of thinking that audience will understand through imagination, or they will put sound there. DC: yeah. Q: from their own imagination, they’ll contribute some sort of ambience. DC: yeah.

132 Q: so the directors or the sound designers or the sound recordists, they didn’t think of putting ambience there. But then why do you, as a sound designer from a primarily digital domain, think of putting ambience? You also may come from that theatrical background as you said. DC: no, we do actually. There’s a lot of cinema that we do where we have to understand the temperament of the movie. There’re a lot of movies, which are coming straight out of the theater. It is still basically a Jatra, which is digitally recorded. Q: ok. DC: so for that your entire perspective was different about designing the whole thing. Like there’s a very interesting, I must tell you, this is one of my most interesting stories from my sound designing career. So there was a time of working in commercial movie, and a gentleman, a producer came to me and he said that, “how much time do you need to do the effects?” so I said like, “I need some time, I mean like twenty twenty-five days ya know to set the effects.” So he said that “don’t bother. Why do you want to spend so much time you know, I don’t need so much effects.” So I said that, “I am doing it for you, for whatever you’re paying me. So why do you want me to not do it, it’s also my work.” He said that, “look I have a theory.” So I said, “what’s your theory?” he said that, “look, the kind of movies that we make, they are played in very small theatres in suburban areas. And in small theaters, people who are very poor, who pay ten or fifteen rupees to go and see these movies, they’re people who are working class. They are basically hands on laborers or skilled people who are doing like labor level work. So they essentially live a whole day in sounds ya know. Like hammering, Q: yeah. DC: pulling some rickshaw, ringing the bell in the street. They are coming to the theater not to hear what they hear the whole day. They come to the theater to hear music. And to see the movie. I don’t want to give them what they hear the whole day. They would not like it.” That is another cultural take, a completely psycho-acoustical cultural situation where, LG, you know the effects is not required because the people who want to see the movie, ya know they’re people who are not excited about effects, they don’t want to see the effects, they want to hear some music, and they want to see some people dance and, Q: yeah. DC: you know dialogues and stuff. Q: yeah, the Vaudeville culture of European cinema. DC: yeah.

133 Q: it’s a huge hundred years of Vaudeville culture, Vaudeville Cinema. Same, same kind of production, like Jatra. DC: yeah. Q: if we don’t speak of or take into account different genres but generally speaking of films, how much ambience in terms of volume or depth, do you think is appropriate? DC: I honestly think that we should do sync sound in the beginning. Q: ok. DC: right at the beginning there should be sync sound because that’s an option, which should be there while constructing the film. And this is what I also do many a times because I don’t tell people, I use camera sounds, like even as bad as shot on a 5D. Q: ok. DC: you know 5D microphone, but using that sound ya know hiding that sound by merging with other tracks using that sound. But using that sound because what I find is the way the locational spaces and- so there are so many aspects about sound. One is you know the sweetness, the image, the depth and all that. But essentially there’s something very central information in the sound. So if we can divide the two, I can take the central information from my – even if it’s bad pilot sound or camera, if I can take it from there – And I can mask it by using a lot of other tracks, which, you know, like hide it. The entire film is made with two lapels and one boom. There have been many situations where we had four characters, but we were one mike short, but we had to work around. LG the situation to work with only two lapels and one boom, ok! And in the post we didn’t change anything. Of course I had to EQ the things tracks a little bit and level them a little bit and I use a little bit of imaging, but that was it. And then it was a stereo film, we did stereo. Because 5.1 is something that again will go out of control. But with stereo at least we know that, you know, one can see it. Essentially most people will see it in computers ya know or in smaller formats, so it was very important to get a bang on stereo mix. So this is a film called Gandu. Q: oh! Gandu! DC: yeah Q: ok. Yes I know that film. It made history in Denmark. DC: yeah! Q: curated the show. DC: yeah. Q: I met him there. He was promoting Gandu as a film which, in his understanding, was an epoch making film in Indian cinema.

134 DC: uh-huh. Q: and Danish audience liked it very much. DC: uh-huh. Q: they couldn’t relate to the very core cultural aspects, but somehow they got into that kind of mood. DC: yeah. So that was sync sound. Q: that was sync sound? DC: that was sync sound and not in the same way as we understand sync sound in Hollywood or even big Bollywood movies like Lagaan, the way they do sync sound. This is extremely guerilla, extremely unconventional sync sound. Q: ok. But even inside the indoor sequences, like inside the bedrooms and inside flats? DC: we modified a lot. We set up, we made our own rigs. If I wasn’t there I made a rig where ya know, if it was a fake rig then with the camera we had a special microphone rig, which fitted with the fake rig, and all the cables were going into the recorder there. If you see the trailer, even in the trailer we’ve done a lot of live emulations. So there’s this wine glass sequence in the Japanese section where the boy goes to a prostitute, ya know there’s this sound of a wine glass, which is live, which could have been done later but in the dialogue, and in the middle of everything like that is innovation of ambience I was talking about. That you’re creating, you’re imposing ambience, it’s not there. But you’re creating something in the real situation, which you don’t know, maybe it’s a sound, maybe its music, maybe it’s something disturbing but it’s there in that space, but somehow because spatially when you’re recording in that room, the dialogue, that sound and everything has its you know kind of commonality. It’s a strange experience. So these are the kinds of experiments that I did for this film. After that I did sync experiments with - we did a film after that called Burn, which has not come out as yet. Q: what is the name? DC: Burn. Q: Burn. DC: Burn was a film, which was basically about a woman and a detective. Q: ok. DC: And the director is following this woman through a flight which they’re taking from Calcutta (Kolkata) to Bombay (Mumbai). And then in Bombay they’re chasing around. And there from Bombay they take another flight to Goa. And then in Goa they go to this music festival and you know like, a lot of things happened. It was absolutely insane

135 because we were shooting inside the airport with no permits. I couldn’t carry my equipment, or my booms, nothing. Q: so…? DC: so we were working with, I mean extremely modified ways so that we don’t get caught. Yet we had to do sync sound. So it was very funny, like, there was a situation- so I made a micro-boom. I had this small Schoeps microphone and boom 48 or something like that, small microphone, which I used as a micro-boom. Q: hm. DC: so it looks nothing like an actual microphone. And then we had these really ya know thin wire, that we custom made which goes into a very small recorder, like yours. Q: hm. DC: but it has microphone inputs. So this guy, you know I’m constantly using this n this in ways where this is mapping the stereo space. And that is basically constantly mapping the elemental ya know characters and their dialogues. So if I use it in post ya know I can always use my stereo space and my boom in a way. And the placement of this will be always kept in mind that, ya know, it’s LR. So keeping it LR frontal or LR rear, LG. Q: is this a stereo film? DC: this is probably gonna be 5.1. Q: 5.1! How will you expand the stereo space into surround? DC: (overlap) see that’s what I’m saying, I will not expand it. Q: ok. DC: it will be on a 5.1 platform. Q: but? DC: but I will only use it when there’s situation to extend it. Q: hm DC: like we are in the beach in Goa, and there’s a Djembe like thing happening, 50 Djembes playing together. It’s very difficult to record that. People are talking, it’s such a powerful sound, how do you? Even if you want to record it you’ll see people will start talking about it in recording n all that. So once we recorded it, the way to fix it probably would be to have a real Djembe player or two real Djembe players, play on top of that n layer it, which I can, ya know like, merge with the actual track to get more perspective on the Djembe when required. And then you have the sea, and the wind and people and all those factors, which are separately sampled. So you can bring them in as and when you need it. Of course your arrangement is important. There’s no overlapping on the

136 spectrum. Maybe the winds can stay on top, and this track is in the bottom and right at the bottom we can have the sea waves. So you have the whole range, spin it a little bit. Q: but everything I’m hearing it’s primarily digital domain, digital technology. But if you use digital technology in that particular pervasive way, then why do you find analog still more qualitatively better? DC: sounds better. Q: sounds better? DC: yeah. Q: but everything you’re using technology-wise is digital. Like recording equipments… DC: (overlap) See we don’t have options. Q: oh you don’t have options. DC: I mean if I want to buy a 24-track recorder I will have to look for the two-inch tape, which will be so difficult to procure. And we’re commercially operating, we have to be compatible with other platforms of other studios where we’re sending our materials or we’re taking materials from them. So we’re also looking at the factor, where is the world going in the common ya know in the technology platform. And not be left out. Q: these two films you spoke about, Burn and Gandu – have you done sync sound for both? DC: It’s sync sound. Q: sync sound. But why haven’t you applied sync sound in any of your other films? DC: because they didn’t let me! CHORUS LG DC: like I did another film, which was a film by Q called Tasher Desh. So for Tasher Desh he wanted a certain quality of sound for the winds. So when they were shooting in Srilanka it was extremely windy. And the flags were fluttering immensely/violently (sound effect enacted). All these effects are happening, there’s a certain sensation in what’s happening, I can hear in the pilot track. But the minute you wanna recreate that, I’m sure that we’ll not be able to recreate that. Q: why? DC: Because those winds don’t blow through our country, where will I get those winds from? Q: ok. But if everything is recorded in sync, if the wind sound is filtered with a low card and captured, then? DC: the tone gets destroyed. Q: ok.

137 DC: Yes. But the minute we try to EQ out materials, Q: ok. DC: it loses on its harmonic ends, Q: ok. DC: and the tone goes for a toss. Q: ok that’s the reason! DC: yeah. So I suggested that, “why don’t we go there and sample these winds?” So we went. We went, we sampled most of the locations over there, we sampled winds and other stuff, even we sampled the flags, and we did Foley. Q: separately? DC: separately we did Foley over there. I mean marching on sand, ok? Movement on sand. Characters falling down, with the whole ambient thing. And then we did this thing, which Walter Murch does. We did this think called Worldizing. So there were a lot of dialogues. What we did, which we actually played them in spaces and re-recorded them back. Q: ok. DC: so it sounds like, it basically captures- so I’m not adding reverb. Q: hm. DC: say I’m playing the dialogue from here, Q: hm. DC: and I put a microphone here and I record it back. So basically I’m Worldizing my content. My content is probably not real, but in this space it is getting that sense of ya know ambient space and tone in it. And that tone is what we understand, that tone is our reference, ya know like, immediately we know whether it’s outdoors, indoors, room, corridor. Q: yeah. DC: that is the tone. So achieve that tone, I use this process and I get the center by simply using a mono microphone. When I got the center, I did some diversification on the left and right, a light spill. You get to move where you are. Q: but in ideal situation it should be completely sync, without adding anything right? DC: absolutely. LG. absolutely. There’s no questions asked about that. It should be absolutely sync sound. Then you can decide in post where you don’t want to keep it and remove out of it, which should be the ideal way of working. Q: absolutely. But you said you don’t get that generally because of the situation of the location.

138 DC: see most people will say, “Sync sound is not possible in Kolkata!” Gandu was sync sound in ! Q: LG DC: ok baaje Shibpur Howrah te sync sound kora (Sync sound was done in Howrah and Shibpur). You don’t care! The guy’s talking, there was a car passing, it was loud, that’s how it is! Q: yeah, of course! DC: how does it matter? The thing is that the film has subtitles, but besides that if you see the film, there are certain dialogues in certain situations, which are very soft. But they are meant to be soft! Why will you dub those dialogues to make it audible? Then that emotional dynamics will be lost! There are some things, which you don’t need to know, you know! So this is I think one of the most important things. What directors here are scared of, of course this is out of the question, but I think it’s also very important to note that people still do not understand the power of sound stage. They completely rely on the power of the image. It’s 80-20. If they really understood how they could manipulate this, they probably do, some of them probably do understand but they don’t know how to go about it. Which is also something that I feel. And some of them naturally work with it because they work with documentaries. Is also one of the things, is why they work with sound so well because they come from documentary background. So I worship people who are basically, ya know filmmakers who have some kind of documentary lineage. They understand you know even if it’s something which other people will say, “that sound is too loud, don’t use that.” So what, that sound must be having the potential of carrying a different sense or adding a different thought! The thought is more important than the sound, right? Now these understandings are so esoteric and so fine! Q: hm. DC: that there are two ways about it. If you discuss it you’re just gonna get screwed. You just do what you have to. I mean that’s what I’ve kind of realized in the long run. LG. After having many battles. LG. But sync sound yes, after that I convinced another guy for sync sound that was for this movie called Shyamal kaku turns Off the Lights (Shyamal Uncle Turns off the Lights). Q: which one? DC: Shyamal Kaku turns Off the Lights, Suman Ghosh’s film. Q: ok. DC: which – Q: new one?

139 DC: new one which did a couple of festivals and which was reasonably appreciated. This film was entirely shot like that. It was shot by Ranjan Palit. Q: hm. DC: he shot the film. So there was like one guy who was helping him with the camera and then there were two guys on the sound. So the whole unit was four guys. And we shot for eight days and that was it. Q: so sync sound is happening in Bengali Cinema. DC: sync sound is setting in as a trend. Q: ok. And you are one of the primary amongst them? DC: yeah I’m trying my level best to use it. LG But one thing is only our contemporary recordists are using sync sound. Whom we can fight with them and tell them where they are going wrong, where they’re making a mistake, which shouldn’t be done! They’ll probably do it. Then they will probably say that “ok we’ll do it. But you don’t say that you need extra money for that, you have to do it in the existing budget.” So I said, “ok, we’ll do it that way, we’ll figure it out.” So that is one section we’re working with. But then there are so many other sections ya know the old filmmakers who’s done it the old way and then there are these other filmmakers who are coming from the Jatra space. Q: hm. DC: more theatrical space. Their understanding and perception of sound is very different. So all of these are like completely based on references. Q: if I ask very theoretically, what do you think that sync sound does to the ambience or the sound environment of the film? How does it add - What does it add? DC: hm. Q: if it’s not made in the studio, it’s directly recorded on location, DC: hm. Q: then you play it back in theater. What sort of difference does it make? DC: I think it eliminates the whole aspect of suspension of disbelief. Q: ok. DC: it brings to the foreground, believe. This is it. Q: believability. DC: yes. Q: that’s what from the point of view of cognition, we call it spatial cognition. DC: yes. Q: believability, absolutely.

140 DC: yes. Maane otar moddhye kono e nei je accha ami oikhane ekta onyo ambience lagiye, dialogue ta hocche sheta reverb kore match kore ekta jinish construct korlam, proshnoi utheche na. Ami okhane darie achi, etai hocche! (By no chance I will put any other ambience sound there, I will not add reverb to the dialogues there to match it and construct, it’s totally out of question! I am standing there and you hear that sound only). Q: yes. DC: “Oh! I couldn’t imagine there will be this kind of sound here!” Q: LG. DC: such situations have such sounds only! Q: LG. DC: (hesitation) see the fun is that’s another power. If you’re working on a film where, you know one of your important tracks of working with the audiences’ believability, then sync sound is so important. Say you’re doing a horror movie, where you bring the usage of sync sound in such a way that you’re always thinking that you’re in a real space seeing a real incident happen! Q: yes. DC: when something crucial happens there, that impact is much more than constructing the whole sound stage. So that is the game, which we have to understand and play. Q: hm. But the early films were all sync sound, right? For instance say, Devdas 1935, and Satyajit Ray’s early films also were sync sound. But between 1960s and 2000 let’s say, there is a strange sort of studio centrism in cinema! DC: money. Q: money? Why? DC: it’s called money. Q: ok. DC: when money came in, then there were some people who realized that, “oh! This could be a good opportunity to make money.” That is when the studios came in. Because films essentially, even if you go down to very small markets - I shouldn’t say markets, very small countries where films are getting made, they don’t have studios, they don’t have sets. They have the real localities - they have the streets, and something happening through that only. Q: European Cinema, let’s say. DC: yes. Say Middle Eastern or European. Q: Iranian cinema?

141 DC: Iranian cinema. White Balloon is running on a VHS, where one girl is passing through the road with a balloon in hand, LG what I mean is there’s no construction in that! There’s no set. So that came in also because the nature of cinema shifted. We started having Godzilla. We started having King Kong. We started having Lord of the Rings, the Superman, and Spiderman. So – Q: RA-one LG. DC: yes, RA-one. So immediately we were talking about a completely different you know like path. Q: whole Amitabh Bachchan genre of film such as the angry young men and action films, they are based on the sense of studio centrism. Because a boxing punch sounds like it’s a big thing, it’s a big deal. DC: yeah. Yeah. Q: just a punch. DC: power, yes. (Sound effect enacted) Out of the blue! Q: a gunshot like—it’s absolutely synthetic – DC: no, you’re right! You’re so right. Even now we did a film, called The Last Lear. Q: Last Lear? DC: ok? Q: by Rituparno Ghosh? DC: by Rituparno Ghosh. For this film, except Amitabh Bachchan’s dubbing, we did the rest of the work here in Kolkata. After adding effects and everything we sent it to a studio in Bombay. They were doing the final mix. There was this gentleman in Bombay, I forgot his name, Biswadeep or something. He was doing the final mix. Amitabh Bachchan came to see the film. And he said that, “why have you changed my voice? Who gives you the authority to change my voice?” to that gentleman, who was the sound person there. Q: changed voice means from sync to dub? DC: no! The tonality of the voice. There’s a bass in my voice, which doesn’t work for the character I’m playing. In Last Lear Amitabh Bachchan is not himself! He is not throwing punches. He is a failed actor who’s being tortured by our director, and he’s trying to recoup himself out of that. But still he wants his voice. Ya know for a sound person who’s listening to this, it’s such an important lesson. To know how actors work! Because no matter where you put them into the character or scene or whatever, he is maintaining the same voice throughout. That’s him! That is Amitabh Bachchan! Q: hm. I can--

142 DC: and Amitabh Bachchan is going through this thing, ya know. So it’s taking the film to a completely different plain! Because it’s not about that character of that film anymore. Q: ok. DC: you know what I’m saying! Q: hm. DC: it’s Amitabh Bachchan who’s the character of that film! Q: ok. It’s a completely different ballgame. DC: completely different ballgame! Hence these are the things, you know, Q: I have something to ask here: Rituparno Ghosh as a director never worked with sync sound. His films, all of his sounds are like dubbed and synthetic. Why is that? DC: yeah. That is because he is obsessed with dialogue delivery. And he used to personally sit and break every single dialogue delivery by people, every single line to the dialogue delivery that he wanted. And which I think gave him more sense of satisfaction in the kind of stylization, in the overall scene of things, rather than on a sonic side of things. Q: you were going to show something. DC: yeah. I was going to show you the hundred people. Q: hm. DC: I mean they work with a lot of people. Ya know, the manager. Like the actor needs a manager, the manager needs another manager, LG. And there’re many people. So many people in a set and untrained people to sync sound environment and sound security, doesn’t work out for them. And honestly, it’s the showbiz thing, ya know. If you really worked with four people and created the same thing, your producer’s will be like, “why am I gonna pay you so much?” You know, so there’s a whole element of scale also. And at that element of scale sync sound is very difficult to happen. So it is very important to understand that there are reasons for cinema, you know. Is it a commercial blockbuster moneymaking or is it like more of a festival, you know more of a personal film or docu- feature. Q: even though it’s blockbuster, for example, if you have a production team – a sound production team, there should be a production mixer, a recordist. Even then at that particular setting, you cannot do sync sound, is it not strange? DC: you can do sync sound, you can of course do sync sound! There are so many Foreign productions which are coming, working right here, with the same people and doing sync sound. But the thing is that they have their workflows in place. Not for the sound people, but for the management side.

143 Q: hm. DC: they have their workflows in place. Of how to regulate an environment where they’re gonna work like this. Which is not in the control of the sound team ya know. The sound team is just responsible for recording. But somebody has to regulate the entire space. In terms of this, that ya know, you cannot carry mobile phones, you cannot wear these kind of clothes, you cannot wear these kind of shoes, or you will just wear socks, or ya know you will have to tie up everything of this nature, no lose ends, or only this many people will be allowed in this ring circle and ya know the other people will have to vacate. These are the things you have to do when you’re, when we’re shooting. You cannot do when we’re shooting, ok? Kind of equipments, which we use for lights, this that, electricals, so detailed the whole thing, to do a sync sound scenario. I think that is yet to develop. Q: hm. DC: unless I produce a film, then I can regulate that, ya know. I mean if I produce a film there’ll be four people because I have no money! LG. So that is basically on the sound effects side, and then we have VFX/EFX. Then we’re designing a lot of also sounds which – Q: but you also use sounds from sound bank or the use of sound bank is decreasing? DC: no we use because, why we use from sound bank is because some sounds are very well recorded, ya know. It’s very well recorded. Like if you wish to use a sound of an aircraft taking off left to right or going overhead, ya know it’s another art to do that kind of recording. Q: yes. But if you have the option of the digital recorder, which can record in four channels, you can go to the location and if you see the plane is taking off, you can go to the location and record the plane that is taking off! DC: I agree. But in Dumdum airport, where I’ll be recording, there will be noises from the passing-by rocket buses like (sound effects enacted) LG. Q: LG ok. DC: challenges I mean. Q: yes challenges. That’s why. But do you believe in yourself, as a sound designer, that the sound of plane from the sound bank and the sound of British Airways flight taking off from Dumdum airport will match? DC: your take depends on the story. The only way to look at it is, for the story you’re telling, and the game of believe and non-believe that you’re playing, how the sounds fall in place within your scheme of things. Q: absolutely. Also genre specific.

144 DC: yes, genre specific. Q: if you, for example, well, make a film on the tradition of Gandu then probably you’ll not, DC: yeah, then the plane will take off from Dumdum! People will talk in the background, and even the rocket buses will honk! Q: yes, absolutely. DC: you know what I’m saying. But in another case where we are trying to construct a classical situation, where lovers are going apart, and the plane is taking off, there at the background if you hear (rocket bus sound enacted) LG CHORUS! Q: absolutely right. LG DC: that can be quite terrible! LG Q: yes. LG absolutely. I had more questions, but that can happen later another day…

145 Hitendra Ghosh (2014)

Duration: 1:21:36 Name abbreviations: Hitendra Ghosh – H, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

H: Ray has been using the sound of the train. The sound depicts this and that, ok? I mean it is being used emotionally, and different types of sounds he had used for different locations and all that. So I was quite impressed. So I wrote it in my thesis that this is how he used it. Then they gave me a permission to interview him. So I went to Calcutta. And Ray actually used to know me because my parents and Ray, they were all in the same class. So that way he used to know me. So I asked him that, “you’ve been using this sound of train”. LG. But my point is that analysis, they think too much about it. Because it has happened very naturally. It so happened that all his train sounds were sounding different. Q: hm. H: he didn’t use the same train in all. Because in the film he has been using about 10 or 15 times. And at that time there were no stock effects. So he had to use the original location train sound. So it sounded a little different, every take was a different take. So that way it was sounding different. So Satyajit Ray rather made a big thing out of it. Q: but later you also did some mixing for Ray, right? H: yes, later. Q: for instance I think Shatranj ke Khiladi, isn’t it? H: yes. Q: what I would like to know from you - I mean I think you have immense amount of stories and anecdotes to tell probably - but my curiosity would be primarily to know about the transitions. The transitions from mono mix and stereophonic mix a bit, and then surround mix. Did the practice change from one to the other? H: see actually the change came in many places. Like you can say from the 80’s the change started coming. But we were doing a little different from the world. See the world went into Dolby. After mono they straight, away went to Dolby. But we didn’t go, we were doing magnetic four tracks. So that was something, which we were totally doing it in India. We used to go and put magnetic heads, four track heads in different cinemas. And the heads were made in India. So that way we used to call it stereo. But it had four tracks. So at that time only we started giving the fourth track into surround. But there was no woofer track, there was only left, right, center and surround.

146 Q: in the projection room the four tracks were separate, right? H: yeah, they were separate. Then once the Dolby came, then of course we also got it changed. But I think we were quite late. Dolby came I think in ’84 or ’85. But we came. Started using it in the 90’s. We started actually in ’95 but basically Dolby came in ’96. Q: in ’96 Daud was Dolby. H: in between that six track magnetic also started coming. There was one film called Platoon. Q: yes. H: that was made in six-track magnetic. So a lot of changes have come from the mono days. Q: but mono mix had a particular kind of sound arrangement, such as voice, effects. H: see in mono the basic thing is that the source is one. So whatever you do, your levels of recordings it has to go at the back only. If the dialogues are going on you have to put the music at the back only, so that the volume of the music has to go down. Then the layers of sound levels have to be maintained in mono. But when the stereo came, the Dolby, then you have a vast thing. So you don’t need to come down to a level because it is coming from left, it is coming from right. So there’s a big span of the sound. So our thinking became a little different. Q: yes. What was that difference? H: the thing was when it came we were very excited, that surround sound is there. So let’s put this one in the surround. So we were actually making it little gimmicky in terms of tracking in the beginning. Q: ok. H: but then we realized that these are all distractions. If a sound is there in the surround people sometimes look at the back, sometimes they get distracted. So slowly we are again coming back to frontal. Q: ok. H: so when the stereo started coming even our music we used to put at the back in the surround and all that. But slowly I feel now with so many tracks already there, now Atmos is also there, we are still going and concentrating on the front. Even the Hollywood films are still doing that. You will hardly find any good Hollywood film where the panning is too much. They are again going back to the old one, maybe sometimes the surround comes and goes ya know that way. In the beginning we were literally making it a gimmicky thing ya know.

147 Q: but then we see that the number of channels are increasing every time with new technology coming in. What does they do? H: well personally I don’t like it. See what happens is that when you are mixing you are in the center of the theater. Now suppose I am mixing in this studio, I am sitting here. So for me whatever playing I am doing I am seeing it here, with this position. But in the cinema hall I am not the only one who is seeing the film in the center, right? People are in the left also, left corner also, right corner also, at the back also. So they should experience the same thing, which I am doing, right? But if you have multiple tracks it is not possible that you are giving the same kind of thing everywhere. So now what has happened, a big question has come, like in Atmos for example I give a sound which is right on my head when I am sitting at the mixing level. Some sound, suppose a bird sound on the top, now in the theater only those people who are in the middle of the theater will have that sound coming on their head. Rest those who are sitting above that row, they’ll be experiencing that the sound has come from the back, ok? Q: hm. H: and these people who are at the back they’ll feel that the sound has come from back. So you are not giving the same kind of sound to everybody. So that becomes a question, why do you want to do that? That’s why I prefer the Auro track, the Auro, which has come recently. Q: Auro 3-D. H: yes. So that is much better. This is my personal reaction to this, that with Auro they are at least giving the same sound to everybody. Q: ok. H: it doesn’t point out. If they are putting a bird sound which is coming on the top the same sound is there in all the speaker line. Q: ok. H: so you get the same feeling, whether you are sitting here or there it becomes the same. So that way I prefer Auro than others. Q: they do some sort of wavefield synthesis, it’s not localized at certain sources. H: No, they should not localize. The problem starts during localization. Or you have to accept that. It so happens that this mixing level, these seats happens to be in the front. Front rows, that happens to be the cheapest seat. So when you are paying more you should get the best sound. But I think they’ll sort it out. Q: so in terms of mixing, mono had this limited scope of not only channels but also dynamic range, also I think levels.

148 H: the best thing about what has come now, because we are dealing with digital recording now, so in mono what used to happen is that the track had to be photographed and gone into sound negative and all, that process. So there’re a lot of losses in the sound. And we couldn’t have that dynamic range also. Suppose we have a soft song of shuffling, but this sound used to get mixed with the noise of the optical track. But now you can get a very clean sound. Absolutely all the details can be heard now, with the digital coming, with everything in hard drives. So that way the quality of sound has improved a lot. Q: if given a choice, which particular format will you prefer? Mono, stereo or 5.1? H: I would prefer 5.1 but without doing too much and treat it like mono. At some places going into surround. But I don’t like the gimmick of 5.1. I prefer the way Hollywood is making. Q: ok. H: I prefer that kind of mixing, I do prefer that. Even their action films also, they’re mostly in front. Only the reverbs are going in the surround, ya know. And sometimes when they want to pan something then they pan it like that. Otherwise you are concentrating on the front. I do like that kind of a thing. Q: but this clarity thing that digital technology introduced - clarity of details and sound information, does it bother you or does it make your choices easier? H: no it helps me a lot. Because sometimes you need a lot of layers in the sound. Like you have a sequence of say in a village. You have birds also there, there is a say river flowing there. Lot of sounds are there. But in mono times we couldn’t get all the sounds clearly. So sometimes we would come to that and then go back and then get the other thing. But now because of the clarity you are getting all. You can put reverb in the left side, you can have the birds on the right side, so many things can be told in a much better way. Q: but then if you treat a surround like mono, then the spreading of those details would be much more wider, right? I mean if you treat it like a mono then everything should be in the front. H: no front too has left also, right also, left center, right center. So you can have a good amount. Because ultimately what happens is when the audience is looking at the screen they are actually concentrating on the screen part. Whatever the length of the picture is the rest of the things are dark. So your surround should only make it sound wider kind of a thing. It should not look like the sound is coming from back. Q: ok.

149 H: say like when we put same sound, say violins in music, so when I put the violins 50- 50, 50% is in front and 50% is in the back. Then what does it sound for the audience, it sounds that the violins have spread. Not coming from left or coming from surround, it has gone wider. So it has gone beyond the screen size. The sound has become a little bigger. So when you want to show something like when you are pulling out of something like the church and then you want to zoom out like this, so you are going wider in your picture. So in the sound also if you can do that it adds to the feeling. So that’s why this 5.1 can be ya know useful in terms of enhancing the visual. Q: and then I’ll ask you about noise. Noise is a specific term but I am rather curious to know about your views on ambience. H: see noise is something like a sound, which you don’t like. That we call it noise. The sound, which you like, cannot be noise. Ok? Q: of course. H: you can’t call it noise. Say now there is a scene, like we are sitting here. There is a pinning sound, which is coming. Now if it is not disturbing you and you feel that it is giving authenticity to the sequence, it is a noise that way, but when you are putting it and it is being liked and it is helping the visual then it is no longer a noise then. Q: yeah. Because it was termed as noise then – for every film in history noise is the term used. But after the coming of digital technology the definition of noise has changed. Now often we redefine noise as ambience, background sound, room tones etc. H: yeah, room tone has started coming. Because now we can play around. Earlier we used to have dialogue track, suppose there is no music then the dialogues are dubbed dialogues. So in between the dialogues there is a lot of gap. So now what we do is we put room tone. If we are sitting here there is a room tone for this space. So that way we can add and now it doesn’t disturb us. Q: I am curious to know why this shift happened. For instance, before it was noise and now it is being used in the soundtrack. H: sound is something, which you have to enjoy. Because see sound is something that you are experiencing every day as soon as you get up, from the morning when you get up till you go to sleep you are hearing sound, you are seeing visuals. So you should have the same kind of an experience in the cinema also. So earlier the cinema used to be a little away from the real life. But now because the technology has developed we would like now to get the audience the same experience that they are getting outside. Q: hm.

150 H: Like today when I go out I hear a lot of traffic. And suppose I meet you there, I am talking to you, alright. You are hearing me but with so much of noise. Earlier what we used to have is we would not use the traffic sound. Q: hm. H: because we wanted the dialogues to be clear then. But today with new technology and whatever you can call it, I have the sound of the traffic. And make it sound as if you are really there. So we are going into more on the natural experience, which you have outside the cinema. So people are enjoying that. Now the only problem, which comes is the background music. In any way it is an artificial thing. So now we have to be very careful about how to use the background music. Like when I used to do Satyajit Ray’s films he would give me background about 20 feet more before where he wants actually. He would record 20 feet more music. And also where he wants to end the music, he would give me another 20 feet more. What was his idea? His idea was “that I have got a lot of time to fade in, or come. But when I come audience should not feel that I have come with the music.” It should only enhance the sequence, without making the audience feel that there is background going on. You get me? So he used to tell me all this that, “come in such a way that I should not feel that the music has come.” So that is also how background can be used. Because that’s the only artificial thing today, which was not there. He was very particular about the background music. He would record himself, he used to do his own recording. But then there is another class of people, who, if I miss the background even two frames, if I’ve come late, “no, you’ve come late. I want it exactly here.” So there is another class of people who think people should notice it. Because sometimes what happens is that the film becomes a little boring or it’s not holding. Then they want to use the background so that the tunings of the background will at least make them feel a little engaged. Like especially if you have a chase sequence. Q: hm. H: one man is running after another man. So now only if you have the footstep and all that, it may not give you that. But if you have a very thumping music, it might create excitement. So that way the background can be used. Q: it seems that in mono era the use of ambience was very less. H: that is because we needed to have very silent portions in mono to get the ambience. But now with 5.1 we can still have the music going in front, and in the surround we can still have the ambience. Q: but Ray’s films for example - his use of ambience was amazing, for example, in .

151 H: hm. Q: in 1969 he used ambience, which seems like -- H: No there he is actually calculating and putting the ambience. His whole designing, what you can say, is that. He would like it that at this point I want to go out of this room. How do I make the audience go out of this room? So he would use the birds’ sound. So that when audience is hearing the birds they are actually thinking outside that room. Q: hm. Psychologically? H: yes, psychologically it goes out. So he has been designing that way. If you study all his films sound has played a role in a lot of places. He has used sound that way. Where he thinks that the music is not going to help. Q: yeah. But in Shatranj ke Khiladi there is lesser ambience. H: see when the chess game is going on the concentration has to be there, even if they are sitting at the lawn or another place. And I remember doing it, and I was actually saying that, “it’s an outdoor, let’s have some birds.” He said, “No. I don’t want that.” Q: you should feel that you are playing chess. H: in that way he calculates everything, even the movement of the camera also he has calculated it. Q: Shatranj ke Khiladi and Charulata were also period pieces. In period piece it’s difficult to provide ambience. I like these films the most, because there he plays with time… H: actually if you see he has worked a lot on Shatranj. For many years he couldn’t make it because it needed a big producer to make it. Because his producers were not able to spend so much money on it. Q: in stereo, in four-track stereo or magnetic 8-track stereo, you have also used ambience but maybe you have spread it out. How did you use ambience then, in those times? H: see I think I did four or five films in that. One was ’s film Saudagar, it was done in that. Then one was ’s film, Dharavi. So we used it the same way as we did in mono. Only one thing was different that I used cuckoo sound which in mono there is no travelling. Q: hm, yeah. H: I had to keep it at one place in mono. Here what I could do is, I could move the sound of the cuckoo, I made it go round. So that panning helped a lot. Q: helped to? H: helped to say that the bird has just gone away. Q: ok.

152 H: otherwise that feeling of going away was not coming. Like there’s a gunshot in an outdoor, and the birds have to fly because of the sound. Q: hm. H: so for that in mono the feeling of leaving that space was not coming. Q: ok. H: but in four-track that feeling came because I went into surround and there it goes into the surround. So when people are there and they hear the sound of the gunshot and then suddenly they hear the sound of the birds going away. Q: so the off-screen space was exposed for the audience. H: yes. The same thing. See in Ritwick Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara the same sequence is there. He had the same kind of a visual. But because it was mono he used the sounds of the birds flying. But it didn’t do that kind of an effect that we could do later on. Q: also in Aparajito when the father dies. H: yes. But my point is that the director’s perception is there. They think like that. Q: but that off-screen space can be further widened in surround sound. H: yeah. So these are the certain things, which help, 5.1 has really helped. Q: now people are working with sync sound. H: sync sound has come back again. Q: yes it has. H: because now they have realized that the sound can be recorded very well. Earlier we were not able to record properly, there were no recorders, we used to have only Nagra which takes only two mics. Now you go out, you take a mixer out, you are using six or seven mics at a time, lapel/Lavalier mics and all other kinds, so the quality of recording has come back again. And also for dubbing this thing was not proper. Dubbing doesn’t give the same kind of performance that the actors do while shooting. So now even the artists feel that whatever acting is done in front of the camera that remains the best. “We’ll not be able to produce it while dubbing.” Now half of my films are all original sounds. Q: in earlier times when live location sound used to be there, like in 1930’s, ‘40’s and 50’s, you also worked in that time a bit? H: no I didn’t. I came in ‘70’s. Q: ok. H: so in the ‘70’s my first film after passing out was Nishaant by Shyam Benegal. Everything there was original. There was no dubbing, no effects recording, no Foley recording. Everything we had to do it there. Even I didn’t use any stock sounds. There

153 were cars, there were vintage cars used there. But what I did was like a documentary shooting. You take a shot, even if it is a silent shot I also used to take the sound of that shot. If the shot is only that the car is passing, I said, “No, I will also take the sound.” So I would be next to the camera to take the sound. So I used get the exact perspective. We recorded with Nagra and we used to have Sennheiser 814, the long one. It was so good to record birds on that, 12 volt. Q: directional mic? H: totally directional, absolutely a gun mic. I would down and if the bird is there on the tree I would catch that bird. I have recorded that kind of stuff. Q: I don’t think he had many people to control the situation. But then there would be many different elements of noise in that. Like even unwanted noises. So how did you control that? H: no we had to edit it and all that. There was one place I still remember I was doing Shyam Benegal’s film Junoon. So there’s a scene where Nasir comes and the pigeons are kept in their cage-house. So he comes, he gets very angry and takes out the pigeons and he talks out of anger. So in the rehearsal he just gave the cameraman that this is how I am going to move. So I said alright. So if you are going like this now then what about the boom since it was quite a long shot. So I said what to do, so I gave him a lapel/Lavalier mic. He never told me what he is going to do. In the shot he is extensively hitting the cage and shouting very loudly at the same time, and he went into madness, total madness one full shot of one minute or one and a half minute. And I was getting all kinds of feedbacks and noises. So I told Nasir that you have to do it again. He said, “I cannot perform this again!” and Shyam also said, “How will he perform?” I said that you can’t use this sound now, what will I do? So it was a challenge to me now, how to cut those portions. And use it like that. Today if were shooting we could have managed now. So I cut it, I used his words. And because it was madness, so there were jerks while cutting in the voice. I added pigeons to that, and it took me four of five days to make that track. Q: ok. H: so sometimes it becomes a challenge for us to record the original sound. Q: of course. But in digital technology, with multi-track recording maybe it’s much more easier now. H: there was another sequence I remember now, from another film. Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Neena Gupta was there in that shot, two people. Now what was happening is Kulbhushan was singing while Neena was talking, alright. Now when you

154 are cutting to another shot, since it’s not a single shot, so when you are cutting to say Neena’s close up then Kulbhushan has to sing. But he has to sing the same line. Q: hm. H: How do we do that? So when the director explained to me that this is the scene, that he is going to sing and she is going to interrupt him, I said you take it in one shot. Then the whole thing becomes alright. He said, “No I will go into her close up, then his close up, then maybe two shot, maybe shoulder shot.” I said, “then how am I going to maintain the continuity of that sequence?” he said, “You sort it out.” So I said alright. So I said you first take a long shot with two people there. Not a very long shot but mid shot and don’t cut it. Let the entire sequence happen, ok, I’ll record that. So that entire one- minute sequence I recorded it. I said now I will playback, like a sound picture you know. Q: LG. ok. H: LG. let them do the lip sync now. Whether it is a close up or not I will play back and let them do lip sync. So the minute I thought of that I got it. Now the sequence looks as if we were cutting from close up to this, that the continuity is maintained because I am using the same sound. Q: yeah, absolutely. Like play back. H: like play back, yes. Q: did you have these kinds of stories with Ray? H: yes there was one with Ray, but it’s not correct to say it. He used to mix with my boss, Mangesh Desai. So after Mangesh Desai died he said, “Ok you do it.” so he booked my place for one full week, for 14 reels I had to do. So he said since I am working for the first time with him so let him book one whole week for this. So what happened was, he came on a Monday, with the first reel I got his pulse. That he wants this kind of look/stuff. You won’t believe, by Monday itself by 6:30 I finished all the 14 reels. LG. and his wife was saying, “Now what will happen since we have paid!” they used to stay in Taj. So they had given a 7 days advance to them. So the wife was saying, “What to do? 7 days of money will go for waste!!” I said why don’t you do one thing. Go to Goa. Goa also has Taj, so they’ll adjust the money there. They said it’s a good idea. So they went to Goa. So after seventh day since I was mixing another film and suddenly I see that they are coming. And she held my hand and said, “Thank you so much.” I said for what? She said, “For so many years we have never gone out!” LG. “because of you we could have a holiday!” Q: LG.

155 H: after a year for the next film he sends me a telegram; that time telegram used to be there. “Book only Saturday for us.” LG. I told his son Sandip that, “Oh that film was easy that’s why. It doesn’t mean that for every film I will be able to do it in one day.” Actually it was all indoors for that film, and his music was there and some footsteps were there, three tracks were there. For this the first day he told me that, “give me the music track, I’ll handle it.” I said, “ok. Fine.” So I gave him the fader, the music track. So at that time we never used to have a rock and roll machine, we can’t stop. Our thing used to be like once it starts the whole reel you have to do in one go only. You can’t break it, you can’t stop it. So I said that this is the fader for music. Then I started the thing. You are looking at the picture and not getting the music on. LG. So I told Sandip that it will be problematic, how many times can we do it? He will forget! So he said, “You only do it.” I gave him a fake fader for him to operate. And I would keep an eye on him, as he is going up I will also go out. LG. what to do? He is a director, not a technician who will concentrate on this thing. He is a director, he gets involved with the sequence. Q: you treat the same way the sync sound and – H: I was the only one at that time who used to do sync sound. Because I preferred sync sound than dubbing. And during dubbing I used to make everybody do footstep and all that. At the time dubbing used to be in loop. So say we have a hundred feet loop. So they would keep on doing take after take, then the director would say, “Yes, this take.” So we will know that the fifth take is ok. At the time we did not have a mixer, which can take separate tracks. We had a mixer, which can only have dialogue track, music track and effect track. So that way. So now how do I record the footstep? If you are recording the dialogue then I need the footstep also right? Like these days you can record your Foley separately, how do I record that? So what I used to do is in that loop one mic is for the artist and another mic is for them to walk. Q: ok. H: so as many footsteps that there present in that loop, they had to do it themselves. Q: the actors? H: yes. Nasir would say, “Should I be concentrating on the footsteps or on my dialogues?! It’s double work!” LG. because I would say that, “your dialogues are ok but your footsteps have gone out-sync!” LG. Q: LG. H: they used to do Foley. Like suppose there is this glass here, you have kept it. In the loop, ok, so you’re saying the dialogue and you keep the glass. I have given them a glass also to make it.

156 Q: it is almost doing like sync inside a studio. H: they had to concentrate on their lip sync plus this. LG. and they would go mad with me. There was no Foley at that time. Q: ok. Is this in the 70’s? H: yes 70’s. In 1975 when Sholay came that is the first time I used Foleys. Sholay was done in magnetic recorders. So magnetic recorder has got four tracks. So I suggested doing footsteps and all in one track. That’s why in Sholay you’ll see that the footsteps of Gabbar on the stones. Then there was a big thing, the coin that was flipped, said, “I want the sound of that coin.” So at that time we said, “yeah we’ll do it.” So when we were trying to get that sound by various ways of flipping coins we were not getting any sound, nothing happened. So we told him that there’s no sound coming. So he said, “Oh don’t worry. We’ll tell R.D.” then he told R.D. Barman to give the coin’s sound. At that time synthesizers had come out, it was new. So he was told to somehow use his tools and give that sound. He gave a lot of sounds. Ramesh Sippy rejected all of them. He said, “No, this is not what I want.” So we were dubbing at Rajkamal then. So I used to wear kurta back then. So I was coming down from the projection room and one coin fell down from my pocket. They have mosaic flooring. So the coin fell and it made a certain sound. Q: ok, yeah. H: I heard it and I realized that it is a good sound, why don’t I do that? Then I got a big Electro-Voice mic from the dubbing theater, we got the cable and put it there and then I threw one coin on the floor. So I recorded that sound. Now after recording I went to editing. So at that time we had Steenbeck, so I saw the shot on it. Now the shot was different, the coin rolled down quite a bit. So now this sound is very small. So what I did was when the coin drops on the mosaic, that sound I cut and joined. And even in the visual it was like this, a little bit of, you know, jerks. So this jerk and that jerk matched. Q: ok. H: so I showed it to Rameshji. He said, “Yes this is very good. But a little more volume is required I guess because there might be music here as well.” So I said don’t worry about the volume, that I can give you. Now this mixing was done in Pinewood, London. Q: hm. H: so we were all there. The recordist there in the mix, he said, “What is this sound? The coin doesn’t make any sound.” So we said, “No, we made this sir.” So he said, “No, I’ll not do this.” He was so adamant that he would not use that sound. And Rameshji liked it. So in the lunchtime while having lunch he asked me how we could convince this fellow.

157 So we insisted him a lot during the lunch. He said, “No, I cannot use this. I’ll be asked why. The coin doesn’t make any sound, how did you use it?” I said, “Just use it. We’ll see what happens.” So the whole day went in convincing him. After all later he did it. So after the film was completed the mix which he did we didn’t like it at all. So what we got from there was dialogue premix, effect premix and music premix. Then Mangeshji mixed it in India at Rajkamal. So that is what you are hearing now. So we called him for premiere. It happened at Minerva. I was sitting right next to him. So when that coin sound came the audience was stunned. As it is in that time any premiere show you go to people used to whistle, clap and all that used to happen at that time. Now these days there were no such premiere shows, at that time public used to really go mad. So in this sequence when they heard that sound of the coin they started shouting and applauding loudly. Then he said, “You people were right! Your audience is very different from ours.” LG. I said, “I told you, people will love this sound.” And today people talk about that sound. Q: LG. You also worked with Ritwick Ghatak, right? H: no. When I was at the institute we used to have him. I only remember once what happened I was mixing with a studio. They had a first floor. You had to use the steps to reach the first floor. And we had a very small RCA mixer. Totally it had about six to eight channels, that kind, not these kinds of faders. It was like a spinning top. So I had to complete something and I was mixing that. So Ritwick Ghatak used to keep on coming to the institute and people used to really use him ya know. Say if one wants to see a Chek film or any other ya know and that print has come, so they would all go after Ritwick. “Sir you know this film, this film has come, it’s very good. You must see it!” “Ok I’ll see it.” So when he watched it we also watched it along with him. LG. so he used to enjoy. But his life used to start only in the evenings, evening till late in the night. So this here I am talking about 11’o clock, I was mixing alone in that studio. And he must be passing by and he must have heard it. So he came up. So I got up. He asked what I was doing, in Bengali. I said, “I am doing the mix for a film.” “This thing that you are using here, do you know what it is?” I said I am only mixing. The tracks are all separately coming here. He said, “You will never come to know. What you do is lift the mixer and break it, repair it, and then you will know what it is.” LG. I still remember Ritwickda that way. But he said the correct thing. What am I doing? I am only using the fader. Do I know what is inside that and how it works? Q: LG. Sir in contemporary times when most of the Bollywood films are happening in sync sound, how do you approach sync sound? Is it a different approach in mixing?

158 H: yeah. The approach in these days is so different. Now see so many changes have come, what I used to believe in cinema is changing every day. Like I used to feel that if there is an emotional scene I don’t have to worry about the footsteps coming there. Today the whole system is different. Today they want all the kinds of effects coming into the film. I was recently doing Ram Leela, a few months back. So in that they wanted all kinds of sounds. Whether you call them the new generation, their thinking of sound is totally different from what we had. My biggest challenge was that technology kept on progressing. In my time there was no computer, I have never learnt a computer. So how do I upgrade myself? That was the only challenge that I have faced in these last thirty years, that how to be in today’s world and also learn the new technology, which is coming through. And how many things have happened! Earlier there were no magnetic recorders. So when I am mixing, the direct sound is going to the sound negative. So I can’t make a single mistake also. Today I am very relaxed. I make a mistake, I go back and fix it. LG. that whole tension isn’t there. But because I am not tensed I am not doing a good job, that way if you look at it. If you are tensed then you give your hundred percent. You know that you cannot afford to make any mistakes. So you try and do your best. That I am not doing now. What am I doing? I know that if I make any mistake I can go back. There have been a lot of changes in technology. I remember I was doing 36 Chowringhee Lane, with . I told her that see I am showing it to you right now, if you want to say anything say now. Because now I am going into optical, so I will not be able to do any changes. So I was doing it and the moment the optical was over Aparna said, “Hitu, you take out the music from that portion.” I said, “Aparna what are you doing? I have already done it! That’s why I asked you prior!” she said now I feel that. I said, “you can’t do it now.” I can’t do it. So I must have shouted at her, that kind of a situation. Then she started crying! So then I said that anyway let’s put another negative, can’t do anything else. Now since she is crying I’ll have to do it. LG. So I did it. The next day I was doing another reel. But she was in a good mood or something or I don’t know. She again said, “Hitu I want this dialogue to be removed.” So she was expecting me to shout. She was pulling my leg actually the next day! LG. So somehow I saw her expression, I thought no she is not meaning that. How can she remove this dialogue? If she had told me about the music piece then I could understand that she doesn’t want. But how can someone take out lip-synched dialogue? So definitely something is wrong and I didn’t react only. LG. And because we were doing at one go, I am telling you we used to get so much respect. Q: yes.

159 H: everybody from Raj Kapoor onwards did that. Raj Kapoor used to call me Ghoshji. Q: hm. H: and I was half his age at that time. And he would never get angry that way. Even if they don’t like something they will not yell saying, “what have you done? Is this how you work?” But nowadays you see how people speak to us. You see Bhansali, how he shouts tremendously, how he is always abusing. In Raj Kapoor’s last film he said, “Ghoshji since mixing is my favorite and I get very tensed. I need to smoke.” I said, “Sir this place is not meant for smoking.” He said nothing will happen if I do. I said, “Do one thing. I’ll open this door.” There is a door in Rajkamal, like this only. I’ll open that and I’ll put a chair there. You sit there and see the film. He said it’s a good idea. So he saw the whole film from there. LG. now people will say, “Why can’t I smoke?” But one thing I now believe in is that maybe you have your own style of mixing. But you are working for a director. First thing you should know is what kind of a mix it is. Because any reel you pick up, you can do it in a hundred different ways of mixing. So you have to actually satisfy the director. You can point out saying that I prefer this way, if you don’t want to have its ok. But I would like to keep it this way. At the most you can say that. But you should mix it according to the way the director wants. In my career I have got art type of filmmakers also coming, the most commercial films have come, so I had to change myself in terms of mixing. Every time a director comes I will have to change. There was this director, Saawan Kumar Tak. His mixing means dialogues should be absolutely crystal clear. And if the background is there, background should go down alike anything when the dialogues are going on. And when the dialogues have finished, you can raise the music. “I don’t want any effects, no sound effects.” And there was Rakesh Ranjan, a recordist. So in one film there was a shot where there is a mansion and a car comes in the car shed. So there’s mud there. So Rakesh ranjan had got very good sound of that car going over than mud, and the background was going on. And it was a Mercedes car. So I slowly had that sound, little bit just to establish that there is a sound like that. He said, “What are you doing? I don’t want this sound of the car.” Q: LG. H: I said why? It gives a little feeling. He said, “No. Why do you think I am using Mercedes? Because it doesn’t make sound.” Now what do I do? So I had to remove that. So you have to understand their psychology. What they feel about filmmaking, that’s how you have to mix. You can’t say that I am a mixer man, I will do whatever I want. That cannot happen. You should always keep in mind that there are people who don’t have ears for music. They have only ears for sound effects n all. Once the music comes

160 they will just put it because the music has to be there that’s why they are putting. Otherwise they don’t have any interest in using that music. There are people. Q: but in course of time BGM is being used less, people are using more effects and ambiences. H: yes because they felt that now because of the tracks you can everything, whatever you want. Earlier background used to be used to hide certain faults of theirs. If the scene is too long, or if the scene is not helping, so then background music was used. With the background the pace will become faster n all that. Now the education is also there, right? Earlier filmmakers were not educated so much. Nowadays you are exposed to so much of different cinema, so many ideas are there. Your editing has changed so much! Leave aside sound, you see today’s edit and earlier edit, how fast they cut. Sometimes I am amazed to see certain sequences. Q: so these days you keep the ambience level or the noise level up? Do you allow more ambience to come in the track? H: at places only, where you are seeing certain things. If you are not seeing then I don’t. I still prefer my old school actually. Say where there is a romantic sequence going on, then I don’t want to disturb them with birds or traffic or anything of that sort. If there is a background I still prefer to use the background. Q: will you spread out the ambience in terms of placement? H: yes. But see for me very film is an experience. And I am learning every time I am doing a film. Today I have done more than 3,000 films. Nobody in the world has every touched a 1000 films but I have done 3000. So still I feel that I am still learning. Because I told you every reel can be done in hundred different ways. How do you want the audience to react? That depends on your mixing. Q: hm. But when sync people are coming - there are many young and a new breed of sound guys working with location sound and sync sound. They give a lot of information to you. I think it’s a thousand times more information than the films from the 70’s. What happens to that? H: sometimes I try to take it out if there’s not much of an importance. Basically one has to see it from the audience’s point. After all you are not giving a test. That is what I keep on telling everybody, that don’t treat it as an exam. Some days back there was a mix of someone. Whether he would do 0.5 or 0.6 reverb he was totally confused, to my ears it hardly made any difference. To the audience, nothing. And the whole day went into deciding that whether we should keep a 0.5 or 0.6. So what my point is that, don’t take it like you are sitting on an exam table and there is an examiner who is going to give you

161 marks. Whether it’s 10/10 or 9.5/10. You are actually making it for the audience. If the audience is able to figure out that there’s something wrong, they will not be able to tell you frankly what has gone wrong. But definitely they are going to say that yes something wasn’t in place.as long as that is not happening you should mix it till then, and in terms of the audience. Q: but audiences’ tastes will also differ. H: yes that keeps changing because they are exposed to various kinds of films in the world. So they know how much of what should be present. That I agree. At times what happens is I don’t know what they want. Now there is a producer, Kailash Nihalani. I used to do his films. So after the reel is over he said, “This rain didn’t touch my heart.” Now he is not pointing out to me that where I have made a mistake. Or he is not telling me that what he wants from the reel. He is only telling me that it didn’t touch his heart. Now I have to interpret that what does it mean? Where am I going wrong? It didn’t touch his heart means he didn’t feel the reel, basically. Now which part of the reel? So I thought about it. What are the sequences that are there in this reel, which touches your heart? Ok these two are. Ok if I can improve these two maybe he will get a feel. So how do I improve that? Why does he feel that? So then I said that suppose I remove the music. Because the music was not in tune with the emotion which is happening. So let me do it and see. So I worked again. I removed the music. Then he come and said, “Now it’s working!” he will not tell me that remove this music, like that. Directors like this also come my way and there are other kinds of directors also. Even if I go a little five percent more, “no, music is too high. Bring it down. Not this, not that etc.” then I become an operator only. Because they know everything that they want. So there’re all kinds of mixing. Q: going through these different kinds of changes from mono, stereo, Atmos and stuff, do you perceive anything? Do you have a vision or some sort of understanding from a wholistic point of view why this is happening and which way is it going? H: no, I think it should be like this. Because we were limited to our typical cinema. Now in Indian cinema vision is also becoming bigger and bigger. Animations have come, and your special effects have come. So even in sound that kind of a vastness has to be there. Otherwise there is no difference between cinema and TV. Q: yeah. H: how do I differentiate? Today if I play around and a lot of things are happening in the cinema, so then they’ll come and say that all these sequences come on our TV as well. All these crying sequences come on TV.

162

163 Hitesh Chaurasia and Jayadevan Chakkadath (2014)

Duration: 01:39:55 Name Abbreviations: Hitesh Chaurasia – H; Jayadevan Chakkadath – J; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

Q: I will just ask a few questions but if you feel like you can speak more on certain subjects or keep up the subject. Do you work with digital technology now? H: yes. Q: did you work with optical or magnetic recording before? H: magnetic yes but not optical. Q: what is the difference that you found while working with them? The difference between working with magnetic and digital - H: working with magnetic was very brief, during our student projects at SRFTI. After I passed out there was one film that I recorded on Nagra, which is not the final track but was supposed to be dubbed. So it was just a guide track. And the ultimate product was again a digital mix on a digital platform. Q: did you find any difference with working in terms of the earlier medium like magnetic recording, its resolution, dynamic range or signal-to-noise ratio? When you work with digital technology now, you would probably find that the dynamic range has increased. Do you find a difference in these modes of working? H: yes. Saturation-wise there is a great amount of difference. Digital is like a snap, and it goes. But with analog, when you're recording on Nagra or stuff like that, obviously it was much more… You could make errors with the tape but the sound will still manage. The tape will adjust for your errors. But with digital if you make an error the machine will not adjust. The error will be an error. Any peaks will be distorted right away. Q: did you find working with magnetic more limiting than digital? Limiting in the scope of your working?

H: initially when we were working on a quarter inch it was mono, like one track recording on location, so obviously in that way. If you compare the technology now, sound is not working in isolation. It is working with the camera also. Initially people were working with blocked lenses, so it was easy to just use one boom microphone. And you knew that the dialogues will happen in a mid or mid close, the blocking of lenses was such. But now with a steady cam and Jimmy-jip and a whole range of lenses coming in, the dialogue

164 might happen in a 16 MM lens. So then how close can your boom reach? So you have to use a radio mike. So then when you're using two or three radio mikes and a boom mike then you have to mix all these onto one track, which is difficult. So if you were getting six tracks on magnetic it would have been still feasible to do according on magnetic. But obviously it would have been expensive. Q: particular mediums have certain kind of limitations. Do you think digital technology has lesser limitations than magnetic in terms of channels? H: in terms of channels definitely, but… Q: dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio… H: signal-to-noise ratio yes, but I don't think there is any issue in the dynamic range. But signal-to-noise ratio obviously was in issue with magnetic. Q: at one point of time all of us, when working with magnetic recording media like magnetic “rock 'n' roll” and Nagra, used to say that magnetic recording is warmer, and sweeter and much more inclusive than digital recording. But standing at this moment today I don't think that a statement like that is valid any more. Because digital technology has already… H: the resolution has gone like… It is simple. Let's take a similar comparison. When we used to see images of a PD 150 and now when you see the resolution of images shot on a Red or an Arri Alexa cameras which are totally digital-based, but you are getting richness in the picture quality. It is a different aesthetic.

Q: but sound-wise? H: it is same in sound. The aesthetics is slightly different. In terms of resolution you're getting a rich, big resolution and big dynamic range. But the kind of a aesthetics that used to be there in magnetic has shifted. A lot has shifted because of the number of channels as well. From mono to surround - it is all happening. From mono you shift to 5.1, from magnetic you shift to digital. Q: do you think that these technological shifts are happening due to popular demand or because of certain choices we make. For instance if we chose to stick to a Arriflex with analogue image recording, then probably it would stay and Red would not emerge at all. J: it is market driven. It is completely market-driven. Q: sound-wise imagine that it would be a normative structure right now to work with a Nagra, but popular demand would be to use digital technology. Do you think that it is the other way around: popular demands want digital technology to emerge and be used, or digital technology is there and you choose. Which one is right?

165 H: when digital came there was choice. They were options. Because digital had to channels and some of the tapes also had to channels. But then you made the choice for various reasons like it was cheap, recyclable… J: non-linear editing made a lot of difference. Digital workstations and the compatibility between the machine and the recorder save a lot of time. But what you mean by popular demand? Did you mean the demand from audience? Q: by popular demand I mean the demand from the practitioners, for instance sound designers and recordists. They wanted to use digital sound, which is more open and wider in terms of dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio; you can erase whenever you feel like, you can record many tracks and even overdub. Of course in magnetic media you can overdub as well but in digital it is easier. You can use “good takes” and “not good takes” N number of times. Should you think that digital technology came out of these demands of the sound designers? They wished that a medium should come with these kinds of possibilities and lesser limitations and that is why digital technology emerged, or digital technology was already there and sound designers chose it - which one is right? J: I think the second one. The later one will be correct. Surely some people would have demanded it leading to some kind of research and innovation. But now it is like this is the only thing that is happening there. Now I don't think anybody will go back to analog medium. Because we all remember this error with a lot of romanticism, like analog being a very warm sound. Q: yes this is romanticism. J: but in a market-driven area where economy, Finance and a lot of things matter, I don't think we have a choice. Q: but for example surround sound came out of demand. People wanted multiple channels. It was not like surround sound was there and you chose it. Surround sound came out of necessity. People wanted enveloping sounds, right? H: cinema, like any other medium will slowly lose its charm if it does not evolve new things into it like technology. Initially when cinema came there was no sound, but people were still mesmerized to see people moving on the screen. Then sound came and it became alive. Even with sound after a certain point of time there comes a saturation, there you need something more. So then stereophonic came and now surround came. It is natural. You are just trying to create the world around you. When you're in a field you are listening left right and center. You wonderful ears are listening to everything. But in cinema you’re listening to the front only.

166 Q: but surround sound came as early as 1995. Jurassic Park was made in 1998. Before that was in 1995. J: the other film was Walter Murch's , which was stereophonic. And then Star Wars came. It was actually a demand. Star Wars sounded of so many possibilities.

Q: but why is it that surround sound came to Indian cinema almost 20 years later? People here also watched Jurassic Park and Star Wars, but why is it that they did not think that this technology can be of any use? It was already available. H: even now a lot of people are not using surround sound not as surround sound, because a lot depends on what kind of film you are making. When you're making more of a rom-com, where only the violins are in the soundtrack, then where you place the violin doesn't make any difference. It is when you're making a film like Star Wars, and you need direction to your sound, that is when you need this kind of format. Like now when you watch Gravity, it makes sense in IMAX, because the format was specially designed for that space. Even in a simple film like Lunchbox, if there was no direction to where that auntie was talking from, then you lose the perspective of that old soundtrack. That is why you need the channel or maybe the channel was there and that is why the design was possible. In mono it would have simply been a perspective thing that somebody is talking from a distance, not from the top but from a distance. Now that there was a channel they just panned it slightly on the right or left or top-ish corner, because the format is available. So I think it is both ways. Obviously there is a limitation of channels, and the biggest thing that happened with digital was with the number of channels. So now there is no production sound mixing happening at all. Production sound mixing used to be when you're mixing six mikes onto to channels or one channel, and that is when you are doing a lot of things on film. But now you have six microphones and eight tracks to record, leaving you with to spare tracks on the recorder, so you're not missing anything. You just recording whatever is coming and then you're doing everything in postproduction. Q: okay, so you are keeping all the tracks as they are. H: yes, as they are. You're not doing anything other than making sure that all the levels are correct. Only checking individual levels for acceptable volume. Everything else, like the choice of the channel and choice of the track are not made by them. All that is happening in sound editing. Whereas with magnetic or two-track recording you have to make choices. At certain points of time you have to shut down extra microphones, because they are adding extra noise. And the delay was horrible. So it is both ways.

167 Q: yes that is a point. Do you think that digital technology offers more creativity? It is not a very important question, but I think it does matter. J: surely. With digital if there is a channel like that they will use it for storytelling. It is simple. Q: like you said, with digital technology you have multiple channels and that is why you could put that woman's voice in some direction. So it is a creative choice that you have now and you couldn't perceive it previously. H: even when you listen to earlier recordings and find that there is not much of ambience, it is because that is all the range there was. So then you had to make a choice, whether you want to hear the dialogues, ambience or the music. Now with so many channels you can choose to have the dialogues in the front and still have a feel of the ambience from the back, so no two tracks are disturbing each other. That is why the mono recordings were so thin. Most of the times you only have the music or the dialogues. And when there is no music or dialogues you would have ambience. Q: but there are use of ambience in earlier films, when direct recording was used, for instance the first Devdas in 1935 by Pramathesh Barua. There is a lot of ambience because it was shot in Calcutta. We hear the traffic and the birds. So there was ambience used before but in the dubbing era there was a lack of ambience use. Like when magnetic recording came and it was done mostly inside a studio. J: another thing is that BGM has got so much of an upper hand. Q: what is BGM?

J: background music. And it has got so much of an upper hand. If you take out BGM from a film, then it cannot stand alone. The whole thread is through the BGM. If you mute the BGM and start watching, you might not be able to sit through five minutes. Films are shot like that. You don't need to hear anything else. You just need to hear the BGM and dialogues. This is what is happening. If there is no music, and there is ambience and that kind of a design you start to feel time in the film. But now nobody wants to feel like that. To compress that screen time people are using BGM. People say it is dragging and lacking and all these things. They are totally against the idea of sculpting in time. You don't want your audience to feel that time and space. Nowadays, most of the time we mix a film we encounter these things. When a BGM comes most of our ambience and effects will go down, because BGM is the one that is going to hold the audience in their seat. If you mute the BGM there is no cinema at all. Because that is the way the films are made.

168 Q: but when was emerging his films used BGM in a very subtle way. J: that's because the script is good and the film is good. It is cinema. Nowadays we are making dialogue dramas and operas. Q: so nowadays the BGM is not that loud. Is that a norm started by Ram Gopal Varma? J: I don't think so. Even Ram Gopal Varma used BGM a lot in his later films. Company has a very beautiful sound design and very mature work. But these are very big questions that we always ask in the mixing theatre. When the BGM comes the whole sound design is in water. There is no way… H: basically it is a choice you make. And in the context of Indian cinema you're always looking for an easy way out. When you're not even working on a script who the hell is going to work on sound design? If you worked for two years on your script then I can expect three months of work on sound design. If you're not willing to give three months to sound design… Directors are not willing to sit with the sound designer and discuss the sound design. They are only going for BGM sessions. It is just simply an easy way out. J: you cannot make the emotions reaching the audience. The violin has to be played for people to cry. If the violin is not played people will not cry, they wouldn't understand and even would get bored. H: people can cry but it is just that they are taking the easy way out. Music itself has an emotion. So if you just play some music you can feel the emotion. But sound works with the visual. If you have to create an emotion through sound it comes with the picture. So one picture and sound creates an emotion. But background music is independent of even your picture. So even if nothing is happening in your picture you can create an emotion with music. So all the directors look for these easy ways out. Rather than working on the film they work on the music. Q: but that has changed. J: no I don't think so. H: in majority of the film it hasn't. But upcoming independent filmmakers are trying something. They are at least open. Maybe in the final mix they will still keep the BGM up but they will let you design your track and listen both, and in particular sequences they might prefer BGM and in others they will let the sound takeover. So there is a choice now. It's not like there will only be BGM. But still it depends on the director and the creative team, if they want to carry the emotion through the music or the sound and video.

169 Q: take for example Highway. In its sound I don't think BGM is perceivable that much. It is there but inside the depth of layers. The first part of the film is so elaborate and deep sound-wise. So many layers! Where is the BGM found? J: you don't even know when it comes and when it goes. Q: yes. It is a fantastic sound design. Maybe the second half is much more melodramatic in a way, but first part is…

H: but obviously it again depends on your film. Everything depends on your film. If you're trying to make a film like Highway and you don't hear things like them going into different zones, it will become flat. Let them go to Himachal or Uttaranchal or any other XYZ place and if you don't hear that particular location sound, then it's all flat. Q: yes. But there are also other films, not just rom-coms, like or Rockstar in which we hear a lot of ambience. If like what you have just said: sound is chosen on the basis of genre, Kaminey should not have… It is an action drama. J: Kaminey actually happens in one rainy night. I worked in Kaminey. In that film the movie was like there was an event happening which was thrilling and action, and then you're going back in time to give the context of what is happening. That is why you going back to a different soundscape and then coming back to this rain. But in that film P. M. Satheesh used a lot of ambience. Even in Omkara you hear a lot of ambience. Q: yes. Omkara also has fantastic sound. Even Rockstar, being a mainstream popular melodramatic film, it used a lot of ambience. J: have you seen Jab We Met? The first part is a very good mix of ambience, music and effects. It is very beautifully done. It depends on the directors. Q: yes probably. But I think there is a dominant mode. For instance the dominant mode at this moment, what I understand from your talk, is sync sound. People are embracing sync sound. But this is not the case in 2005 or before. It was mostly dubbing. J: actually the film institutes made this difference. A new breed of people like Resul… H: basically, like when we were doing a diploma, if we were passing out before 2000 what was the job you could have got? J: you would have been a dubbing engineer. Q: yes dubbing engineer. H: yes. And then films like Dil Chahta Hai, Bhopal Express, Lagaan and other films like that happened and became a success there was another job opportunity that came up. Which was a live sound recordist, for which we were trained. We were in a way already trained. We did not know crew management or set management but we knew the basics

170 of recording. And that is when the digital era came which the oldies were not comfortable with. So the new generation got used to these new technologies like digital and radio mikes, and got the work done. Because they also did not have their big egos like senior recordists. The young generations were just looking for jobs. Some of the films got disastrous sound on location and they had to dub it completely. It was a complete failure on sync sound because the recordist just could not manage to set. Or maybe he did not get enough cooperation from the people. Whichever way you take it. But it was a new and well-paying job in an Indian perspective, and so people grab it. Like being a dubbing engineer or a folly recording engineer or a music engineer. Music used to be the biggest industry for an Institute pass out, because you could get maximum number of jobs in music. And then music totally collapsed in the 2000 era. There was no live music recording happening with digital coming in. So all the music directors were sound engineers themselves. There was no need of a dedicated sound engineer. So then this new job came in which was sync sound recordist, it is well paying, and a lot of people got into it. And to become an independent sound designer that was a great way. You do location sync sound recording, people get to know you and trust you, and then you get to do the sound design for the complete film. Q: so tell me about yourself. Why did you personally choose sync sound as your mode of working? H: I did things sound in all my Institute projects also. Q: but why? H: because I found the dubbing was a waste of my energy, actor’s energy, my team’s energy and everything. Everyone can shoot the visuals live with actors and restrictions and limitations, then why can't we just do the sound also? Like when we were doing my diploma, it was set in 300 BC and the protagonist is talking Pali. We were shooting in Ghatshila and there is this bridge where the traffic is going through. But we managed. When we went on recce and so the thing I asked 'How the hell are you trying to shoot this in the middle of Subarnarekha where there is a bridge on the river? Well there will be honking and all sorts of noise.' And on the day we were shooting there was a marriage happening in a nearby area with all this music and wedding songs playing on loudspeakers. And this guy is talking in Pali. Then the director and the production manager came in. We stopped the shoot for a while. Then the loudspeakers went off and we shot it. There were a few things that we still could not shoot. The couple of lines that we could not manage while the music was still playing, we went to a different area and recorded it. The end result was fantastic.

171 Q: what about you JD? Why did you choose sync sound? J: actually I did not choose sync sound that way. I also did most of my projects with sync sound in the Institute. But my diploma was not sync sound, it was dubbed because we had to use other people's voices. In the early stages of the film itself might director wanted to use another person's voice. I came here to become a mixing engineer. Mixing was the one thing I wanted to do. There was no possibility for me to get into mixing and there was no vacancies. That is when I started assisting these multi-cam shows and then moved to sync sound. I also did post. I was doing dialogue editing for Subhash Sahu, and because of that I was much more interested in sync sound because I was mainly working with human voices rather than effects and ambience. Like dialogue cleaning, setting the tone, equalizing and remixing dialogue tracks. I did two or three films with him as a dialogue editor and then I moved to my own films. Q: but you from the very beginning decided to stick with sync sound. H: yes. But after passing out I did two feature films in which I was recording guide tracks. For Sagar's film, our SRFTI guy…

J: somebody had sent me Sagar's contact saying that he was looking for a sound recordist. H: and then in one Marathi film. There is obviously this thing, when you're doing guide track recording for an Indian film you are as good as a non-existential entity. It does not matter if you're there or not. Sometimes people don't even call for role sound. They just assume that the sound recordist should roll. That is one thing that I observed. After doing a diploma in sync sound where I had old the control on the set, and then I get a feature film as a pilot sound recordist I realized that I don't exist on the set. I have no say in the whole process, which is pathetic. Why the hell did I do a three years course if I had to do something like this? Those experiences also added. From then on I have always been doing sync. I still do postproduction but we try to use our knowledge of sync sound to make sure that the dubbed film does not sound like a typical Indian dubbed film. That we try using different kinds of microphones, using different kinds of… J: trying to give some kind of perspective to the dialogues, use more ambiences and merge the space with the sound. That is the most important thing. You trying to use the spatial aspect of that feel. If you're sitting in a room and you are giving that kind of a reverb and ambience is outside. You're actually trying to engulf the space. That is what you get from sync sound. Postproduction has actually improved a lot.

172 H: yes. Sometimes we are not involved during the filming when it is a dubbed film, but if we are involved then we would like to send a guy, not with the Nagra but a two-channel digital recording with some stereo ambience recorded from the location and some additional staff. So that we don't get anything from the location. If we get something from the location we can states them together and create that location. J: for the last film I did, I went to all the locations for 16 days. After the shoot and the edit, I watched the film and made a list. I went to all the locations according to the time, like if it is evening I went there in the evening and recorded the ambience and used it like that. Even the vehicles like the Ambassador, Vespa, Lambi scooter and all these things we record. It is a Malayalam film and they were doing it for the first time. Godly went and recorded all the ambiences and we were trying to do it like that. H: but definitely we are working in a much better time for sound. People are at least open. It's not like there is a template for sound and the sound will happen only that way. People are open. Maybe in the mix you will lose out on the basis of argument or whatever one chooses. But you can do your work and present, and in the final mix a call is taken as to what prevails. This is a much better time to work as a sound designer or a recordist. J: you can tell a story with some portions of the story being told through sound. It's that kind of thing and not a completely visual media. H: and even on location if you have a correct logic and explain things properly to the team, they listen. If you are not talking nonsense, they will listen to you. You can get the work done on location. Even with the biggest of stars, whoever it is, if you are confident with what you're saying they will listen to you. Q: but why has this situation changed? That sound has become better or people have become more aware of sound? Or the production team has become more inclusive of sound? Why did this change happen? Is it because of technology or popular demand? H: no. It is more to do with the exposure to world cinema also. Nowadays the filmmakers who are coming have obviously watched world cinema, with Internet and lot of international projects releasing properly in India, not just dubbed but released in English and people watch and realize the difference. Right now 80% difference of quality is because of sound. In Indian films as well as international films. In camera and other stuff, obviously scripted is a part that people ignore, that is the way of filmmaking in India. Sound they used to ignore, but by watching international film they realized that this is one element that we are not paying attention to. And until and unless we pay attention to this one element we will not be able to create… and these films are going to

173 festivals and they are completely unknown no further dubbed films. The moment it is a dubbed film it is minus points. They realized that. So even if it is very difficult, like the way I did this recent film called Sunrise, it was an Indian guy who studied abroad and had an international crew. It was Partha Sengupta. The whole film was supposed to happen in the rain. We would have dubbed the whole film. But he said I will still do live sound, because in the international circuit I cannot say that I dubbed the whole film. Luckily the whole film turned out to be correct; but the initial thing was that I cannot go to the international community saying that I made a film by dubbing. Q: but it was shot in the rain! H: constant rain throughout the film. There is not even a single shot without rain. And the rain was created with the rain machine. Q: how did you manage to do sync sound then? H: the good thing was that the film had a maximum of 40% of dialogue and the other 60% is all sound. It is not a dialogue film. It is more of an action film that things are happening and people are watching. Not too much of it talking filled. So that helped. And for the portion, which had dialogues, we had a plan. After working for two or three days and the recce of the location and everything. Because he knew from the very beginning that it has to be rain. So we planned the whole sequence accordingly. Q: so watching international films also changed things quite a lot because of these new sensibilities about sound. Why are people getting aware of sound? Is it because of certain exposure? If you give good food to people they will only accept good food. They will never… H: we never used to eat pasta. But when it came certain people liked it. Obviously now it is their favorite food. There was no pasta when I was growing up. I never had pasta in the first 25 years of my life. But once you have it you might like it or you might hate. If it is good it will stay. Q: do you work with digital technology for better resolution, headroom and clarity? Does it mean that doing these aspects are better than the previous formats? H: Right now there is no choice. Like the government of India has said that you have to get DTH done. Direct to home has been made a compulsion. So there is no choice also in cinema. You cannot record on analog until and unless you're looking for a very specific kind of… Q: now I come to the main part of my questionnaire. Which I also think… H: let him (JD) also come. Should we pause and put on the fan for some time? Q: yes maybe.

174 JD rejoins. J: … but people are not going to listen as a day-to-day environment. They're not listening in a surround sound mode, but you are listening in a stereo mode as a human being. You are surely listening to a stereo mode, but that itself can give you everything, all these perspectives and depth and everything. But as cinema, then you're enclosed in a theatre with a dark background and if you want to communicate something, you're using it as a totally different thing. And with Sukanta it is another thing, he mainly deals with music. When you're doing a fiction storytelling it's altogether another thing. Q: yes. I had a very nice chat with Sukanta. I met him last year when I came to India. I also met Jojo Dipankar Chaki. Two opposite perspectives. Very opposite. H: Jojo got a national award last year for Shabdo. J: now if Rajarshi is doing the film Jojo is doing the sound design. They called me but you can't imagine the budget, it is very difficult. Without… H: did Rajarshi edit Tasher Desh also?

J: I don't know. One film like Gandu, which Q was doing. H: yes Q's film Tasher Desh. Q: his new film came out. J: now they're going to shoot a film and they called me also. But the thing is that it is a very demanding project. They're going to shoot in the metro, full handheld, there you need all the radio mikes to be perfect. The range should be perfect and it should not cut. It should sound well. If everything should be there you have to pay money for the equipment. The equipment itself will cost their budget. That is how the dealers. H: now Q should not have a budget problem. He has good money. J: but the thing is that they have sent a very emotional… Q: what is the name of the film? J: I don't know the name of the film. Q: Ludo. J: yes Ludo. It is actually a one-night event. Everything happens in one night and you need at least 2 to 3 guys. They're asking me to take somebody from Calcutta. Then I asked 'who will hold a boom properly in Calcutta.' It is very difficult. I'm not getting anybody. And I also have to communicate with this guy, which I don't know. H: it is better to say no rather than do. Because it is a waste of effort and time and energy ultimately.

175 J: when the director tells you that he really cares about sound, it means that he does not care about sound. It means that he has to explain his care. Somebody who really cares for sound does not need to say that. It shows in his work. If somebody says "Dude, I really like sound." It is like you're coming from an alien world and trying to give charity to this thing. It is a very stupid thing when somebody says that he really likes sound. H: nobody will say that I really like camera and I will give you a good option to shoot. Because you already know what you need to do in camera.

J: that's the thing. Nobody would say that he needs to work with visuals. They say I like to work with sound. Then I say “brother, enough.” This happens every once in a while Q: would you mean ambience? Because I have major questions here. What do you really mean by ambience? Some effects can also be ambience. Such as footsteps, when we don't see them, can become ambience sometimes. And if spatial information is there… J: spatial information. That is the basic thing. When you define a space how do you do it with a sound? As I said you have to make it like a precedence. Presence felt is true ambience for instance because like in the film Seven, the train goes on and on, and this woman gets upset. Q: which film? J: David Fincher's Seven. And the train goes into the whole thing is never being shown in the film. Q: yes. Like, let's say… J: there are so many films. Even in Godfather also… Q: why? Why do we have to go to Godfather? We have Satyajit Ray. Just look at Nayak, The Hero. Everything is shot inside a train and every single compartment has a particular and recognizable kind of ambience. When you come inside the coupe where that religious guy is sleeping, there is a peculiar vibration - and inside the old man's coupe the vibration changes. It’s an absolutely fantastic use of ambience. And he made it in 1969. J: even in Sholay, I think they have used good ambience. H: and if you see Pakeezah, the establishing shot where the whole of 's area is being established, you have the depth of visual and the depth of sound as well. You have at least 7 to 8 different songs happening in different places, and you can hear all of that. Plus the horse cart, which is passing through on the ground. And then you have these Pan walas and pimps. You hear everything in that one longshot and you know that it is the red light area. Or in those times not the red light area but the area of

176 courtesans. And it is brilliantly done. And what about the vessel of the train? Like in Bandini when this guy is… Establishing the… Q: Bandini by ? H: Bimal Roy. When they're establishing the whole prison, this guy goes on top of the wall and says, "Everyone is all right?" And you hear the long delay of "Everyone is all right?” That is when you realise how big the spaces and all these women are trapped there. There is no ambience there like what the put now, rumble and all. It is just as one voice with this long delay, which establishes how lonely and trapped these women are. And he does it for or five times. He goes to all different corners and says, "Everyone is all right?" Which also is a procedural thing that might even be continuing now and which used to happen at that time. It's inspecting everything in the evening and making sure everything is all right, and a shout: "everyone is all right?" And you hear this long delay. Q: Bandini was in 1954, right? H: must be. It is black-and-white. And in the end you hear Ship's whistle again. The song is happening and the climax is happening on sound. Thrice the ship horn comes and she is to make a call whether to board the ship or stay with the hero. And the ship is constantly calling. She can go and start a new life but she chooses to stay with the hero. She does not go for her new life. Ambience is not like say the traffic or the birds. That is not what ambience is. Ambience is again part of sound. Dialogue can be ambience. Anything can be ambience. Q: …which carries spatial information. H: correct. Anything can be ambience. Or sometimes we choose to withdraw ambience to create another kind of space. The moment you withdraw ambience the space becomes something else. Like in Guide when he's lying in the temple and suddenly when he goes into his thought process there is obviously no ambience because it is his thought process. In that thought process there is no ambience.

Q: but the lack of the use of ambience in the dubbing era is an established fact, for example films like Dharmatma or Deewaar or Amar Akbar Anthony and those kinds of films. Even later in films like Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak did not have much ambience. Is it that in those times ambience was not used, or this was not the norm? Why is it that there is almost no ambience? H: because in the script the city used to be Rampur or Lakshmanpur. They never establish the city you are in. They never want to commit the space for the time. Q: like a fictitious place.

177 H: yes. You are always used to hearing "I have to go to Rampur" or "I have to go to Sonapur". Q: but look at Shanghai. Shanghai is also a fictitious place but you hear a major amount of locational information in sound. H: but in Shanghai, even though he's not saying it because it might become controversial, it is Mumbai. Because there was the slogan from political parties saying let's make Mumbai India's Shanghai. So that is why it is Shanghai. So it's clearly Mumbai and everybody knows that it is Mumbai. But just to save is ass he is not saying it is Mumbai. Because the moment he says it is Mumbai becomes political. Q: this is a good point, that most of the places were fictitious. Ramgarh is a fictitious place. J: completely fictitious, but they use some location information H: Sholay was more on effects than ambience. The effects were brilliantly done because they did folly and everything. J: and it has a very good influence of Western films. Q: but Sholay should not be a representative film. It is an exceptional film. Generally the films produced in those times came with very poor quality of sound. H: but even when you're talking about Deewaar, the opening scene when the whole rain is happening and the people are there with umbrellas, and the union strike is happening…

Q: look at the voice! He's speaking in a rally in an outdoor situation and we hear the father's voice which is full of room reverb. Look at it. There is no spatial information. Sounds from an open space should provide the sense of space, which should be reflected from different directions. It should not have room reverb. J: it should not have any reflection at all. H: but at the same time in this iconic dialogue happens "I have my mother!" You can hear the children singing the anthem and the train passing, because they meet below that train bridge. The meeting point is very significant, it is below the train bridge. The train crosses and these two guys come and because it is the 14th or 15th August in the script you can hear in the background children singing the anthem. And that connects to their old memories of school when they used to sing and parted their ways. And he decided to become a don and the other decided to become a police inspector. So that anthem has a role in the whole script. So that is the choice, whether it comes from the script, whether as sound designer can interpret the whole space in his own way and add…

178 J: again it is not only spatial but also calling back the past through the sound. Q: but there is no information about Mumbai. J: no. There is nothing about Mumbai. As even Ghatak uses much better ambience. H: it is not just the ambience. The dialogue quality and everything else in the soundtrack of films in that era, like say from the late 70s to the late 90s, their obviously and totally dedicated to music. The soundtrack meant music. So there was no work done on soundtrack as such. Before the 70s, in all the Bimal Roy, and other films, ambience were still lacking but there were pieces that were very vital to the whole film. And this was there in the script.

J: but it is almost like a radio drama in that way. You are giving the sound of a whole and saying that the ship is the. It is almost like a radio drama. It does not give any information about the space of geography. Q: I'm very curious and this is my basic question. Why suddenly, (I see suddenly but you might know it better because you're into it) there is an interest in the spatial information in Indian films? Look at Lagaan, which is a major breakthrough in Indian cinema. After Lagaan there has been so many films made, most of them really want to give ample spatial information by the use of ambience. Why is there this change? What is the reason? H: I think it is because the technology is also available. It is not that people did not want to give that information. There was always an ambience track when we were mixing life on a mixer. Like in Fx track, music track or a dialogue track, there was an ambience track. The moment the dialogue track came the ambience track would come down. And it used to come down to a level where you cannot hear it or it is not disturbing the dialogue in Mono mix. Now when you have the surround mix you have the option of putting the ambience so the director does not mind as long as his dialogues are not disturbed. But even now the moment you disturbed that I lock the ambience will be correct. Even now in Hindi films if the guy is talking at the CST railway station, if you suggest to keep the ambience loud because the station is loud even though one or two words are missed, it is not going to happen. It will not happen even now. The dialogue should come up and you will have a bed of the ambience. A rich and thicker bed of ambience than what it used to be. But not that it will take over. Q: do you think that ambience is used a lot now because there are extra channels? J: that is just one reason. And the other reason is that there is a new breed of well- trained sound designers and directors who want to play with sound.

179

H: channels are there. The non-linear digital technology is there. You don't have to do the effects the way we used to do it on magnetic tapes, where once it is done you have to reload and playback, and punch on the correct option. You can even add ambience at the last stage of your mixing. If you are missing something after doing the mix and then you decide that one particular piece of music is not required and it's empty, you can still pull back your ambience and mix it immediately. So it is a combination of things. Like even from the location you can dedicate one channel to your ambience, like the way he records. He always has a stereo mic on the field, which is recording ambience. Sometimes simultaneously another times separately. So he's getting a dedicated channel for ambience. Some people record ambience from the location after the take. Sometimes stereophonic and sometimes even a 5.1 microphone to record ambience from the location. And then they’re mixing it with their own libraries and giving that kind of feelings.

J: I did a film in the Andamans, and we shot completely on the beach with the waves coming and going. And the dialogues are happening like that. So always I kept a stereo microphone, an MKH 60/30 pair. Q: was it a 60/30 combination? J: yes 60/30 combination. One is a figure-8 and one is a... Q: MS stereo? I use that combination all the time. J: it is very common in Mumbai. It is very good. I don't like 418 or anything like that. So in a film where you're seeing the waves coming and going, if you keep the ambience as it is, you don't need to do anything else in the post. Due don't need to add anything other than some kind of wind or something like that. Everything else is there. Anyway it is always there in the dialogue track as well. But when you keep this ambience you can define the space, and as you said the whole information is there. And I always keep it a bit away, because anyway I have to cut it down during my mix and I have to give way for my dialogues.

Q: this is my personal question, because I see, watch and listen to the films from an audience’s position as well as perspective because I'm not directly a part of the film industry. I hardly did any film sound design myself - maybe only two films. How do the practitioners use ambience? Why do the practitioners use ambience? And what do you think that ambience does to cinema?

180 H: it is basically why we do sound design? Ambience is just one of the tools of sound design. Dialogues are a way to tell the story but dialogues are also part of my design. And so is ambience a part of my design. We have ambience live effects, stock effects and lot of other things to create a space. So ambience is just one of them. Q: so it is just a material, isn’t it? H: it is a tool for us. For instance, if you ask me why does the cameraman use so many lights, he can do it with one light? For us it is one of so many options. Q: what about you, JD? J: yes that is the thing. But my purpose would be for instance if a character is a, what is the dealing with at that moment? You can say a lot of things with ambience. At some point even if you want to isolate him from the whole city, you can do it through ambience. And if you ask what is the purpose of ambience in cinema it is a very difficult question to answer. Q: because you're using it… H: like one of the films that I did not do the postproduction ultimately, but I saw the edit and it was done in sync sound. And in one particular sequences there was ambience. Obviously when you do live sound on location there will be ambience. And I said “for this particular sequences we should do the (…) because I don't want this ambience.” I as a sync sound recordist said I don't want to hear any honk, traffic, rumble or a hum in this particular sequences. I want this space to be isolated from the world. So how do I achieve this?

Q: okay, that might be particular to that sequence. H: yes. So for me as a designer, ambience is not the only tool. Q: of course. But it is a very important tool. H: yes. A very important tool. I cannot think of my soundtrack without ambience. Even if you're sitting in an AC room, there has to be an AC hum or a room tone. J: and if you're shooting in a set, a sound stage for a film like Rangeela, 80% of the things are shot on the set and without ambience that does not work. Because it is supposed to be set in Gujarat and we're shooting in Mumbai in a set. Q: okay, so what do you do? J: I was giving my complete attention to getting the dialogues. Because all the ambiences has to be added later. I'm trying to get the dialogues as clean as possible. And in the post-somebody else who did the sound design added the ambience. Q: do you go to Gujarat and bring the ambience?

181 J: yes, a lot of ambience. When we went to shoot some particular things there, I went to separately and the audio for a lot of things like the market, wind, birds, peacocks… And a lot of things. And we used most of the things. Q: for instance if you are unable to use ambience under certain pressures, let's say from the director, do you feel happy? I mean if there is no ambience in your soundtrack would you feel a bit unhappy? H: no. It is not just about ambience. If he intrudes into anything in my sound design space I will not be happy. If he says reduce the footsteps, then also it is a problem. I have kept those footsteps on a certain level for some reason. I would not keep it just for my pleasure, saying that my sound should be loud enough. If the birds are on a certain level obviously I have a space in mind. When he wants to reduce it, it is not just the volume, a lot of things changes with the volume. The whole atmosphere changes with the volume. If he cuts down the birds a bit, says “bring it down a bit". It means that the purposes are lost. If my birds were at a window it is lost.

Q: does anyone make the final mix on stereo? J: now I mostly mix for 5.1, and only for TV or satellite distribution I… But regarding the thing that he just told now, in the last film I did, it was a Malayalam film and the climax scene had a police firing. They were showing it very symbolically showing the police and the guns, and some people striking and it suddenly becomes slow motion. Two kids are watching the strike and the police are about to shoot. Now you see these kids are shutting their ears. It means that the policy shooting. And for this scene I give three different options. And the director did not want any kind of music in this film. Q: that's great. J: it was Biju's last film so I was in a difficult situation there. And he did not want any gunshots to be used in the soundtrack. First I suggested that we use some music but he was totally adamant saying that he does not want any music. Because right after this the title track starts and for it to be very clean and strong we should not use any music. This is one thing I learnt in that film. The next option I gave them was with effects, using ambience is and some drones like some musical kind of sounds from the beginning of that scene and I built it up to a crescendo and then abruptly cut it when the kids are shutting their ears. Means that they are stopping to hear. Again he did not like it. The thing that he wanted to underline was that, the fact that these kids die does not make a difference to anybody. So let's just keep simple ambience. These are two adivasi kids,

182 and it does not make a difference to the world if they are dead or alive. So you don't have to underline it with sound. It is a day to day… Q: so it is avoiding the subjectivities of the boys. J: yes. You don't need to tell that these boys are dying and it would make any change in the rulers or the power game or the world. It is a very day-to-day thing. A lot of people are getting in police firings and lot of other things. So it is like a very directorial thing also. So I had a lot of argument saying that the scene is dragging and that the scene is not working out sound wise for me, but as a director he had a point. When I'm trying to do something with the sound it is attracting attention, like when I cut abruptly. But what he was saying was that the scene is fading out suggest fadeout sounds along with, because that does not make any difference to the world. So as a director he has a point. Surely we are unhappy at times that we are not able to do this or that. It happens. But when he's talking very logically, from the person who hears it first when he's writing, we have to surely go with his vision. Q: when you're working with surround sound, does your choice of use of ambience change? J: surely. If I would have done the same film in mono or stereo my choice of sounds would have been totally different. Here I can have different layering is and still make it heard in different layers and at levels that I want. I can have a lot of bandwidths and the differentiation between layers. I can achieve these very easily with these kinds of technology. And now with this Atmos you have complete spatial control. And even with 5.1 people have done great works. 5.14 fiction is like a beautiful medium. Q: if you can use it properly. J: yes. And people also abuse it very properly. Q: for example in the film : in the rear speakers I don't hear much except when we encounter the urban landscape. Then some of the sounds are spreading into the space in my behind, not much. Such as the train is going around on the screen, I can hear it more in stereo and a little of it is coming also from my behind. But when they are going closer to a person or when we are going inside the home there is nothing in the background. H: that is what I told you. It is much more quiet than it should have been. It is very quiet. The only problem I have with lunchbox is that it is very quieter than it should have been. Even if any sound designer, not even me would have designed it, I think it would have been much more… J: who designed it?

183 H: some… Not an Indian guy. J: foreign guys? H: yes. Q: what about Anand Gandhi? J: he (HC) was called for Ship of Theseus and he denied the work! Q: why? H: because he also said that he cares for sound. Q: Oh! He said? Chorus: LG J: if somebody is that… H: no I can smell the directors. J: this is a very good way to… H: I can even hear them when they talk on the phone. J: if somebody is going to explain to you then it is very difficult. Q: so he worked with a Hungarian sound designer, right? J: he was not even ready to give him a title, even if he works. He said, "I will give you the title of an assistant." “Why the fuck do you have to give me an assistant?” Doing everything and… H: I went to meet him. And almost 6 months we were discussing the whole thing when he was editing. 3 to 4 meetings in that six months and I also gave him a 10 minutes show reel, because he wanted to send it to some festival. So the first thing that happened was that I saw the edit and the location sound was very bad. It was pathetic. And everybody in the team including him and me told that the location sound is pathetic. And that guy was an idiot who did the location sound. So I asked Anand who the guy was. And he did not know the name! So I said, “that is why the sound is pathetic. Because you do not even care to remember the name of the guy who did location sound. So you deserve to get a pathetic sound. That is what you deserve.” I told this on his face. Then he said that Indian film sound is plastic. I said, “Yes it is plastic.” J: then you don't hear Indian sound also. H: he says that especially the Indian Foleys are pathetic. So I said, “tell me the name of the worst Foley guy - because you guys really don't care who's doing the Foley recording.” J: they don't hear. H: and then you say it is pathetic and does not make any sense. Being an Indian if you can make a decent film than being an Indian any Indian sound designer can do justice to

184 your film. You're not dropped from Mars. You are also born and brought up in India. If you claim that you have made an international film than an Indian guy can also design and international soundtrack. But you have to trust somebody. And you have to give your time… J: some kind of freedom… H: and your money. You have to give everything. Resources! If you want me to do the sound design in 15 days. I said, “okay. It is better that I don't do it.” If you edit the film in two years and expect me to do the sound design in 45 days, when obviously it is not going to be the world's best sound design! Do you like Ship of Theseus? Q: I did not see it yet. J: good. But people liked the film. Q: yes. I don't know about the sound design, but I saw an interview where he was speaking about why he chose a sound designer from Europe. H: because he was making for… J: would it say? Q: he said that he heard another couple of films where this guy had designed. J: in a way it is a very funny situation. There are so much talent people in such a beautiful world. H: no. But the thing is your cameraperson is Indian, you are Indian, your whole production is Indian, your actors are Indian but only for sound you go to a foreigner. Correct? So my theory is you are trying to make a pirated European film! For most of the so-called sensible filmmakers or art kind of filmmakers, my theory is that there are two kinds of films happening, one you get a DVD from Hollywood and either buy or not buy the rights and make a Bollywood film, like the mainstream Hindi entertainment films or you make a remake from South Indian films. And the third type of people are those who have seen films at the film festival circuit, who is in the European films and they want to see the soundscape to be a European soundscape. There you will see for three minutes without any sound, just wind. There won't be a guy for three minutes. It be a longshot and there will not be a guy in the field. But in India wherever you keep the camera there will be a guy… J: thousands of films. LG H: there will be a cow, there will be buffaloes, there will be dogs, there will be something. You cannot take an empty frame for three minutes in India, for god’s sake! So what framing are you doing? You're trying to replicate that European framing! That is

185 what my problem is. You're trying to replicate those colors. You trying to replicate that kind of music. That kind of loneliness is not there in India. J: technically also… H: I told you that in lunchbox the loneliness will come if you put a lot of sound, and make noisy. And then this guy will be lonely at his old house. But if you try to make it European, you want to play with a nice little piano piece, light subtle ambience, then it is not an Indian sound effect. Q: but then Highway is, in that sense, a lot noisier. Noisy in the sense how an Indian landscape should sound like. H: yes. J: still I think that it should have been a little more louder. Q: Highway? H: what was in the picture I think has reached close to what was there. Even in the picture here showing so much of beauty and landscape, it does not talk about the… My problem is with the picture more than the sound in Highway. J: yes surely. H: because it is too picturesque. It is too beautiful images. Too beautiful shots. Q: that sense of beauty inflates all these problems. H: yes. It is shot too beautifully. This girl who's going through all this trauma and pain, and who has run away from the house, is not going to look at things so beautifully. It is just an open space for her. It does not matter. Even if she was there in a Mumbai local crowded train, at least then she would have felt the freedom that now she is on my own and that she can move around. It is not that you don't have to go to the Himalayas, or the mountains and stuff. Anyways that is a kind of… Q: that Danny Boyle film Slum Dog also has a very rich soundtrack. It is shot in Mumbai and you can hear that it is Mumbai. J: Derek and I have the same issue. It is like they have used very clichéd Indian sounds. H: but that is to happen because the design was not Indian. J: yes the designer is not Indian. H: Resul must have given much better recordings. J: I think it would have been much better if Resul did the design. Q: of course. H: if Resul would have designed it, again just like in Lunchbox, would have been much noisier. J: it almost sounded like a Nat Geo, Discover India kind of thing.

186 H: the whole filmmaking was like that. Q: remember that sequence where this guy is coming to meet his brother on a big high- rise. Can you remember this sequence? J: yes and the construction is still going on.

Q: where he imagines he's throwing his brother from a big building. That is when it is so fucking noisy. H: yes. Q: and sounding so beautiful! J: like I was telling somebody, how our national vehicle is JCB are national sound is this construction ambience. Wherever you go you hear this construction ambience, tak tak tak. And these cement mixing machines and all these things. In my last Malayalam film also there is this shot of this construction crane going up to the 12th floor. So I used this crane sound in a lot of places, and with a particular shock it stops. Cuttack… And there is this sequence where this guy comes out of his dream because of the sound. I used that sound actually. This shock like sound coming when the cement is put. He was so worried about his life. Q: and his drink? J: it keeps doing this all the time. It is now like a non-existent sound for us. Because we are hearing it so much. Now this traffic is non-existent for us in Bombay. H: ambience also. Sometimes in the soundtrack of films we just make the ambience for the sake of ambience. It is not adding anything to the visuals or your picture or your storytelling. You just put it for the sake of putting it. Like if you show an urban high-rise in any Yash Raj film, which is happening on the 12th floor of a building or a lobby of a hotel, you just put the ambience for the sake of ambience. It is actually not enhancing the whole experience. Q: but if it's not there… H: then also for that particular film it is not going to need any enhancement. J: if it is not there you might be noticing the presence of it. Q: you also feel like there should be something. I don't relate to the space being shown. So in order to make you relating to the space you need to have some information. Probably it is not adding to the narrative, as you said. But it is adding to the sense of presence.

J: yes surely. Still that adding kind of thing is very rare in many ways.

187 Q: I don't think that ambience has that burden that it should add to the narrative. Ambience is… J: no. That is what I said. Then it becomes a design element. As I said about seven, it becomes like a scripted thing. Some people call it a state of mind of that particular character. People are using ambience and silence and it becomes a very conscious decision to use these particular sounds. H: like this Marathi film that I did. It is basically theatre actors rehearsing their lines in an auditorium where there is nobody. It is a blank auditorium with one actor rehearsing his lines. So the whole world comes from the sound, because there is no sound inside the auditorium. There just rehearsing the dialogues. Q: how do you work with ambience? H: sometimes we show what he's saying. Sometimes we show what the director wants to say through the lines. And things like that. The sound was recorded live but I did not do it. Two FTII students recorded the location. And it was pretty decent. So and dialogues we had this little room tones which we kept so that is the space. And then there is another layer of what they are talking, and the third layer is what the director wants to convey through those dialogues. So those three layers we create. So there the ambience becomes the main thing. Otherwise it is people talking for 90 minutes without anything. There are no effects as such. There are also parts of ambience. There is no vehicle or crane or anything. So there are no effects because nothing is happening. So the effects that are coming like lightning and everything is part of ambience. That is not part of effects. So in that sense there is no effects such and we did not do any Foley. We did not do any Foley as well. Whatever was there on location is there. We did not add any Foley.

Q: when ambience comes from the location shooting, it comes to you if you're a mixing engineer; sometimes I think you do mixing for films, isn’t it? H: no, I don't mix. J: we sit with the mixing engineer. H: we just supervise. J: it is the same thing. They give an idea or concept something like it should sound like this. Because we know the story and we have worked in the film for more time. And he is like trying to get that particular thing. Q: how much do you keep and how much do you erase as a mixer? What does a mixer do with ambience? Does he clean it to a certain level?

188 J: sometimes. It is like you're monitoring the whole thing in a different room and when you're going into a bigger room things sound pretty different at times. Sometimes we have two add ambience is to make the dialogue smooth. You can touch the dialogue at times because if you touch the dialogue it will become sharper, it'll sound different, totally be bland or flanging will start. So you have to add noises to mask a lot of things in the dialogue and still make it clean. I did not do too many sound designs. I only did five films and most of the times it went through as I wanted. Sometimes when I wanted to keep it very noisy I kept noisy. Again it depends on the film, like most of the films I did rarely had music. Maybe six minutes of music in the whole film of about hundred minutes. Q: that means you have wider scopes. J: yes the last film I did almost the whole of it was shot in the street. It was a story of a municipality sweeper. The whole film is happening on the street and the place where he is staying is supposed to be near a railway station. It is on the curve of a nearby railway station and sometimes the track is seen and the vehicles go. But still in the night you're hearing the railway announcements and all this crap, because you want to make it like you're still there. This railway station is there and people are fucking there and this guy is here. You want to make the spatial thing again. You want to give that geography, there is a railway station nearby. And there are some… You use it. Everybody uses it I think. There are some particular dogs I used, very restless dogs all the time in the night. It is part of the effects and at the same time it is a part of the ambience. When you reach this particular slum you start hearing these dogs otherwise you don't hear it. And in this film I used a lot of religious announcements. Actually the film starts with a religious announcement. Because in Kerala people are playing bhajans continuously in the night at high levels till about 11. Wherever you go religious announcements, political announcements are so much. It is a part of the soundscape now. Q: Aiyappa? J: I've recorded so many political speeches in Kerala. Different speeches and a lot of them are used. Like false promises from God and from political parties. Q: I think at one point of time both of you will work with Atmos, which I think is already there in a number of theatres in India… J: yes, in some theatres. Q: Vishwaroopam of Kamal Hassan… J: even Sholay was mixed again in Atmos by Parikshit recently. H: he just did 3.2 not Atmos.

189 J: yes he did Atmos but still there are not many theatres. Perhaps most of the current Indian films still do not need Atmos. H: the sickly Dolby is going to die because the film is dying. So Dolby's patent is dying. So they have come up with Atmos which is a digital surround rather than… J: no Atmos is a bit different in a way. Atmos is more into spatial things. Q: 128 channels. J: more than 128 channels for instance in this room if you are keeping this but two feet away, in every room wherever you going to listen to this thing the bird will be two feet from the screen.

Q: so it is absolutely a realistic perspective. J: that is what I'm saying. Do we need that much? For the films that we are making in Bollywood or India do we really need this much of information to be told through audio? H: it is again the same thing. Arri till late did not accept the digital thing. So everyone else came with a digital camera and Arri realized that they will lose the business so they also adopted. Now Dolby is losing the business because of digital release and the digital market. Dolby had compulsion only for the print, if you're not printing then there is no Dolby required. Q: but there are also Auro 3-D and BARCO… J: I heard Auro 3-D. I watched Gravity in Auro 3-D. Q: how was it? J: I don't know. I watched it in the South and it is kind of the territory of loudness. It was so loud. But still I enjoyed the film. To be frank I did not think of sound when I watched Gravity. I did not analyze. I just watched the film and enjoyed and wondered whether Sandra Bullock is going to die or not. H: but from the very first five minutes I love the sound. Q: Gravity? Did you watch it in 3-D? H: I watched in IMAX format. J: that particular sound quality of the taped voice from somebody else through the headphones, the world realization of that voice is very beautiful. H: less design. J: that is a proper design. Very interesting. H: ultimate. J: the same thing with the film hurt locker, the way they used the breath. Q: what will you use in Atmos? You will have 128 tracks…

190 J: that is the thing, here actors are continuously talking and there is no scope for something else to be heard. Walter Murch says that you cannot hear more than four tracks at a time.

Q: two and a half. J: now it is more than four tracks. You cannot concentrate. That is all the information your brain can handle. Then what are you going to give in 128 tracks. Q: did you need that amount of… J: that is the thing. It is going to be abused again. H: but again I'm saying. When you're asking in the initial portion whether it was the technology that is available and then… Or whether people were demanding. Now nobody was demanding Atmos, but Dolby is dying. So they have to come up with something new. J: it is a market-driven thing. H: we were never demanding for smartphones J: it came and now it is a necessity. H: like Facebook we never demanded for. Did you demand for Facebook? Q: no. H: I never demanded for Facebook. It came and then people liked it and then it became an addiction. J: it is the same with audience also. Once they hear surround sound, there are now used to surround sound. Now if you mix in mono and ask them to watch, they will not be able to digestive that thing. They will say that there is something wrong with this. Surely. Even if the mix is very good. It is completely market-driven. H: like if you see the Internet, it came out of demand of communication. You had to move fast and do things, so Internet was a demand, a much-needed technology. But you did not ask for Facebook. Or you did not want instagram. Q: but of course there was a… J: it is a demand in a way. Any technology that comes out is in a way out of necessity. H: no. The market creates… J: still I think Facebook and all is like, people are much lonelier. How does this come? How did the idea for Facebook? They're saying that it came from the Howard networks, but how did it become so popular? It is like people wanted some outlet like that. Otherwise Facebook is not going to…

191 Q: I think the surround sound or Dolby Atmos, from mono to stereo to 5.1 to 7.1 and Dolby Atmos - these trajectories are not just technologies that are there and you choose and you like it. No. Definitely there is some sort of wish. J: yes. Some sort of wish is surely there. To solve some problems you have to go for that. It might be that you don't find a solution for it at that time but it comes later. But still… It is both ways again. For Indians I don't think we demand something and then it comes out. For the rest of the world they demand something and then they make it. For us it is already made. Q: I think we are more or less done. J: full? Q: yes. I have more enquiries and questions but at this point I think more or less things are pretty clear. I would like to continue with this discussion about ambience because it is endless. The more you talk the more you learn. J: when you work you don't think in these terms. Q: yes. But of course there is some sort of compulsion. If not compulsion, there is a lot to reflect on. J: even when the color of the image changes, the ambience also changes. Like when you get the last picture you will feel that the ambience I put or made for this particular scene doesn't go with that at all. I have to rework it. It happens many times. Q: but this is clear, I think you don't have any question about it that recent films are using a lot of ambience in India. J: but in Hollywood they're cutting the ambience. They are not using too much ambience. Q: and European films also don't have that much amount of ambience. So why Indian… J: because we just want this toy. We are not using it at all but this is something new. In the film arrack say having ambiences. You know Shambhu? He did a feature film that was a big hit in Kerala. The film is happening during a particular one- day festival in Kerala. All the women gather from the villages and the cook rice in the streets of Trivandrum. And there are a lot of announcements and things happening. In that film, I've seen some parts of that, when you're walking the streets on that particular day into random, you're hearing one particular song at one point and when you move you start hearing from another speaker an announcement and you go forward and hear another bhajan. When you're moving within a particular short the soundscape changes drastically. A guy called Godly from FTII, one batch junior to us, gave the sound. Beautiful. He tried to create that ambience. You feel like you're in that particular festival. Q: how?

192 J: he recorded that thing. And during the festival he put that thing in high levels. It is unprecedented in Kerala. People are saying that something is good but at the same time there is something lacking but you can't say it is lagging rather it is working. It is like they are confused of what is the problem. A very respected musician gave beat-to-beat music for this film but Godly and Shambhu used only six minutes of the music for the whole song. These announcements, these buttons, these people’s sounds and all these things keep on coming to the soundscape. And it also holds the view work onto their seat, they're watching and it is a hit now. It is a big leap for sound in Kerala or Malayalam films. They do not use ambience. If you go to Tamil, maximum 10 films in India… Q: like Bengali films. There is no ambience. J: there is no ambience. And what you hear as Foley is only tak tak tak. That is what he said is plastic. It is footsteps, there is no tak hear. Where are you coming from? What are you walking on? What kind of shoes are you wearing? It can give a lot of information but we don't give that kind of sound. You're not giving anybody sounds. Q: it is strange but Satyajit Ray was working with so many different layers even in magnetic recording, Indu tape I think he used. Even with that bad quality tape he used so much ambience. Even Bengali people did not learn much from him. H: technology has never limited your creative this thing. You will always find the way out if you want to achieve something. Maybe you'll achieve in a symbolic way, when you see Ghataks film, then this whole theatre group is working there is a constant tak tak tak from the worker working on iron, which is in a way the restlessness of the whole group. Because they are all Communists, revolutionary theatre activists and stuff like this. Whenever they are rehearsing this sound is there. So it is not that mono or magnetic or anything was… And people make worst kind of sound with surround and Atmos. In Atmos the recent one is Race2 or Race3. You will not be able to hear anything in the world after you watch that film. Because with Atmos it became like to put everything loud. So it is the same thing coming from 10 channels. J: it is a competition between sounds. If you raise the music, you will have to raise the level of the dialogues, raise the ambience and raise the effects and everything else. H: two films happened, Vishvarupam as well as ABCD happened in Atmos. Then Race3 of happened in Atmos. Q: also Endhiran. J: Robot. But Robot was not Atmos. Q: was it released on BARCO or Auro 3-D?

193 J: I don't know. I watched it here and that film also I found it very…Promod did the mixing. You can meet Promod also if you want. He's very available. He also is from the 93-94 batch. He can give a lot of very different answers to all these things. He's a guy who does mixing, location recording and music. He's that kind of a guy. Promod Thomas. I can call and tell you like… Q: maybe I can. Yes let's do that. J: you should meet him. He's a fascist in sound. No processing. As natural as it is. No radio mikes. As it is. This is the lensing I am doing and this is the news he's got. He should be added to your project I think.

194 Jyoti Chatterjee (2012)

Name Abbreviations: Jyoti Chatterjee – J; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter – LG

J: When the ballet of Uday Shankar happened, Ananda Shankar was present, was there. Then Shankar was present. So that ballet took place for almost seven days, it was on a huge scale. A play called “Shamanya Khushi” (Small Happiness) was staged. The time I am talking about is when India film’s 1 had made a new scoring theater in 1958. Then we had 6 channel mixers and we used six microphones. Before this we used only two channels. It was there, 1958 model. Whatever it was, it was used for Pather Panchali, Aparajito and many other famous films, and a film by Rajen Tarafdar. So work used to happen with two mics at that time. And song recording was very difficult with two mics especially with so many hands around. It’s very difficult if there are about 15 to 20 hands. So we had to manage somehow and do it. But some loopholes still remained. If the song’s words are overlapping on a particular instrument then that had to be recorded separately by the artist. Q: did you solely do music recording? J: no, music recording and song recording. And dubbing too. Q: ok. J: in those days, in outdoors, there used to be a lot of noise. So we did it in the form of loop cycles. Do you know how loop cycles used to work? Q: yes. J: like that. Say there are two shots in one scene. So we would loop both the shots, each shot will become a separate loop. Now what used to happen in those days, there were about seven to eight takes for each shot. Say the first part of take one is ok, the third part of take three is good, and the middle part is from another take. So we had to judge it that way and use them accordingly. Thus it was very difficult. Post that time when we had the six-channel mixer, then NFDC (National Film Development Corporation), we didn’t have “Rock ‘n’ Roll” then, so in Behala we had a studio where we used to work. One advantage we had was if we got a full day in hand at the studio the work would be complete. It is generally not possible in one day, we had to face difficulty to do it, whatever. Q: all of it was magnetic recording, right? J: yes, everything was magnetic.

195 Q: was RCA also magnetic - the RCA machine? J: RCA magnetic machine is there but I have not seen in a full-fledged manner, didn’t get used in my work. We had portable recorders. Q: what about Kinevox? J: yes Kinevox was there. Q: Pather Panchali was recorded on it. J: yes, I know. It wasn’t entirely on Kinevox, some portions. Whatever. Q: so my question is that, the sound that was recorded on location, there was a pilot track recorded on location, right? J: yes. Q: and later the dubbing happened. J: yes. Q: did Satyajit Ray use dubbing? J: no. He used to do dubbing, but he didn’t prefer the loop dubbing. Q: why? J: he didn’t do because the acting would fail if he did. Q: the acting would fail? J: yes. The thing was lip synchronization could happen, but the acting would not be very good. Q: yes, acting might not be good. So what did he want then? J: so what he used to do was he would write down what is required for each shot, he would do shot division and do the dubbing according to that. He would do straight dubbing. He used to break down the dialogues and the artists followed that? So he did straight dubbing. Q: straight dubbing, ok. J: straight dubbing means you record a couple of takes and cut them and do the necessary synchronization. Ok? What happened at that time was at the Moviewallah studio floor, the boom microphone was used just as it would be used in case of a film shoot, and the straight dubbing happened. If it’s a mid-shot then the microphone will be placed accordingly, if it’s a close shot then it will be different, it’s different for a long shot, ok? So this was the process of doing it. That’s how he did it. Q: then what happened to the sounds that were recorded at the location? J: the incidental sounds like birds calling, crickets calling, post dubbing these use to be recorded separately. Q: ok.

196 J: they were recorded and mixed separately. Q: did you do straight dubbing for the voice? J: yes, straight dubbing. Q: that means the actors used to be called again for the dubbing in a studio? J: yes. Q: with the boom rod? J: yes. The dubbing used to happen in this way. After the dubbing then comes the incidental sounds, which was equally important. Say the scene is happening around this time, so the kind of nature sound that should be present, they have to be put that way. Ok? So we had to do a lot of physical labour at that time, ok? Now it has become very easy in the age of the computers. But today people will be astonished to see the techniques we used to work with. They wouldn’t believe it actually happened. Q: but dubbing means the actors have to enact again, right? J: why? Q: in straight dubbing the actor had to say/read his or her dialogues again afresh, isn’t it? J: yes. The original outdoor song has to be removed first, then it has to be played back on Moviewallah and the artist has to be shown the style of performance done at the location. Ok? Then the actor should decide how to re-enact that. There were senior artists who were very experienced, so it was not a problem for them. Q: what about the non-actors? Say Chunibala debi from Pather Panchali? J: they all used to do straight dubbing, but the dialogues were broken up and recorded in separate takes. Q: it all happened at the location, isn’t that right? J: yes, all at the location. Not all the dubbing happen at the location. Q: no, I mean, say Chunibala debi from Pather Panchali. Was her voice dubbed voice? J: Some portions are original from the location, which are good to sound and don’t have a lot of out-noise. So that was the process. So the location fixed by him (Satyajit Ray), generally they were all quiet and secluded. Naturally there were not many people to form a crowd in those times. Now if there is a shoot happening, thousands of people will gather to see it. In those times this wasn’t much. In spite of everything some people used to come to watch the shoot. So what else do you want to ask? Q: I want to know about a lot of things. What is called ambience now, used to be called noise in those days, say the sounds that are present at the location like a bird’s call or a cow’s or say a cat suddenly calls?

197 J: yes these sounds are all recorded. They all are recorded separately and synchronized later. It happened that way, alright? There was no lack of that in the film, ok? Q: ok. But when it was direct recording format, the ambience was there. Once the studio era started so much stress was not given for location sounds, isn’t it? J: yes. Q: I am saying this because we have seen in earlier films, say during 1940’s, 1950’s… J: no, it wasn’t so modernized at that time. We always tried to keep the original sound from the location, ok? If the dialogue was absolutely inaudible then we had to dub. Q: did this become the trend? I mean, was it same for the films during 1970’s, 1980’s? J: yes, we have seen this in some films surely. Q: you did mixing, right? J: yes. Q: final mixing and re-recording too? J: yes. During the shoot of Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha, have you seen that film? Q: yes, I have seen. J: I have worked for that film. It’s dubbing, ambience and other sounds, all I did. And I did re-recording too. Q: did you record ambience at the location? J: not much at the location, at that time we were mostly permanent staff at the studios. It was extremely troublesome at the location. Firstly the crowd management was a huge trouble. Who knows if someone makes some kind of a noise? So we had to fetch clear sounds from there. Q: the location sound recordist of Subarnarekha used to give you all the tracks that he recorded from the location and you used to edit them and put them, right? J: these tracks used to be recorded on his recorder that was transferred at the studio, ok? After the transfer the tracks used to be synchronized with the picture. Now we used to look at which sounds are good and which will not work, and the dubbing was done according to what was required. Then we realized that some portion of dubbing and some portion of location sounds are not going well together. We would dub the whole film then. Q: the whole film would be dubbed? J: yes, the whole film. When I joined NFDC, then I worked for a film by Goutam Ghose, it’s a film on Bangladesh called Padma Nadir Majhi. There the boat’s sounds, boithar awaaj (the sound of the water), kaada (footsteps on muck), we created all these sounds ourselves at the studio floor. Q: meaning the Foley?

198 J: yes. We used flour to create kaada {muck} and then record the sound. Q: Antarjali Yatra? J: no not that, it was a co-production with Bangladesh. I don’t remember it because I have been detached too long and out of practice too. Q: Padma Nadir Majhi? J: yes, Padma Nadir Majhi. There was a huge use of sounds in that film, so much of extra sounds other than dialogue. Q: did you create all those sounds? J: yes, we created them all. Q: none of them was recorded at the location? J: no, only some of them, like they recorded some sounds of ripples of water. We punched that with the created sound and made it, by punching the indoor and outdoor sounds, ok? Q: what is the difference between straight dubbing and dubbing? J: straight dubbing means without picture. Q: Okay. J: no problem was there as such. Because when we brought the artists in the moviewallah studios we used to show them the acting, otherwise they couldn’t enact. Q: ok, so you did dubbing by only looking at the picture? J: yes. Q: so that is straight dubbing? J: no, not that. Straight dubbing means without picture, ok? Q: ok. J: and the loop dubbing used to happen with the picture. Q: but you mentioned earlier that Satyajit Ray used to prefer straight dubbing. J: yes. But in one of his last films, in a film towards the end, Ghare Baire, he did loop dubbing for that. Q: ok. J: the whole film is loop dubbed in the studio. And we too worked for that recording. And Soumitra da was giving lectures at certain places at that time, so he would very fluently deliver one to three pages of dialogues. And what happened was in loop dubbing you had to give rehearsals, to fix on the acting style and other stuff. Then the final recoding used to happen. Soumitra Chatterjee is an ace actor and exceptionally well with dubbing. And he maintains his acting while dubbing. So while the rehearsals were monitored, we used to record it at the monitor. And then we used to listen to the take, to see its quality. So

199 then he used to say, “This is ok. You can keep it.” So we recorded some shots in that way. And then it was extremely satisfactory to work with Manik da. Because he used to think how different sounds can be recreated. For instance in Goopy Gayen Bagha Bayen: when Goopy and Bagha are sitting in the forest and they are being attacked by mosquitoes, he wanted to use the sound of the mosquitoes. Now that was an impossible task! Isn’t it? So then what we did, there is a kind of flower available here, it’s called Krishnakoli. So we cut out the front portion of the flower and produced the sound by blowing through that hole. We went to the India Film recording echo chamber with that flower and two artists and created that sound. So when one is going out of breath then the other person is starting, and so on. It was kind of a loop cycle and that was used in loop form to make the noise of the mosquitoes. So there are certain kind of sounds for which we need to think and figure out how to recreate it at the recording. Q: have you worked with as well? J: yes. Q: which films? J: the first film I worked for was . Q: ok. Re-recording? J: completely. Dubbing, re-recording, effects everything. Then I worked for another film where this famous actress from Bombay had acted, she passed away. I don’t remember it now after so many days. It’s because I am ageing, so naturally I won’t remember. Q: Simi Garewal? J: no, not her. Someone before her. Q: Suhasini Mulay? J: no she came much later. I am talking about way before. She passed away as well. Q: is it in Mrinal Sen’s film? J: yes. Q: So he used to record a lot on locations, righgt? And post that would he go for dubbing? J: yes. Q: in all of his films? J: yes, no one worked without dubbing. Because there was so much of out-noise, it was very difficult to eliminate all of that. Q: nowadays for films, all sounds are recorded on location. J: no, that is because it’s digital now.

200 Q: yes, digital. Now every film is going for sync recording, recorded in sync with the camera on location. J: so the out-noise is not coming? Q: firstly, the production team has been increased - they are controlling the location. Secondly, the actors are throwing their voice according to that. J: even if they are throwing their voice they have to balance it according to the kind of dialogue, because it is not a “Jatra” (play)! LG Q: yes, but the actors are also co-operating. J: yes, they could. Q: and thirdly, technology. Three mics are being mixed together, say a lapel, a boom and a directional microphone - the voice is recorded this way. J: what help will that do? After the shooting is over you’ll have to go for dubbing. Q: no, dubbing is not required then. J: ok. Q: the expense of the dubbing is saved, one. J: then what happens a noise gate comes in the sound from the machine. There always a “hiss” like an out-noise. That has to be eliminated. It is possible to do that but to a certain percentage. It doesn’t work if you do it beyond the percentage. So whatever you do that noise can’t be eliminated. We have done it to some extent at that time. But what you are saying about the new pattern, it’s not possible if it is not shot in a quiet place. Say today if you are shooting at Dharmatolla will you be able to keep that sound? Q: LG J: you won’t be able to. Q: no, you’d require a big production team for that. J: however big is your production team, they wouldn’t be able to stop the noise. Q: ok. J: so you have to dub certain portions if you are shooting outdoor. Like I gave you an example, say if there is a shooting at Dharmatolla, will you be able to keep that sound? No, you cannot, you have to dub that. Q: but that won’t be naturalistic. Say if someone has to shoot at Dharmatolla more - if that sound is dubbed later and mixed with the ambience then it won’t be naturalistic. J: it will be. You can make it that way. Q: how? J: while the shooting is taking place, the ambience should be recorded during that time. Ok?

201 Q: ok. J: now you put that as a filler continuously. It will surely be possible, why not. Say a car passes by suddenly, then you have to synchronize the sound with the sequence. Q: a lot of people don’t like dubbing. J: yes that is true. Then how is sound happening for foreign films? You think all the sounds are original? Q: in most of the European films it is the original location recording. J: then the location noise would be less. Yes. Previously the Tollygunje studios in Kolkata used to be a quiet location, now if you go there to shoot there will be crackers bursting, ok? Now the numbers of cars have also increased on roads. Naturally the studios aren’t so perfectly noise-proof as well. So problems will be there, you have to figure it out within that. Q: have you mixed many Uttam-Suchitra films? J: yes, many of them. Q: I have seen your name in quite a lot of those film-credits. J: during that time almost 90% of the films were done by me. There was no day and night for me, I left home for shoot at 7 in the morning and some days I used to come by back 1:30 at night, or 2 or even next day early morning some days. And someone would wait for me at home with food. And it was not even the era of mobile phones that you could easily call home and inform that you’ll not come back. Q: ok. So you have been working for many of these studios, right? J: yes. Q: New Theatres? NFDC? J: yes the sound studio of NFDC. And Technicians studio also. And Calcutta Movietone, the one, which was called Radha films studio before Doordarshan. Q: ok. J: then East India. Ok? And there were many others. Q: what I want to ask is that - say within the years 50’s to 60’s, 60’s to 70’s, 70’s to 80’s and 80’s to 90’s - has there been any change in the pattern or trend in sound designing work, like the use of ambience? J: yes change has come. In earlier days we used to see that for ambience whatever sounds were recorded from the location were kept. When I see those old films on TV now I realize how much of noise has remained. Whatever then later those recorded sounds were re-recorded and synchronized at the studio. I have recorded numerous effect- sounds with my tape recorder like tram sounds, train sounds,

202 Q: have you all done these sounds yourself? J: yes, all by myself. Then I also had the sound of a snake gulping down a frog (he enacts), this belongs to one of the impossible things. Q: did you record on tape, as in reel? J: yes reel. Wire machine. Q: ok. Did you always give importance to dubbing solely? J: no I don’t give importance to dubbing if the sound is good. Then why should it go for dubbing? But ultimately we find that dubbing is necessary. It is because the noise level has increased much now compared to before. Now there are new ways of controlling noise, like noise gate n others, but still there is a percentage up to which you can do. Say you can cut within 10 – 15%, not any more. Q: you can only cut the rumble out. J: yes, the rumble can be cut out. Along with the rumble the hissing noise is also there. Q: which films of Satyajit Ray did you work for? J: I have worked since the last phase of Pather Panchali, when he was doing the re- recording. Q: ok. Did you do the re-recording for Aparajito too? J: no, I didn’t do re-recording. Satyen Chatterjee was the location sound recordist, he did it. But I had assisted in all these films. Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Rajen Tarafdar and other famous directors, I have worked with most of them. Q: I have wondered often how he did it after seeing some portions of his films. For instance if you remember in Pather Panchali, when Indir Thakrun is dying, there – whether you call it noise or ambience whatever – he used the sound of a tree grazing against another tree. Do you remember? J: yes. Q: was that recorded separately? J: yes, separately. Otherwise it will be difficult to establish it. Imagine the shoot is happening here and that sound is happening at a distance and it’s audible. But the audience has to be given a certain feel, right? So this was recorded separately and later put into a separate channel. Q: ok. So he understood the requirement of that sound for the film after going to the location, isn’t it? J: he used to observe that the sound is happening, ok? Q: ok.

203 J: and he knew that had to be recorded. And how to do that? It could be done with different trees, it wasn’t necessary to do with that tree only. Q: there is a lot of location sounds present in a lot of Satyajit Ray’s films. J: meaning? Q: I mean there is a great use of ambience in his films. J: yes, it’s there. Q: they sound like they are recorded from location. I mean whatever he got on sync. J: when Pather Panchali was happening there were no portable recorders. So we had to carry those huge Kinevox machines and record. It was very difficult to make it move. So naturally once the Nagra came we used to carry it easily and record. It’s easier now, you carry a recorder, record your sounds and come back. If it is not there it is inconvenient. With time the recording machines are improving. But the difficulty with which we recorded sound during our times, contemporary recordists will be amazed to hear that. We had to struggle a lot during work. Now what you can do in a minute at the press of a button, back then it would take time. Soumitra babu is a well-known dubbing artist. So for him it’s not difficult. But you had earlier asked about Chunibala, she couldn’t do it. Like , he could never do dubbing. LG. so that’s how it was done. So we had to do straight dubbing with Tulsi babu. And we cut and added portions from different takes. Q: so straight dubbing means you cut different portions from what you have recorded on location and join them, right? J: no. Q: then? J: we brought the artists to our studio floor and shown them all of their shots on the Moviewallah machine, and then go for dubbing. They were shown the acting style. Then we stopped the playback on moviewallah and recorded the dialogues. Q: ok. How did you sync them? J: sync would then happen on the moviewallah, by cutting and joining. Say we would break one shot in three to four different takes. Now different parts of these different takes were joined together and they generally matched well. But if by chance the take was not matching at all, then we would go for another recording. Q: where did this happen, on the floor? J: yes, at the floor. Q: and loop dubbing was done inside the studio, isn’t it?

204 J: yes. The projector was there where the film will be playing, and the artists will look at the film and deliver their dialogues. We kept two to four takes for variation, say first part of take one and third part of take three would be later joined together. Q: say for example Kanu Bandyopadhyay - if you look at his sequences you can easily understand that it is completely dubbed. There is a stark difference between the physical acting and the delivered dialogue. J: yes, that happens. Unlike a few artists, most of the actors were not accustomed to dubbing. Q: it is impossible to dub Tulsi Chakraborty. J: yes, impossible. Q: he is a natural actor. J: like when the comedians come, it is very difficult for them to dub. Q: yes it is. So what happened with them? J: in a similar process like others. Now people are more accustomed with dubbing after much practice. Q: generally how many takes would record during dubbing? J: generally two to four takes. But there have been times where whole thousand feet tapes had been used fully, as many as seven to eight. Q: why did you omit dubbed takes? Is it because there would be no lip-sync or because the acting wasn’t happening? J: both acting and lip sync. Q: have you ever gone to the location and recorded yourself till now? J: yes, I have done, but very less. We had a machine called Stencil Hoffman at the technicians’ studio. It had two large boxes. LG Q: ok. J: once we had fallen in trouble while shooting by the Ganges. We couldn’t establish contact with the machine because of the wind). So ultimately we had to use the screwdriver to tighten it and then we worked. And we also had to keep a check on the cycles, if there was any problem with the cycle we had to correct it. So we had a lot of trouble recording in those days. Q: yes. This straight dubbing used to happen right after the shoot or on the next day? J: no, it used to happen after the edit was done. Q: ok. So the actors were called again, and the film was played at the studio?

205 J: yes. One day what happened the whole shoot was over. So it was joined and it was projected to check if there is anything missing from the film. So once we checked and found everything was alright, we used to call for the dates of actors for dubbing. Q: was this process followed for Satyajit Ray’s films as well? J: yes. Q: so the sound that we hear with the rush, is that direct? J: yes, direct. Q: were these sounds all removed? J: yes. Q: will it not be possible to get any of those now? Are there any tapes that have those direct-recorded sounds - if anyone wants to listen to them? J: the editor might have them, if at all. Q: ok. J: but I doubt if you will get them. Q: ok, I wouldn’t get it. For instance Aranyer Din Ratri - I heard that it was entirely direct recording - it didn’t have any dubbing. Isn’t it? J: I am not sure about that. That film happened at the Indrapuri studio, so I’m not entirely sure whether the original sound was kept or it was dubbed. Q: did it happen in 1965? J: yes, it would be around that time. Q: it is very essential to understand that, the films, which used direct recording without dubbing and the films, which were dubbed, there was a difference in quality between them. J: quality difference will surely be there. Because the boom operation which is present at outdoor location shoots, if they don’t have proper mics they might turn off at times. Say a character is walking down the road, so with his movement the mics position will also change. Naturally the recording of the sound will not be smooth. Then it had to be dubbed to bring uniformity. Q: I am really astonished to know that all of Chunibala debi’s dialogues were dubbed, because they sounded very naturalistic in Pather Panchali. There are many such instances. Such as in Aparajito, the old man who played the role of the grand uncle was also a non-actor, right? J: yes. Q: his voice also didn’t sound like it was dubbed. It sounded like it was from the original location take. But you’re saying they were all directly dubbed.

206 J: direct dubbing means? Q: straight dubbing, sorry. I am trying to understand this properly. Even if it was straight dubbing it was done very well. J: yes that is because the sequences were played multiple times to the actors, to show them the acting and what was required from them. It has to be done this way. The artist too has to understand it clearly, or else it wouldn’t happen. Q: we spoke just about the voice till now. There are many other films, like Chowringhee. The shooting of Chowringhee happened at Maidan and Dharmatolla in Kolkata. J: yes. Q: if you notice you wouldn’t hear any sounds of Chowringhee or Dharmatolla in that film. Why do you think they didn’t use it? J: probably that was decided by mixing engineer. If the director had said that ambience is required or necessary here, then he might have kept. Q: has it ever happened that some other location’s ambience was used? J: no one would figure that out. Q: ok. Say some films use stock sounds, sounds from the sound-library. J: no not those. The sounds were recorded on a different location, ok? Say the shoot happened at this location, so the ambience was recorded from another location at a distance. Ok? That is possible. Q: ok. Sounds from a completely different location were never used, right? J: no. Q: for instance in the film Kanchenjungha by Satyajit Ray it can very clearly understood. There is only one location, but different areas or zones. Every zone has its own unique sounds. For example, where speaks is a different zone, where Ashok Mukhopadhyay speaks is a different zone, and where and others are going out for a walk near their house is another zone. The texture and quality of each of those sounds were different. So if in the post you use one location’s sound for another, it will be sounding very odd, isn’t it? J: yes. But it wasn’t done that way. Say when the shoot is happening at the Darjeeling Mall if you concentrate and listen you’ll hear the faint sound of the nearby waterfall. But that wouldn’t be audible among the other noises there. So the recording had to be done accordingly, and usually it was done at night. Q: ok. J: the shooting was over in the day but the sound recording would happen in the night, because we had to utilize the sound well.

207 Q: no if you are shooting the sounds of the day in the night how will it match? Ambient sound is different in the day than in the night, wouldn’t that be a problem? J: the sounds of the cricket, the sounds of the foxes in the distant – we used to make loop of these sounds to use in portions where they were not present. But the audience wouldn’t realize that. Q: so the sound recording was done with proper concentration and care in Satyajit Ray’s films. But what about other filmmakers like Rajen Tarafdar? J: he was very particular too. He made the film called Ganga. We had kept some of the original location sounds and some had to be dubbed, ok? Q: ok. But the ones, which were location sounds and the ones, which were dubbed were different in quality. So how did he mix them together? I mean the dubbing of the voice happened inside a studio, isn’t it? J: the ambient sound from that location was laid over the dubbed voice. Otherwise the mistake will be noticed. Q: can I get some of the sounds from location recordings of the film Ganga? Will anyone have them? Is there anyone who will have location sound recordings of those old times? J: if you want to find Ganga’s sounds then there is an editor, Aurobindo Bhattacharya, all the sounds were usually kept with them. If you visit Rupayan you might be able to meet Aurobindo Bhattacharya there. You can see if you can manage anything from him. The tapes become sticky if they are too old. Naturally that’s how they are discarded. The stripe tapes which we used here were for use and throw purpose, ok? Q: which Indian manufactured tape was used? J: yes, lacquer used to be applied on celluloid and later perforations were made. When first we started getting tapes then the lot/bulk order used to come from Singapore, three to four track tapes ok? Q: ok. J: we have heard music from those tapes, it sounds extremely good in quality. So naturally they were used extensively. Post that time they were manufactured here. Q: have you used Nagra? J: yes. Q: but that is portable Nagra, isn’t it? J: yes, portable Nagra. Q: and the magnetic machine that you used at the studio to mix, was it RCA’s? J: yes. We had RCA as well as Magnetek. Q: is that Magnetek’s Rock and Roll?

208 J: yes. Q: that is a huge sized machine. J: yes, it is very big. Q: how was your experience working with Ritwik Ghatak? Was he very particular too? J: he always had everything inside his head. If it’s somebody else they will keep thinking about what should happen. “I will keep your thought in my mind”. For instance I had done the dubbing and background music for his film Subarnarekha. That scene with “Kaali”, the way he designed the sound for that – he used bronze utensils and created the sound by throwing them on the floor from a height. After that these sounds were transferred. Then the points were marked where the peak modulations had happened, he cut the sounds with scissors and put reverb there. The characters are chatting and coming across the highway, suddenly that sound will almost strike your heart it was done in such a way. I mean it was meant to strike the heart/chest of the audience. So this thought process is an extremely crucial thing, that how it should be executed. It’s not possible to do this with magnetic. This has to be transferred into film. Q: ok. J: the positive has to be done. Q: that means he would do the recording at the studio and then transfer that on film? J: yes. Q: and then he reversed the optical? J: yes. Q: but optical has a single track, isn’t it? J: yes. Like if the sound is reversed then how will it sound? It will sound exactly reversed. If you wanted to reverse it then something called glaze emulsion was applied. So naturally the sound will be audible over the glaze. Q: are all the films of Mrinal Sen dubbed? J: yes. I don’t exactly remember the name of the film, it featured , probably Ekdin Protidin. Q: but Smita Patil wasn’t there in that film, it was . J: yes, Shabana Azmi. Q: with Smita Patil he did Aakaler Sandhyane and Khandhar was Shabana Azmi. J: yes. Q: now if you are working with the digital system, how will you do it?

209 J: I will have to learn it from scratch. LG. so that’s why I didn’t continue to work, sometime before someone called Anup Mukhopadhyay joined NFDC. You know him I guess? Q: yes. J: ok. He had joined NFDC along with me. He is now working fine with the digital technology. I am sure with a try I would have learnt it too. We have spent most of our lives with two-channel recorders, then we saw Rock and Roll where we used twelve channels. I might have learnt but it would have taken much time. Now at this old age there is no point in trying. LG. Q: which is your last work? J: my last work was Satyajit Ray’s Ghare Baire. Q: really? J: yes, he fell sick after that. His son was looking after then. And there were quite a few small budget films, but not worth remembering for so long. LG. Q: all your final mixes used to be mono, right? J: yes, all were mono. There wasn’t any other option. Q: yes. The first Dolby stereo film was Dekha by Goutam Ghose. J: yes, that was shot in Madras. Anup Mukhopadhyay did the sound. Q: so when you mixed on mono how did you mix all the number of tracks into one, how did you do re-recording while mixing? J: I used a mixer to do that. Q: but did you apply any standard compressor on the final mastering? J: no we didn’t use compressor then. It was used right before going to the optical, not before. Q: 1:2 or 1:3? J: that you have to decide after looking at the quality of the sound. It doesn’t have a constant flow, it changes. Q: I have seen in a studio at Chennai, they apply 1:2 ratio for all films. J: it’s possible. Q: I don’t remember the name of the studio, it is a very famous one, and everyone goes there. Didn’t you apply reverb? J: I used it wherever it was essential. Q: so the films would finally release at the theater. Have you ever applied reverb thinking of the theater?

210 J: depending on what is present particularly in the scene. Say someone is giving a lecture from a big dais, so only that portion will have if not the rest. Q: ok. Did you apply any overall standard…? J: no, nothing of that sort. Q: there is something called the “look” of the soundtrack, an even - J: no, that wouldn’t be good. At least that’s what our theory used to tell. I am not sure about today’s theory. But sound should be done just like it is in a location, that way you provide relief for the ears. Q: ok. J: if everywhere you put loud noises in the background it doesn’t work out. And is some cinema halls the quality of the acoustics is not good. Q: So the vital point is that during Satyajit Ray’s film shoots someone would be present to do the complete pilot track recording at the location. After that the rush was viewed. J: yes. Q: after seeing the rush it was decided how much dubbing was necessary and where. J: straight dubbing would anyway happen, so it was crucial to achieve the exact acting/emoting as is in the picture. Q: so then the dubbing dates were fixed. J: yes. Q: ok. So after the dubbing was over would the music recording start separately? J: after dubbing, the matching was done. Then it was projected and the sound quality was checked for any errors. If there were any problems anywhere then that portion would be re-dubbed. Q: ok. J: yes, definitely. Q: ok. So then it’s like we have the visual, then voice dubbing is done, then it will be the effects, at what stage did effects happen? J: effects should be towards the end only. Once the dubbing is done with the actors that part is over. Earlier what happened was a loop was played and the effects recording happened along with that, say whether it’s footsteps or something else. Q: this is what I am curious about. Say these effects from the location for instance the sound of footsteps, or the sound of glass, or the sound of dragging a chair - were they recorded at the location or later as effects? J: all were done later as effects. Q: none of it was recorded on location?

211 J: no, none. How will you do it at the location? The out-noise will also be heard in the recording. Q: ok. J: it cannot be eliminated. Q: ok. So effects done, now ambience. How much of ambience will be recorded and of what kinds? Who would decide that? Was it the Director himself or was it the sound mixer, like you? J: say there is scene 1, shot 1 and the duration of this shot is one and a half minute, ok? So for this one and a half minute I have to necessarily get that ambience of that location, ok? So that’s how it will be decided, and we will move from scene to scene. When a car is passing by in the city the ambience of the city can stay. When the same car starts approaching the highway then the ambience will slowly change, ok. Naturally that’s how it will happen. Q: did all filmmakers think about this with equal importance? J: no. A lot of people think actually, but some don’t Q: I have observed it for many films, say for most of Uttam-Suchitra’s films, which are very popular and viewed many times - they had no ambience at all. J: Na (yes). Q: there is no ambience in Saptapadi. J: the director used to take this machine and record the sound himself. Q: did he record himself? J: yes. After that he transferred that to us, we had to do the transfer. Q: I was watching one film by Nabyendu Chattopadhyay, it’s called Sauda. J: yes. Q: I don’t know in which year it was recorded, but while I was watching it on television I noticed that the location sound is so rich, so good in quality. I don’t know where did he record it, I don’t know who recorded the sound. Do you know? J: I don’t know who the recordist was, I can’t say. Q: each director has a unique sense of hearing. Some of them don’t give any importance to ambience. J: the thing is, though I shouldn’t be commenting on it, what they -the directors - decide is what finally happens. If someone else says that, “Sir, this is a mistake/not working”, he would, “you keep quiet.” Q: really? J: so then they kept quiet

212 Q: how did Satyajit Ray work? J: he was very good. He made an effort to listen. In the film Mahanagar there were some sound effects of the tram, which were created by rubbing two files against each other. Q: Foley? J: we had used these sounds. Q: these were recorded later? J: yes. They were created later. Every sound will not be similar sounding, there has to be variations in them. Q: I too have studied film sound production. So I find this questionable about what you just mentioned about this sound effect of the tram when it moves. J: yes, when the wheel turns around. Q: why didn’t he record it at that time when the wheel was clashing? Why did he create that in the studio with files? J: could he use that sound if he had recorded, was that possible? Q: if the recording was done in the night? J: no, that doesn’t happen. We had tried doing that a lot, it didn’t happen. Q: ok. J: it was not possible with outdoor locations, that sound couldn’t be used. Q: but the noise level has increased from before. Say there was more noise in 1970’s than in 1950’s, right? Industrial development has happened, many factories have been built; many residential apartments have been raised. J: the human population has increased. Q: yes, people with different languages have come here in Kolkata, like the Marwari’s have come; many people from Bangladesh have come, so there is a lot of noise. J: yes. Q: so what do you think about the usage of location sound earlier and the way they were used later with the number of sound effects going up, and more dubbing is happening? Has the usage of dubbing increased? J: yes, dubbing has definitely increased. Q: has Foley increased too? J: the thing is dubbing has increased, so at present also there isn’t any option other than dubbing. Say you are making a film now, you won’t have any option other than dubbing. So naturally the thought process should be based on that understanding, ok? I have quite a few old quarter-inch tapes, I have two or three bags full. Q: really?

213 J: yes, and there are lots of sounds in those. We had recorded those on wire machines. I have a wire machine as well. Q: what will you do with them? J: they will slowly go bad, what else. Q: were they all recorded on location? J: yes. Q: recorded on the streets? Really? J: yes. Once what happened, Aparna Sen’s father Chidananda Dasgupta, in his film Bilet Pherot there was a scene where rain sounds were required. So how would it be done, because he wanted the sound of real rain, not artificial rain? So we hired a car, followed the dark clouds and went towards Basirhaat. We had almost reached when we realized that it wouldn’t rain, ok? Only the breeze remained for some time. So at that time we stopped the car at a place and saw that a snake is gulping down a frog and making a sound. So we recorded that. Q: which microphone did you use? J: it was the wire machine, it was good for recording effects. In the mean time it was around 1:30 or 2 in the night. Suddenly we heard boot-steps from a distance on the tar road, followed by big flash lights. The police came and asked us what we were doing there. So then we replied honestly that we have come to record some sound effects from a sound studio. Eagerly the cop asked to show what we had recorded, so we did. After listening and being convinced he told us the reason why he was asking us the questions. He said, “just sometime back a robbery happened here. That’s why we came here.” Then they asked if we needed some help. We replied in the negative. We said we would be leaving soon. So this is how we used to record sound. Q: where did you finally get the rain sound? J: that didn’t happen. So we went to a studio. We took a plain sheet of tin and fit it inside an echo chamber, and then sugar cubes were poured from above. Q: ok. J: ok? So it exactly sounded like rain, ok? We had to keep that, we couldn’t do anything else. So to create these sound effects, you have to really work your brain and figure out ways to do it, how you can make a sound. Q: don’t you go out for walks in the evening now? J: no. Q: you generally stay at home? J: yes.

214 Q: I took a lot of your time.

215 Jyoti Chatterjee (2013)

Duration: 01:13:18 Name Abbreviations: Jyoti Chatterjee –J; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: Have you done magnetic recording? J: yes. Q: but your career started with optical recording, right? J: yes. Q: was it direct recording while you did optical recording? J: yes, at the shoot it was direct recording. Q: ok. You used to go there? J: yes. Q: ok. Then? J: there was a sound booth called Van where, through microphones, the sound was recorded on the recorder. And in the meanwhile during the shoots some loopholes/faux pas will be there either in the camera or the sound, so in those cases re-takes are done. And the re-takes are then cautiously taken. And when the sound is taken then the proper shot number and take number will be written on the clapstick. Like there are proper divisions say in a scene there are 6 shots. Q: hm. J: and how they will be shot will be decided by the director. And that’s how the acting was guided. Q: ok. So the sounds that were taken during direct recording, were only those sounds used during mixing? J: no. That sound will have some out-noise remaining. Because now there are a lot of structures around the old studios, big buses also pass by, so they’ll blow horn loudly while going. So that’s why the sound can’t be kept. Q: ok. So if this was shot on location, like this is an instance where recording has happened on a set, what if it happened outside the set on a location? J: then the same problem remains. Q: what is the harm if a bus passes by? Isn’t it a real situation? J: we are not seeing the bus pass by visually, we are only able to hear the sound of it passing by. Q: ok.

216 J: so if we have to establish that the bus is passing by we have to show a shot of the same as well, ok? Q: ok. So that’s why all the sounds that you had from the direct recording - they were all discarded, isn’t it? J: yes, they were discarded. And there was out-noise as well, the sound proof studios now are not so good. Some or the other out-noise seeps in somehow. Q: hm. J: that’s why those sounds get discarded and are recorded afresh. Q: then what was the need of recording? J: because it is a guideline. Q: ok. J: guideline in the sense say the dubbing will happen after four days. Q: ok. J: so it is difficult to remember that exact emotion during the dialogue delivery for that long. Q: ok. So while recording generally any location, the location will have its own ambience - if you discard that ambience then it has to be recreated again, right? J: yes, it has to be re-created. Q: what was used to create that ambience? J: that was taken from the location, at a given level. If it’s an outdoor shot then dialogues will sound odd so there should be ambience sounds in the background. Say like we are sitting inside four walls. Q: hm. J: it’s almost soundless. So if some vehicles are passing by this place, it has to be established in a certain way. Q: what sound was used there? J: the ambience of the same location was recorded and used. Q: ok. But was it audible? J: yes, of course. Q: why I ask is because when I am watching on television or listening through my headphones, I don’t hear anything. There is no ambience, only the sound of the camera rolling. J: that means it was shot with direct recording. Q: ok. J: that’s how the sound of the camera is there.

217 Q: wasn’t it discarded? J: no because at times it happens that the level of out-noise is very low in the ambience. Q: ok. J: if suddenly some loud out-noise enters/is heard, that cannot be matched with the kind of sound that is required for that sequence, then it will be discarded. Q: ok. So when the ambient sounds were recreated, were the sounds taken from the sound-bank? J: no. What we did was, after the dubbing of the film is over, when we just have the dialogues and nothing else, you feel that some feeling is necessary there. Q: hm. J: say the shoot is on the road, so there has to be blowing horn sounds. Soon after a motorcycle will pass by. So these are recorded softly. Q: you record them, right? J: yes. Q: ok. Then they are put back in the same place? J: yes. Q: which time period is it that you are talking about, 1950’s to 1970’s? J: yes. Q: before that, did everything happen directly, say around 1935? J: yes. The trend of dialogue dubbing was not in vogue at that time, the use was less. Q: when did dubbing start then? J: I recorded sound effects. Say in a night sequence foxes can be heard distantly, crickets are calling, these sounds would have to be established. When you are at the location during shoot there is a big crowd of people, who come to watch the shoot. So naturally those sounds with noises cannot be kept. So we discarded those sounds and recreated the ambience. That is when we need to create those effects. So I have to go out in the night and record those sounds. Say there’s a sequence, which is being shot somewhere out-station on the road. There are different kinds of sounds like sounds of crickets, then dogs barking, whatever comes across our ears we record them. And we have to be careful while recording then for clarity. So after the dubbed dialogues are matched and placed, we lay these ambience sounds in the background. We apply a filling level on them. Q: filling? Is that a soundtrack? J: yes. Q: what can you hear from that?

218 J: these are the ones, which are from the recorder, the sounds that are recorded in the night, that’s what gives the feeling level. Q: ok. Is that also called ambience? J: yes. Q: are ambience and “fillings” similar things? J: ambience is of course a background sound of a location. Q: ok. Are you calling that “filling”? J: yes. Q: ok. So it is called “filling” in film terminology as well? J: it is filler level. Q: ok. So that means you have to visit the location again to record those fillers afresh. J: yes. Q: but this process - say I am going to a village and recording sounds from there and later I discard them, J: then you have to check the quality of the sounds. You have to be cautious while recording. You can do it later as well. If it’s a village it should have a certain soundscape like dogs barking, crickets calling, ‘pheu’ calling, these sounds are there. You have to understand the requirement and put them in places. Q: those sounds have to be recorded as well, isn’t it? J: yes. I have some of those sound effects on tapes with me, you have to play one by one and listen. Q: hm. J: after listening you have to record it on another tape. Q: hm. I have got a machine here with me with which you can convert sound from analog medium to digital medium and record it on the computer. But you can’t use this without a player. J: what kind of player? Q: spool player. J: oh! That isn’t there. Q: I have one, from Atari 334, but not here. J: yes, 334. Q: I will come once again in January with it and we can play the tapes and see if the recording happens. J: ok.

219 Q: in optical recording, when dubbing was not dubbing, when everything was done directly, what was the procedure then? J: you’d have to check the quality of the out sound. If you can keep that sound you should do a “close” treatment on it. Q: ok. You mean to record with the mic closer to the face? J: yes. If the mic is placed at a distance of 10 to 15 feet naturally the distance is more. Q: have you worked with optical? In direct recording? J: yes. Q: so when dubbing came after direct optical recording, what was the difference? J: the only difference was you could avoid the out-noise. Q: ok. J: you have to record the sound so that you can maintain a uniformity throughout. Q: but dubbing is magnetic recording, right? J: optical is optical. Q: hm. But all the dubbing is done as magnetic recording, isn’t it? J: yes, that is all magnetic recording. Q: in which year did magnetic recording start? Do you remember? J: no, I don’t remember the exact time. Q: did Satyajit Ray use magnetic recording first? J: no, it was used before, even before Pather Panchali was made. Q: magnetic recording? J: yes because earlier in dubbing the sound was louder. If it’s not a silent camera, its sound will enter. It can’t be avoided. Q: hm. J: if it’s a Blimp camera, then it’s fine. Or else it should be a silent camera. Otherwise there’ll be a constant noise. Q: like in Debdas by Pramathesh Barua, 1935, it’s all silent. J: no that was not dubbing, that was all direct recording. Q: so when did dubbing start then? J: as far as I remember, there was an editor called Bhagawandas. The gentleman was Oriya. He is quite a famous editor and used to work in Kolkata. Suddenly one day what he did, he cut a few shots in loop form, joined them and it was played. Then a mark was given to it, say one’s end and the others’ beginning, there is a gap given at the point they are joining. Q: hm.

220 J: it differs from 3 to 5 frames. There is a mark provided there in the shape of a cross, that’s the sync mark. And that was played parallel to the camera and sound. So that track will play in the loop form. It might not work for the first two shots, but in the third shot it will be correct. So that’s how the loop is used. Q: what is the usefulness of the loop-form? That you can record those tracks later and sync with it? J: yes, that’s what it is. Q: ok. J: after you get the loop form you have to interlock it and record it. The recorder and the loop should be interlocked and then the recording should happen. So after recording you may find that only take 4 is ok out of the others. Q: do you remember the names of any film where this was done, under Bhagawandas? Daktar, Mukti – were these films all direct recording? J: no, even before. Only for cases where suppose the camera noise has entered, a loud noise of a bus passing by, these sounds couldn’t be kept because the out-noise will be louder than the dialogue. Naturally that sound couldn’t be kept. When the first print of the rush is viewed, with both picture and sound, then we come to know which shots are ok sound-wise and which ones have loud noises. Q: is this rush of direct recording? J: yes. Rush is that where you discard the sound and sync the dialogues and use it. Q: so I am trying to figure out the time when dubbing started. J: I’ll tell you what happened before. Say there are some sounds where the amount out- noise is tremendous. Only those portions were dubbed. And according to the “filling” out- noise was added later. But at times it would sound a little unmatched, so then it would be decided that the whole film will be dubbed. Then it can be done just like we desire. You can add the sound of bus here, a rickshaw honking somewhere else etc. this will add to the feel of sequence, and it would be nice to watch the film. Q: did this change bring any inconvenience to your work? For instance you said that in direct recording work would be less. J: yes amount of work was less, true. Once direct recording is done while shoot that would be all. Now there are other steps involved. Then there would be dubbing, then adding filler sounds in the background, we had to monitor the whole film properly while adding these. If dubbing was chosen then the whole film would be dubbed. Ambience would be added later in the post. Q: didn’t Satyajit Ray shoot most of his film on location?

221 J: yes. Q: were all of them dubbed later, like you mentioned? J: no some sounds would be there which you would have to absolutely discard and then go for straight dubbing and add a “filling” sound in the post. Q: for instance when you see Aranye Din Raatri you will figure out that it is direct recording. J: yes, it happened for some films then. But in those cases the level of the out-noise is slightly more than that of the dialogues. And the layering of the ambience is well- measured. Q: what does that mean? J: well measured in the sense that no sound will appear suddenly very loud, everything is in control. Q: was Satyajit Ray’s working process any different from other filmmakers? J: not entirely. Q: then how are his films so rich in sound? Whenever you’d listen to his film soundtracks you’ll figure that it’s different. How did it sound different then? J: dubbing used to happen. Q: did Satyajit Ray do dubbing for his films? J: no, for his early films he never did dubbing for the whole film. He would usually dub one scene/sequence. Then we would match the fillers in the post and prepare the final tracks. I am forgetting the name of the film for which for which he chose dubbing first, I have not been in touch since a long time. It was in 2002 that I retired. Q: was it Goopy Gayen Bagha Bayen? J: no that was much later. Q: are you talking about a film, which was made earlier and the whole film was dubbed? J: yes. Q: was it Charulata? J: yes. Q: are you sure about this? Whole of Charulata is dubbed? J: yes. Q: ok. J: Charulata was done by us in NFDC. His editor, Mr. Dulal Dutta, was very particular about sound, he would mention where the sound was not so good and something needs to be done. Then he would be asked his opinion and he would say that the level of ambience should go higher or lower at places.

222 Q: ok. J: he would also suggest addition of some sounds at places. Q: did Satyajit Ray ponder upon the use of sound? J: nothing of that sort, but later he realized that he should have thought more about sound design. Because the kind of locations he chose for shoot, there were generally no loud out-noises there, only natural ambience. Q: so he mostly shot his films on location, like Joy Baba Felunath was shot in Benaras, was shot in Rajasthan, both at real locations. Was it not possible for him to go for totally direct recording at these locations? J: well that used to depend on the dialogues. It was done according to that and later placed properly in the post. Q: before you retired in 2002, did you work on the digital platform? J: no. I heard that the digital technology was about to arrive but we did not get the opportunity. Q: which system did you use primarily for all your films? J: we used two separate machines, one for sound and another camera. The clap-stick was used back then for shoots, the scene details were mentioned on it, say like scene 34 shot number 1. This was the process. Q: was everything recorded on a Nagra? J: yes, Nagra was used mainly for all the outdoor location shoots. Q: you received all the tapes with the sounds. Didn’t you work at the studio? J: yes. Q: then you would discard the unusable ambient sounds and arrange for filler sounds. After the dubbing was over you would match the ambience as per your reference, isn’t it? J: yes since the shoot was happening in Rajasthan, the out-noise in the film should give the same feel. Q: ok. How would you get that? J: that would be shot/recorded separately. One take would be about 5 to 6 minutes long, they were recorded at a stretch. Q: this was ambience, right? J: yes, ambience. And when dubbing happened these sounds would be added to give the feeling. Q: did this happen after the dubbing was done? J: no this was called re-recording. Q: ok. So you did re-recording as well?

223 J: yes. Q: when it comes to hearing, magnetic recording sounds clearer than optical direct recording, isn’t it? J: yes, magnetic definitely is clearer. Q: the dynamic range is higher. J: yes. Q: if ambience and fillers were not given then what might have happened? What is the need of fillers or ambiences? What purpose does it serve? J: now first you have to know where the location is. It is a must to know that. Q: hm. Now what if the location is inside a set, indoor? J: yes. Say the kind of sound that is present here is itself creating an ambience with the out-noises. This room is not sound proof. Q: hm. J: there are places abroad where the exterior sounds don’t enter at all. Q: yes, they are soundproof. Do you mean to say that ambience is there to provide information regarding the space? J: yes. Q: but who would decide about how much volume or depth or level should be given to the ambiences? J: that our ears will decide. Q: ok. J: whatever is projected on the screen, the entire audience has to be given that feel of the sound. So naturally it will be done accordingly, whether it’s 5% or 2% or 3%. Q: so the levels given to optical recordings and the levels given to magnetic recordin, were different? When final mix is done with optical tracks then it’s direct optical recording, married print is also on optical. And if recording is done on magnetic media and so is dubbing, and then re-recording is done on optical – is there any difference in the levels of these two platforms? J: no not really. You have to keep hundred percent level/volume for the dialogues. Q: hm. J: naturally after this stage you have to decide about the percentage of the other sounds to be added. Q: if the dialogue level was hundred percent, how much would be allotted to the effects? J: that depends. Say a bus comes from a distance and passes by closer, so when the bus is the closest its volume would be hundred percent, this way you have to build it. It has

224 to be created in such a way that there is no dialogues there, it should be off during dialogues. Q: ok. So when the dialogues are at hundred percent level and you have to add ambience to that (which would not sound like happening nearby) what percentage would you give? J: if the foxes are calling from a far-away distance then volume would be low but it has to reach the ears. Again if it’s a mid-shot or a long-shot volume will vary accordingly. Q: did you do Foley recording, effects which were recorded at the studios? J: yes, of course. Q: why wouldn’t this happen at the location? J: no, it wouldn’t happen while dubbing was done at the location. Otherwise you have to see the picture in front and synchronize properly right there. Say for instance a footstep. A person is walking from a distance and coming closer, so we have to see the film and sync accordingly. Q: but that footstep could have been recorded at the location, isn’t it? J: say that person is starting from quite a distance. So he is walking and coming closer, the sound should carry the same effect. Say when you are recording at night, you are eagerly waiting with the recorder at night, two people are coming from a distance and they are chatting. The footstep sounds will be quite loud and clear. So similarly the level of that sound will vary from low to high. Q: are you aware that most of the films happening now are going for sync sound recording, as in direct recording in your terms? It’s just the same as before, nowadays it is called sync sound. Most of the films now are doing sync sound by digital recording. Most of the films in Mumbai are doing sync sound now. J: yes, I am sure they have well equipped studios. If the studios are towards the main road then it will be disturbing. Q: did you do dubbing yourself? J: yes. Q: did you not feel there were qualitative differences between direct recording and dubbed recording? J: yes, slight mismatch would happen. Because during acting the artist who is performing automatically becomes more conscious while he is dubbing. So we had to tell them when it was not matching, that’s how it was done. Some artists like - even now they just see the film and enact exactly the same. Even while performing in a shoot they were aware that these portions would later get dubbed. It’s an expertise they gain

225 with experience, earlier this was difficult. Earlier they would give their hearts best while performing in the shoot, but faced difficulty while emoting the same during dubbing. The minute fumblings were especially difficult to recreate. Like , the way he delivered his extempore or dialogues it would always be missing in the dubbing. Q: the performances of the artists were better for capturing during direct recording, isn’t it? J: yes. Q: what I’ve also felt that is there is a difference between the dynamic range of optical medium and the magnetic medium. J: yes. Q: do you think magnetic recording is of better quality than optical recording? J: yes dubbing is definitely better in the sense while shooting at times the microphones are not properly set for the dialogues. While dubbing they are. Ok? Q: hm. J: we have to decide how much distance to keep. At times the sound becomes hollow. Q: what does that mean? J: well this happens when dialogues are recorded in an empty room, then the dialogues will resonate. Q: hm. How would you avoid this in dubbing? J: while dubbing we always took care of that, the mics were always placed at close distance. Q: did you like doing dubbing yourself? J: while dubbing my job was only to record the sound properly. The acting was taken care of by the director, we didn’t have any say regarding that. Q: hm. How was the quality? J: Dubbing quality was definitely good. Q: You were talking about the “fillers”, which were added later. Couldn’t some of them, which were recorded while shooting at the location, be used after cleaning? J: say there’s a dialogue, and there’s a gap in between, some or the other sound will enter there. Ok? The same thing will happen as many times as you repeat that loop. Q: hm. J: so the solution would be to discard the whole recording and dub this as you want it. Do you understand what I mean? Q: yes. It’s better to create a new track rather than using that loop. But why is that loop coming?

226 J: say for instance we have a sound, which we cannot match somehow - like a footstep coming closer to the camera from a distance - this footstep is not matching. Q: hm. J: so then we keep that sound there and reduce the volume so that the level of out-noise goes down. But this is not a good way of doing it. Q: while mixing you only did mono mixes, no stereo mixes happened back then. J: no. Q: so for the mono mix you had to keep everything through one speaker, like ambience, voice, effects, and background music. Did you keep all of them in one mix? Didn’t it become unclean? J: no. Q: how did you achieve this? J: say there’s a dialogue between two people, the voice will get the 100% preference. Q: ok. J: and the sounds, which will be in the background, like the fillers, the levels of those will be adjusted accordingly. Wherever the filler sound level has to be increased it was done according to requirement. This was the process. Q: say when there’s no voice or dialogue in a scene, would you apply filler there? J: yes. Q: was the level increased there? J: no, not like that, there was a uniform level. Say we both re speaking here and some sound is happening at a distance. Q: let’s say it’s a generator. The generator sound will be kept constantly then, right? J: yes, the level would depend on the distance. Q: for instance, in Jalshaghar, there is a generator sound. Can you remember? That generator sound is there constantly for 3 sequences. Was that sound recorded later and added in the background? J: yes. Q: one more thing. The fillers, which were recorded in optical medium while shooting and the fillers, which were recorded on magnetic separately and added after dubbing, were the levels and quality of these two recordings different? I mean the ambient sounds or fillers, which were recorded while shooting, and later while dubbing – was the quality and volume of the latter different from the former? J: yes they had to be different to save the dialogues. Q: ok.

227 J: to save the dialogue the level should be kept at such that it doesn’t disturb the audience. Q: hm. J: but still that sound will be perceived at the place. So you have perceive it as per your hearing and adjust the level. Q: why was voice given so much importance? J: see voice is not like a song, the level changes at places. So at some place where the voice level has gone down, some out-noise like a bus sound has entered there. Now that gives rise to a problem. To control this it is required to create a separate channel. Q: that means, with industrialization, as the number of vehicles have increased, dubbing has become a necessity for people. J: yes. Earlier there was very less out-noise. Take the Tollygunje studios for example. Earlier no buses used to run through that road. Now there is a bus route, many buses are plying through that road. So it’s natural. And the ceiling is of asbestos. Say a crow flies and comes to sit on it with a piece of bone. Soon there’ll be a loud thud. Q: LG. J: these sounds will get recorded as well. Q: so when these natural sounds were discarded, the naturalness of the film sound was lost, isn’t it? J: yes, it did. We had to compromise to some extent. There wasn’t another option. Q: what was this compromise for, only to keep the voice clean? J: yes. If the voice gets entangled with the other sounds, it will sound very bad. A lot of people will not be hearing the dialogues. These days’ people have less hearing power. The way the ears response has changed over the years. This constant noise from outside that plays in our ears has weakened the diaphragm as well. In recent times you can’t speak to a young man softly, they will ask you to repeat what you said. Q: LG. J: Such is the situation in present times. Q: have you seen any recent films in a cinema theater? J: no. Q: when was the last time you saw? J: I have seen till 2002. I haven’t been in a theater since then. Q: ok. Do you watch films on television? – Q: I would want to know how you did the final mix, final re-recording?

228 J: first the sound was synced and laid matching with the visual, then the effects were created. Then the levels were fixed according to the requirement. At places when there are no dialogues we had to play with the effects in those places by adjusting the levels. This was the process. Say there’s a shot on a running train. The sound of the train compartment and the overhead out-noise has to come in such a way that our ears can concentrate on the dialogues. For instance, say you keep the level of the trains sound at 5%. But it’s not necessary to fix that level, it can be changed and played around it. Say the dialogue goes on for a while and then there’s a gap where you can hear the sound of the engine loudly. You have to play around for the gaps, otherwise the emotions will not develop. You cannot keep the sound at a fixed level. It is necessary to play around with both dialogues and effects. Q: for instance, in Satyajit Ray’s Nayak one whole scene is inside a train. J: hm. Q: the train sound is there throughout but it’s different for different compartments. J: hm. What happened was the shoot was done with a camera and a tape recorder. Say for instance the shoot starts from Dumdum on the train and ends at a small town in west Bengal. So the train leaves the city and journeys through the villages there will be the train running sound, then it would break loudly at a quiet quaint station in a small village, it is crucial for these sounds to be present. Q: and these were recorded separately. J: yes. And the sounds, which could be kept, were left intact. Q: did Satyajit Ray put more stress for sound in his films? Inside of a train is a common site in popular Bengali films, like Suno Baranari or Chaoa Paowa. But the ambience that is used in these films for the train sequence, to create the feeling of being inside a train, is almost the same throughout, there’s no dynamics. J: yes. Q: but in Ray’s Nayak the details are more in scale. Each compartment has its own different ambient characteristic. J: say the sound of the bathroom of a train, that loud sound. Then the sound of the door closing. Q: yes, then the sound of the corridors. Was Satyajit Ray keener in bringing out these details? J: yes, he placed the sounds perfectly. Q: ok.

229 J: say a character walks down the corridor and comes towards his own seat, so that corridor sound was recorded and placed here. That is how we had to balance in those days. Q: then how did he (Satyajit Ray) become different from the others? Why is he different from others? J: oh! That I cannot say LG. Q: no I mean for sound - didn’t he pay extra attention to sound? J: no he actually didn’t pay that much attention to sound earlier in his career. Q: ok. J: after completing the film he would realize that there are some loopholes remaining in the sound. Then he would slowly think about it. He didn’t prefer dubbing for his films. Only when it was the only option left he would do dubbing. Q: why did he not like dubbing? J: because the acting generally gets spoiled while dubbing. If an artist is allowed to deliver his dialogues freely while shooting he will give his best. Ok? Q: hm. J: now that happened at the shoot. But the moment that was dubbed it would lose that charm. Q: so that’s why he didn’t prefer dubbing. J: yes. Q: then what did he do? J: for some portions where the sound would be really bad, the Moviewallah was played and recording done accordingly. Q: did you work with Uttam Kumar? J: yes. Q: has he done dubbing? J: yes, he was good at it. Q: ok. J: Soumitra as well. There are some artists who’re very good with dubbing. There is one problem with dubbing. Most of the artists who hear about dubbing become extremely conscious. Ok? While shooting they were completely involved in that situation and performed fabulously. Say there are fumbling’s in certain shots. Q: yes.

230 J: it is very difficult to exactly match these kinds of sounds. Artists like Anup Kumar will exactly match it. But when they heard that dialogues will be dubbed later then they avoid extra fumbling’s. Q: but Anup Kumar has acted in many Bengali films; were they all dubbed? J: no not all. See his acting is mostly very loud dialogue delivery. Naturally that’s kept intact. It’s too troublesome to dub the whole film. Q: did do dubbing? J: yes. Q: do you have any kind of curiosity about ambient sound? Do you have any focus towards ambience? J: no nothing of that sort. Just that ambience can’t be avoided at certain situations. There are some shots where you need to add ambience so it will sound nice. Q: but isn’t there a limitation to that? Like optical recording has a recording limit, it’s between 800 hertz to 8K, it has to be in between. J: yes it has to be done within that. Q: but a lot of ambience will not be within this. For instance the low frequency or high frequency ambiences. How were they recorded then? J: sound has a variable area as well. Q: hm. J: sound peaks get cut. So we had to keep that in mind while recording. Q: was final mix always done on optical? J: no now it’s magnetic. First the entire final recording was done with optical. Then picture and sound was synched and we checked the film to see how the recordings have come, if there is any loophole in the sound. If nothing is there then it’s ok. Q: the projection in the cinema theater was optical, right? J: yes. That was the married print, picture and sound printed together. Q: did you ever have creative differences with your directors? J: no generally it didn’t happen. In some cases say they wanted some sound and I suggested something that might work well. So they agreed to see, even Manik da agreed to some of them. Q: my observation is that the presence of ambience is more in Satyajit Ray’s films than in any of his contemporaries. He prioritized ambience. Why did this happen? J: we… he didn’t generally go for dialogue dubbing. Naturally the level had to be put up for the dialogues and that’s how the outdoor noises enter. Q: ok, I understand. So most of it is direct?

231 J: yes. The dialogues and other sounds have to be levelled properly, a boost up was done. Q: ok, since he wanted direct recording the ambient sounds were more present in his films. J: yes. Q: ok. J: say for example an effect sound, which we are applying while re-recording. There was a separate sound booth, which had its own microphone and the visuals were also given. So we recorded according to the visuals. This re-recording used to happen while the shot was being played. Say we had to give the sound of thundering clouds, how would we give that? India film studio had one echo chamber. Big sheets were thrown on the floor and that rumbling sound was recorded, this is how we created such sounds. So the volume of these recreated sounds were more than the original sound. So we could adjust the levels wherever necessary. Q: but isn’t this cheating? J: LG. It sounds like real only. These kinds of sounds were created once within the studios and they are repeatedly getting used. Q: but you could’ve recorded cloud thundering sound very easily, why go into such difficulty? J: it wouldn’t have worked out. Q: why? J: we had to apply as required within the shots. It cannot just come from anywhere, it has to come where I wanted it. Q: ok. J: isn’t it? Q: yes, correct. Didn’t you get that thundering cloud from stock sound? J: yes. Q: did you use stock sound? J: yes. Q: from where did you procure the stock sounds? J: we got them from the English films, ok? Q: hm. J: these were generally kept with the editors, they only helped procure them. Q: how were they stored, in tapes? J: in spools.

232 Q: ok. When you needed some sound that was not available in the recorded soundtrack of a film, you used stock sounds, isn’t it? J: yes. Q: why I am asking is because I remember hearing a particular bird’s sound in many films. J: yes this is because that sound was made into a loop and used for many purposes. Nowadays this practice is long gone. Now you can just put the tape recorder out in the nature and it will record all the sounds. Then you have to treat it according to your requirement, adjust the levels and so on. You cannot put other sounds separately, it is all-inclusive. Q: is this what you are calling as filler? J: yes, that’s filler. Q: so filler is ambience, right? J: yes. If you have only dialogues after dubbing it will sound very bare. Q: but in some films say even a place can have its own character. J: yes. Q: for example in Pather Panchali, the village itself is a character. J: hm. Q: so if you have to depict the character of that place then there is no other way than doing it through sound. J: yes, that’s correct. Q: then you cannot just call it filler, then ambience is equally important. J: yes. For instance that sound of the coconut leaf being dragged through the ground in Pather Panchali has been created by us. Q: is that so? J: yes, of course. Or else how will you get that sound? Q: you could’ve recorded that coconut leaf, isn’t it? J: sound has different variations, ok? Q: hm. J: so the recording was dependent on that factor. Q: since you partly re-recorded or dubbed the tracks, didn’t you face any discrepancies or disbalances as a result? J: yes, we had to balance it properly to make it even. Q: how did that happen?

233 J: we had to balance carefully. Because at times there would be original sound and then there would be dubbed sound, the recording had to be done cautiously. Q: but it can sound disbalanced also if one sound is recorded at the location and others are not. J: there would be ambience sound added with it. The dialogues or portions, which are dubbed we have to add similar ambience to those shots later. Q: the same filler? J: yes definitely. A similar kind of filler has to be given. Q: how did the word “filler” come to be used? J: filler means some or the other outdoor sound. If there is a tape recorder on here then this droplet sound here will be captured. Q: are these fillers? J: yes. Q: ok. Is it room tone? J: no, we didn’t say room tone, it was the filler. Q: then which was called the ambience? J: filler is ambience. Q: and effects? J: effects means synchronized effects like footsteps, sound of lathis, sounds of saucers and plates etc. Q: when was the music recording done? J: after the whole film is complete re-recording will be done. Then the re-recording print will be taken out and the effect sounds will be applied on that. Then the requirement of music is decided. All the decisions like how long the music will stay, how much of the effect will be given are taken after this. Q: when you did the final mono mix then music, voice, ambience and effects didn’t get overlapped, right? J: no. We used to do proper separation. Q: how? J: say one dialogue is being said. I am saying and you are listening. The gaps, which are there in between, we used them as fillers. Ok? Q: hm. J: that was the process. Q: and music? J: background music will come over a particular dialogue say. Ok?

234 Q: hm. J: I already decided that I will give music for a particular dialogue, where I felt it is required. Then I would do that.

235 Kunal Sharma (2014)

Duration: 00:33:48 Name Abbreviations: Kunal Sharma – K; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: Now you work with Pro Tools and with other digital systems - how is it different from the earlier days? K: the very first thing that was different that you can say is that you can see the sound. You can see what the tracks look like, the waveforms, you can see and you can hear, ok this is the beat and then you can cut the noise. Q: but in magnetic recording you could also touch it. K: you could touch it, you could hear it that was a different feel altogether. I mean even nowadays we are trying to get back to the kind of sound quality we used to get on tape, we don’t have that anymore. You know the tape has a completely different take on whatever you give it, whatever you’ve done, whatever you give it just makes it much more nicer and warmer. Even with film I think. Even when you do a DI then you take a print out. The print looks better than your digital version. Just because of the medium I think. I love that medium. The only problem is it’s too expensive. Q: do you find that working with the digital format having multiple channels offer you some flexibility? K: it does offer a lot of flexibility. A lot of flexibility in terms of creative things that you put in toward that thing on analog because – we’ve mixed Devdas analogue in Anand, Sanjay Bhansali. Leslie was there, me, Vikram, the designing head, and at a certain point everybody was on the mixer because there are so many channels you are operating. I am operating four tracks, Vikram’s operating a couple, Leslie is doing the dialogue and the music, so I mean just to achieve something the way you wanted to was a little difficult. Now it’s become very easy. But the problem is the aesthetics of the people is not the same. You know because at that time you were trained, because you had limitations you’d put the sound that was required. You couldn’t just put anything. So limitation was good in terms of controlling the sound and making it better. Nowadays with the new students you have so many tracks and you have so many libraries that they just see the visuals and there’s not a thought-process. There’s not something that you’re thinking about story telling or anything. You know it’s not the state of mind I think right now. Because of Facebook there’s so much of distraction around, you have an assistant

236 sitting with you at the back, and you probably think he is not seeing your work and understanding something but he is probably checking his Facebook stuff on the phone. It’s a lot to do with the generation’s mindset also, I mean who want things really fast, who want to grow really fast. Just out of the institute they want to do two films, become a sound designer and then be a sound designer, or a director or an actor or whatever. But I think the period of struggle is very key for you in understanding what you are doing in terms of your craft, which I think is missing now a days. There are very few people you will come across now a days, who you will think have it and then you try to help them, you try to push them. That is one problem right now, that I feel is there, the situation. Q: I am very curious about the use of ambience, and how it used to be – K: it’s beautiful. See I’ll tell you how I got into it. I was under Aloke Dey. We had Pro Tools, we had ambiences. We did a few films in terms of sound effects, otherwise we used to do dialogue matching n stuff. We did a few of them n Dolby had just come in. So I was there in the transition phase. And I saw people recording on stripe tape, putting some sound effects on stripe tape and they were very good and very fast in doing that, manually. That was physical labour. You hear the sound, you mark it, you cut it down, you splice it, put it onto an RT. But they were really good. There was Sadanand Shetty and his team who I saw at that point. Every reel if you have 20 tracks you’ll have 20 tapes. Q: hm. K: right? So we used to put those tapes on dubbers. And transport to mixing, they used to take four tracks at a time because we only had four tracks. So I’ve seen those limitations. And once we had Protools, I saw the possibility of what more you can achieve over here because of the limitations these guys had. Ambience used to be put directly into the mix earlier. Q: hm. K: so what used to happen is they used to do a dialogue pre-mix, and effects pre-mix, that’s the main sound effects, and music pre-mix. And then whatever ambiences they feel they needed they’ll patch it in the mix itself. So we were supposed to do SFX, that was our job and which was not entitled to do ambience. Then Kathuria Sir opened his own studio, which was called Kathuria Audio Techniques. I mean, so he put me there. But instead of Protools he got in a Paris, which was cheaper. So I started working over there on the Paris for a while. I worked for him for a year and then I quit. Because we weren’t just getting along, I had creative differences or whatever, we were just getting

237 into not a very good space. And he was a friend of my dad’s, and that’s how I got into sound. Otherwise I’d have never been here. Probably I don’t know what the fuck I’d be doing to be really honest, because I was not studying, I wasn’t doing anything, I was just wasting my time. Sound just opened so many other things in me. I mean it changed me as a person, it changed my understanding n everything. Many things I didn’t get from the book I started understanding in terms of sound. So there when I started working and then the sound effects work used to come here and he told me that you start putting ambiences also. Even then I never put ambiences. I only did sound effects, dubbing matching, and I used to send it to the mix theater. Q: for mono mix? K: no, for Dolby mix. So used to have a limitation of sixteen tracks. Everything has to come in sixteen tracks, and that’s what you send to the mix, because it will not take anything over sixteen tracks. 1997-98 I was in Sunny (sound studio), one year I was at Kathuria, in 1999 I joined this company called “Aawa”, they were the dealers in Protools at that point. And I was sick of Paris because that was just cramping me a bit. So I joined this company and over there I started working on this film, Mission Kashmir. We were doing sound effects in Mission Kashmir, Manoj Sikka was there with me. There was another colleague of mine, Jatin, who was also there with me in Sunny under Aloke, I first started learning Protools from him. But the work I actually learnt from Aloke Sir and Kathuria sir. So in Aawa basically we did Mission Kashmir and Aloke was mixing the film at that time. Kathuria sir had just stopped mixing and Aloke was just starting mixing. So I met him. So he said, “Ok 16 no? I know for this film you need more.” So 24 tracks is what he gave me, as a final output, that you give it it to me in 24 tracks, that’s what he could take on the Omni mix and the number of faders, his limitations. So he opened up his limitation by 8 more tracks and he said, “Use more tracks, but do it nicely.” We started working on the film, when we started the climax actually, the last twenty minutes of the film and it took a month to do that. But see, the same thing is with limitations. Now I have only 24 tracks. Right now we are playing with some 200/250 tracks of sound effects. In that we did ambience as well as sound effects. So you picked and chose your sound, you went through libraries ya know you just picked the right sound to put over there. And I wasn’t from the FTII, so I never knew how to EQ, use the compressor. So I think all the limitations actually worked for me better in just sourcing of the right sound and putting them. And eventually when I started doing that, was the time when I am roaming around in the mountain or I am on the beach. So I keep hearing a lot of stuff. Even now it happens to me, when I am in a space I am just hearing a lot of the

238 surrounding. That’s the way I’ve got tuned to it. So there’s a lot of ambience. There is rhythm in nature, there is sadness in nature. Everything is there in nature, I mean even a fan if you have noted, it has a rhythm of its own if you just hear it. So it is just putting those sounds at the right point if you can put. That’s the thing. But ambience is what makes it real, what makes those visuals real that you as a person identify with generally, but you are not aware of it. It’s in your subconscious, I mean it’s all around you. But immediately if you hear those things on screen you start relating with the space. I mean if I am in a chawl how does it sound, if I am on a railway station how does it sound. So once it sounds real it’s more real for you as an experience to watch the film. That’s what I think. That is why my thing is in ambience - I’ve always done ambience. Since the beginning, since Devdas I think , Devdas, Mission Kashmir is made ambiences, it’s been creating that space, that’s become more creative and fun for me rather than putting a gunshot or you know all of that. That’s the kind of mood it sets, when you have so many variations of sound, which can make you feel probably a happy space or a sad space or whatever. So that is just too much to play with. I think I am having too much fun and I want to continue it. Why do you think that ambience is used, you actually felt that people are using more ambiences now a days? Q: not only that it’s evident. But I am also thinking how the space itself, real space, is represented only in terms of ambience – the sheer amount of ambience. K: right. Q: there is no ambience in earlier films of 70’s 80’s, even early 90’s. K: have you seen Satyajit Ray’s films? Q: Satyajit Ray is like a reference point. K: yeah. See I mean you always have people who use it and you always have people who don’t use it, you still have them. It is also the kind of mix, I mean I’ve learnt from Aloke Sir that is so much nicer. I understood the mixing bits and nuances from him. Once I started doing films with him that I had designed, so I know exactly what I’ve designed, then he is understanding what I’ve done, then he is coming with his own take with the music or softness or whatever. So we haven’t tried to do the conventional way the films are mixed here, where everything is in your face and full loud, or there is no esthetics or ya know you are not enjoying it because it’s hurting you. Me personally I want you to sit through a film, have a nice perspective towards the film, enjoy it the way I can present it to you maybe. My job I think is to make you sit through that film, it’s not my job that the film’s going to work or not. My job is to make you sit through the film, make you understand as much as I can about that space and time, the story that we are telling

239 about, what is the director trying to tell over here. If you can watch all of that and come out with a smile and you can just say, “I had fun” it’s good for me, it’s very good for me. I mean I’ve done quite a lot of stuff, which is radical also. If you see Gangs of Wasseypur part 2 was completely radical. Part 1 I loved and I had lots of fights in Part 1 mix with Aloke Sir and Anurag. Because I thought there’s too much background score in the film, too much of music overall in the film, which didn’t let you just breathe. But that was a better film. I think part 2 mix is much better. The film is not as good. Q: I also felt that. K: yeah. I think part 2 mix is one of the best mixes we came out with in my entire thing in career. Udaan I thought before that was one of the best. Part 2 was very good and Sreejesh. So Sreejesh did something in the last track, which we didn’t expect at all. I just gave him the track, we were getting ready to go to color and stuff. And he mixed it in like I think three four hours his first mix was ready and he called me. I went and saw it and I liked what he did. But I wasn’t sure because of so much of panic, how the audience will react because the sound was just moving all around. So I wasn’t very sure. So I said, “I can still stay with the visual. Let me check with other people, you know.” Then I called Anurag. Then he saw the mix, he also liked it. He was skeptical in the beginning because Sreejesh had just muted it down, and just come out with like a bang with the gunshot, which was perfect. But he didn’t realize it. When it came, he was just gone, he was just very happy. So that’s how that happened. But I was still a little skeptical saying how people will react to this in the theater. So we went to Cannes. We finished one scratch mix, we took to Cannes for screening. We had part 1 and part 2 back-to-back screening. We sat for the screening, there were few people, not house full as such but quite a few people. Within the first twenty minutes of part 1, I saw a few people walk out of the auditorium, little bit of heart-wrenching. Then part 1 finished. People went out to get a twenty minute break and then part 2 started. So after that twenty minute people came back which was encouraging because they wanted to see more of this. Then part 2 we went through it. And then that climax … came eventually. I knew when it’s coming and what’s gonna happen. So I was not looking at the screen. I was looking at everybody around me, like how they are reacting. Are the heads turning to the sounds around or they’re still with the visual and not leaving that. Nobody left the visual. Nobody turned around, nobody did anything. They were there. So it works. Q: did the panning work? K: the panning I mean in the sense, in that state of mind the climax was at the point where this man’s outbursts after being all of that. So it needed that state of mind that

240 was my brief to Sreejesh. That is needed - 7.1, rest of the whole film was in 5.1. Only reel 6 and reel 8 was 7.1. Q: ok. K: so only those two sequences where the house is attacked, Nawaz runs to the terrace and jumps off that reel is in 7.1 and that reel number 8 is in 7.1. And that works. Because throughout the first half you are not used to listening to these speakers. Suddenly they just open up the entire space. And because for me personally it was a problem in terms of the film because his mother dies in reel 8 after the shootout in the house, and after that I thought the film actually tripped. It didn’t hold too much. So I did a lot of gimmicky things, just to have fun, it was like a party thing. I mean we did till four hours- four and a half hours. Now if I can just extend it and have a party I’m going to have a party. That’s what we did, in terms of sound design, we had a party in the climax. Q: the gunshots sound very realistic. Did you use the stock sounds of gun? K: we did use the stock sounds as references. But Mishaal was working with me at that point. He came on during the post, so he had seen through Wasseypur, I took him on the shoot just for him to understand that entire process. Then I pushed him a lot in the post. Then he came out with some really good stuff. So I left that bit onto him because I was mixing. So he was working on the gunshots. He did one run, two runs on that, we saw it in the mix theater and I told him this not working. Push it up a little more, make it a little more in your face n this n that. What he actually did was he used stock tracks, then he created different sounds underneath. So every gunshot has probably got some 10-12 tracks underneath it. Everything has got a different EQ on it, going through a different compression and then coming up, panning is different. Then he and Sreejesh actually collaborated for that bit. I had just my briefs and wanted them to play and have a ball. That’s was my brief, ‘do what the fuck you want’ that was my brief. As much as you want, you want to make a 7.1 show reel, do that. They had complete freedom to do whatever they wanted. And that’s how it came out. I just had to oversee things and then finally just put them together and stuff. It was a brilliant job by Mishaal, Zahir was there. He was doing the dialogue clean ups and everything, brilliant job by him. In the middle I was losing it and I had told them - I was getting married n everything was too stressful. So in between I told, you guys only design it, do what the fuck you want. Then eventually I came back after my wedding because we had to go to Cannes. Then we started working. But the ground work was so good by these guys that I could take it to the next level. Q: was it shot in sync?

241 K: yeah. Q: did you use the voices, the dialogues primarily in sync or did you dub? K: mostly in sync. When I was shooting I was very particular, even if I get 40% of this or because there was so much noise around, so much ambiences, truck horns, this that. I thought probably we’ll be dubbing 60% of the film. But eventually we managed dubbing only 10-15% of the film because Zahir worked very hard. We had different takes and everything. I showed him ways and then he picked up from there and then he just made the track, which was just fantastic. I didn’t have too much to say in it. So that’s what I am saying. It’s been a team. I mean Zahir is working with me and I had got him on during No Smoking on the shoot. From there he’s been working with me. So he has also evolved. He has evolved through Udaan, through all those films, Yellow Boots and everything. And finally when this happened he knew exactly how to boost and whatever. So he delivered something that I was not expecting at all. Both of them. Mishaal wasn’t, but then I pushed him. And then he came up with even much better stuff. So I mean it just happened like that. Then I went to Chinai, the machine was really bad, we had a bad Pro Tools and the machine would hang n stuff. Chinai mixed on that, I would have broken that machine if I’m mixing at that machine. Chinai sat there, he mixed that part, and he did a fantastic job. Everybody, I think every call I made in terms of people collaborating, whatever, it just helped. Sometimes these kinds of things happen. But if you see , its ambiences… Q: did you work in Lootera? K: I designed Lootera. Q: ok. Wow. K: I did the ambiences of that film. Q: it’s a huge amount of ambience layering I found. I really liked that. K: yeah. Because the characters were really layered, I mean apart from Pakhi everybody around was layered n stuff. Then her state of mind was layered when she is in Dalhousie. So the reel number 5, the reel just after the interval was just ambiences. Probably one music piece or something. And they were really nice, I mean they worked really well. Q: are those ambiences shot on location? K: they are created. Q: they are created? K: they are created. You have shot on location. You go and record ambiences. But finally you have to put them together the way you want to. Q: but those ambiences are from the same location?

242 K: yeah, the same location and we used some exotic birds here and there because we were showing a period. Q: hm. K: I mean there are some birds probably we don’t hear now, we only hear traffic. Q: hm. K: the soundscape can’t be the same, if I have to make that. So I’ve to put a little bit of imagination and make it more believable in terms of space. You have to create those because you just don’t get it. Sometimes you just pick it out and put and it just works. Randomly you just pull n drag it into a session, you may have forgotten about it. You come and see it at that point, it just works, that’s the magic of working. Things happen also when you have the same thought process. Q: was it also sync? The dialogues were all in sync? K: yeah. Most of them were in sync. Q: how do you find the difference between dialogue in-sync and dialogue dubbed? K: huge difference. LG Q: yes. LG K: I don’t like the dialogue dubbed track anymore. I mean it’s also with my directors. Even whatever’s on location we try to dub it. I think it’s the space, it’s the environment, it’s the actor in that space, everything matters, it just matters. But sometimes you don’t have good locations. And you’ll have to dub and try n make it sound like that the location. Q: do you clean up? K: yeah. Q: how much do you clean? I mean there are so many informations. K: see first of all you try to keep it as open as possible for yourself to help you in post. Then you clean it. If you’ve given two characters two mics, when you are talking this is picked up here as well. So I need to cut this, so use this guy only when he is talking, use that guy only when he is talking. So that is the amount of work that you have to do with everything. Then there is a boom track, if you also have a stereo track. So that’s what Zahir has mastered right now, if Zahir was not there I’d have got fucked. Because I have left it onto him and he has taken it over. I mean the same thing was with Mishaal, I left him to it and he came up and he took it over. So that’s when the films design goes to a different level. You know if I am only bothered about groundwork and I am bothered about cleaning up and everything myself then it won’t go to that level. Q: yeah.

243 K: so if once they do that correct, then I get it to a level, then I go to Aloke. Then he takes it to another level. That’s the way of working, I think that’s the way a film should be done. Q: you said correct. How is that? It’s a very relative thing to be correct in dialogue cleaning. Cleaning means erasing a lot of information from the location about that site. K: lots of unwanted information. Maybe there’s the gain, which is too loud, there’s a hiss in the track, which you don’t know. So you take the hiss out. Or there are traffic horns, which you don’t want in between the scene because you want the focus to be here and it’s disturbing you, so you cut that out and you layer it with something else. So even those are dialogue editing job. So that’s how you do. It’s like how you do , you are taking one shot from here, one shot from here and putting it together right? So that’s the same thing you have to do with sound. It’s not going to be like, I have got this thing for the sound and this is the best. You’ve put this take, this is the sound. I don’t work like that. I try to see which is a better take, if this is not working for me in a flow, then I go out in different takes, I take them out, we try n do that stuff. So I mean all those things are necessary. That’s the problem ya know. Now a days you don’t have people who will think that way and want to do that much of an effort. Q: and then the ambience. Coming back to ambience: do you think that handling of ambience will be much more elaborate in the multiple channels now available in your hand, like even in Atmos? K: I mean for me to be frank it always was elaborate. With Atmos I see even more possibility to do it. But I am scared about Atmos, it’s because I can easily overpower my visual. Q: yes. K: I can easily overpower my visual in Atmos. So I don’t want to do that. I never want to overpower my visual. Q: but why? K: because they have to work in sync as in audio and visual, they have to get together. At ((either/any?)) point anyone is overpowering the other, it doesn’t work for me. Q: visuals for many years have already overpowered sound itself. K: yeah, if they have done something doesn’t mean that I have to do something wrong. LG Q: LG. probably some films may require that the sound overpowers. K: I mean if you need. I’m not saying that you don’t use the space, I’m talking about loudness in terms of overpowering. I’m not saying I’m not going to use these speakers at

244 all because they are going to overpower, it’s not that. It’s in terms of loudness that I’m talking about. My sound shouldn’t be louder than it should be. Q: ok. K: or my visual shouldn’t be softer than the sound, or whatever, it shouldn’t be that way. I’m not saying I’m not going to use this space. I want to use it even more. But it has to be subtle to hear. Because if I make it louder then you as an audience – because I am seeing a few films now like you go into a theater, there’s so much action in the film and there’s so much sound information in that film that at a certain point you as an audience is like stuck in your seat. Because there’s so much (enacts gun firing sound), when finally that’ll be over you’re like “Ah!” I don’t want that. I want you to sit through and enjoy. Q: so the rear channels are the extra ones? K: no now – 5.1 you had 6 audio-tracks- now you’ve 64 tracks. So that’s a lot more possibility where your entire sound image can change. The kind of imaging that you were fight and trying to get in 5.1 is much more possible in Atmos and it’ll be even better if you just use it correctly and nicely. So sometimes you might have to overpower it. That’s the way it is. Q: hm. but do you, frankly, think that those extra speakers are needed at all? For what purpose are they needed? K: see now 5.1 you can get in your house on a TV channel. What’s the next thing for cinema to stay alive? So you need these kind of things. These are not bad things. I mean everything has a good use and a bad use. People who can use good stuff badly will still use it badly. Or people who think there’s a possibility of making the good even better will do that. So I mean that’s all there’s gonna be there. So you can’t say that the technology is bad or what’s the need of these speakers. I mean it’s a nice space if you can use it nicely to its potential and for what do you think is right and if it works for the film, it works. There’s nothing that why would I use a motion control, or why would I use this or that. So when technology is there it’s enabling you to do a lot more stuff and there is a possibility which is a very good thing. Q: do you think that these extra channels will add to the kind of environment that you would like to create? K: absolutely. There’s so much more possibility. Now I’ve been doing 5.1 for the last maybe twelve-thirteen years. I have been doing my designing for 5-point tracks and everything. Now that it’s Atmos it’s better for me because I’m really sick n tired of 5.1, what more do I do? So now that this is there I am looking at it from a different perspective altogether. Like wow I hve even more to do now, this can change a lot of

245 other stuff, there’s a lot more possibility, it is much more improved. I mean I can get these sounds right here in front of your face and probably image it like that n stuff. So there’s a lot more to do and think on that ground. Which is better because for me this is more inspiring and to think forward. Otherwise I’d have probably been going down. So I am looking at that bit. Because when I joined I use to work in stereo. Stereo has gone to 5.1, 7.1. Now you’re going to 64, you have a possibility, which is never ever thought of or dreamt of or you haven’t even thought that you’d be handling that kind of stuff. So I mean the things are changing and they will also get better – the usage of your technology. Q: coming back to the transition from mono to stereo and to multi-channel formats like 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos: how do you see these transitions? What is your impression in terms of sound design, the placement of sound and the environment being created? K: see it wasn’t possible earlier, to be honest. It wasn’t possible, it was possible on a stereo to a certain extent. But just stereo is also good in the theater. But just when you imagine 5.1, the whole surround theater with the visual at that size and the characters are speaking at that amplification, and the screen size – I mean normal audience actually identify with the characters and they think they know them and they go, it’s a very strong connect. That’s what you want to achieve. If you can keep achieving that and you have this space to help you to do that it is beautiful. Q: but in mono it could not be. K: it couldn’t. Because you just had one track, there was one speaker playing. Ok so now I’ll give a simple example. If I have to create this room in a stereo I have your dubbing which is going in the center and I put the reverb of this space in my left n right. So that will give you a slight feel of the space that you are in. In mono it will come from that thing only. So there’s a dialogue behind you also you can’t register it that well. Your width is not as big. Now you have more width and this is even wider n wider. So it’s more possibilities especially for music and ambiences. I don’t know that well, I am gonna do my film in Atmos this year, my first film on Atmos. So I’m gonna really be testing out a lot of stuff and probably have even more fun. I just hope I don’t have too much fun and kill it, so I’ve to be careful. Q: what are the instructions you give to your collaborators? K: nothing as yet. For me, I have only spoken to Sreejesh because he is going to be mixing it. We had a brief chat about it. I’ve told him I’m gonna start off from the front and then eventually have the whole space take over at a certain point, which will happen

246 after the edit. So I haven’t had a design structure from the script. I have an idea roughly. But then after the edit comes in place then I’ll start implementing those things. Q: which film is it? K: . Q: is it by Anurag Kashyap? K: yeah. Q: ok. I met Anurag Kashyap in Copenhagen in 2013 - I think. And he told me that he is planning a film without any music. K: yeah. That’s the one I think he is shooting in August. That’s a small film that he is shooting in August I think. Q: ok. Short film or feature? K: that I don’t know. Q: so in Bombay Velvet there is a lot of music? K: yeah. Bombay Velvet is a jazz club. Q: ok. K: so there’s a lot of live jazz singing in terms of the feel, lip sync, artists performing, and we have recorded everything on 96 KHz. That we are doing from Udaan. So we mixed Udaan on 96 but the master was given on 48. Lootera we did it again, master went out on 96 as well, DCP. Q: so 96 Hz is the kind of resolution you kept, right? K: yeah that’s simply what you have in 2k and 4k projection. I mean you shoot 4k and you project 2k. So it’s more information that you have, correct? Q: yes. K: so it’s the same thing with 48 KHz and 96. I have more information and more detail in terms of sound. This happened to me only because Vikram was directing Udaan, he is a very dear friend. And he was shooting on super 16mm because he didn’t have the budget. So I went up to him and I said, “if you can’t shoot on film, let’s do sound like that. Let’s record sound on 96. What do you think?” He said, “Go ahead, if you feel like that, it’s your work.” That’s how we did that. Then I spoke to Amit, I told him about everything. But you see that in the soundtrack, it’s just that openness in the sound. This is much more open and much softer mix. Same thing in Lootera. And Bombay Velvet is also like that. So we recorded everything on 96. Q: is most of the music recorded live? Are they diegetic?

247 K: live. They’ve gone to Budapest, they’ve gone to Prague and recorded strings and everything. So everything is recorded and planned to be done throughout. Hopefully we’ll get the Atmos mix on 96, which is not possible I think. Q: so maybe you have to down mix on 48 then, right? K: no. We are figuring out ways to get what we want right. So I’ve spoken to Sreejesh about it and he is working on it also. It’ll start in September, so we still have time to figure out. Q: great to talk to you. Thanks a lot. K: you are welcome.

248 Manas Choudhury and Bobby John (2014)

Duration: 01:08:15 Name Abbreviations: Manas Choudhury – M; Bobby John – B; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay– Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: I would primarily like to ask you about your experience with sync sound. Because I think you both worked with sync sound, and you (Bobby) worked with the editing part of the tracks. M: (overlap) yes. Q: probably I can ask you about the intricacies of sync sound. Why did you choose sync sound to be your particular format or method of work? Instead you could dub the voices. You could have dub/create most of the effects in the studio. But firstly: why did you prefer to work with sync sound? M: sync sound is more realistic. Because if you see a visual you can see a person, and you can see everything in the visual. And if you dub it you cannot recreate the whole emotion. And at the same time like some artists are there, they can recreate the emotions very interestingly. Sometimes it’s better than what is supposed to be on the screen. But it’s so realistic it cannot be exactly recreated the same emotion and the same feeling. So that is why it’s very challenging also. Especially in India it’s very challenging because Indian condition for the sync sound is so noisy. Like other countries and other places, it’s not that noisy. So Indian conditions are very noisy areas and you do sync sound, that is more challenging also. So that is the – Q: but then there were films from 50’s, late 50’s or early 60s to 90’s, most part of late 90’s - most of these films were dubbed. M: yeah because the first talkie film itself was Alam Ara Q: hm. M: which was sync sound. Because at that time there was the Mitchell camera, so which is supposed to be a sync sound. But later on people wanted to go out of studios which like they wanted to use not so bulky camera like Mitchell. So they wanted to use a very handy camera, so Arri (Arriflex) came into the picture. So that was noisy. So then it was very difficult like to capture both sound and picture, because of the camera itself is so noisy. So that time slowly the sync sound was obsolete after 1940’s probably. 1935, 1939. So slowly obsolete. But I remember some films like, I did lot of work with Mr. Shyam Benegal,

249 Q: hm. M: he’s been doing—from his early films every film is sync sound. Q: yes he’s doing. Maybe is also doing. M: a lot of people though because they are the people, they see cinema where sound is an integral part of the whole cinema. So why (can/will) the sound be different, so that’s an integral part. So if you talk, if you see his eyes if you see the visual, so why not sound? In whatever form. Even if it’s bad that is the beauty of the whole feel. Q: yes, but do you think that particular sensibility in people - not only in the audience but also the sound people came after digital technology emerged? I assume that digital technology enables people to work better with sync sound. M: you know, Indian cinema is more based on the Star system. So if some artists like they prefer dubbing, they’re used to the dubbing, and dubbing they know they can perform much better than the location, than the shooting. So they want to make their voice audible in a much better way than what has happened in the shooting. So they wanted to come to the studio, they wanted to do it in a proper way, so that is why – so because of the Indian Star system and basically some filmmakers they wanted it in a bigger way. Because they wanted the cinema in a larger format, larger perspective, larger audience. The audience wanted to listen to the sound, which is much larger than realistic. But some of sensible people wanted to see cinema as an integration of everything. So sound is an integral part of the cinema. Sound cannot be better than what is supposed to be in a cinema! Nothing can be better, neither visual nor the sound can be better than the cinema. If the cinema is great, so everything is great. The visual is great and the sound is great. So that’s what some people, the sensible people, they believe the integrity of the sound that is why the sync sound is more believable. That is much more believable than anything else. Q: ok. Believable. But do you think that you have digital technology in your hand, that’s why you can work with sync sound? Will it not be difficult with Nagra - say two channels or single channel tape recording machines? Can you do sync sound with them? M: yeah. Initial days, because slowly the technology is growing up to right now Dolby Atmos, so slowly everything is going up day by day. Q: hm. M: so initial days I’ve been working with the Nagra also, I’ve been working with sync sound. I did a film called Samar. Q: hm.

250 M: so which was for the first time I did sync sound in Nagra. At that time Shyam Benegal used to do every film in Nagra. So for the first time I introduced to Shyam Benegal, I said that, “Sir there is a DAT which is digital. So why not let’s try with the DAT. Then Shyam Benegal, because he is oldies, he said like, “but we’ll do it in Nagra, right?” I said, “ok. I’ll do it in Nagra and simultaneously I’ll do it in DAT.” But later on when he listened to it, the DAT, so most of the dialogues I replaced/used is the DAT, slowly that digital technology in a DAT format came into Shyam Benegals film, which was Samar. The earlier films he was doing it in Nagra. So the first time I introduced DAT in Samar. That was digital. Digital is much more crisper, clean. But Nagra was also there, Nagra tone n everything was there. For Nagras we are using a single microphone. So everything was mixed. Then that was much more challenging. You have to be very sure on the location. This is going to be final and this is what the audience is going to listen. Q: hm. M: you have to be very sure at the same moment. You have to decide then and there. So that you have to be very sure. Right now the more technology is coming you become more casual, you become more careless. I know that in the post, like, I’ll be able to clean it, I’ll be able to do it. But that was much more challenging during those days. You have to see the location. You have to see exactly what are the noise factors which are there, what are the things that’ll be taken care of what the artists are going to do there, your boom, whether its facing correctly, down or not. Right now you have multiple tracks, you can do it. You know that some mistake might happen, day by day you become more casual. You know in post you can do it. Q: hm. Yeah. M: a lot of gadgets are there, you can do it. You can simulate the tone, you can do many things. Q: but still we hear more…? M: here at the same temperament if you can have the technology then nobody can beat you. And specially in Indian condition I have worked all over India, different parts of India, I’ve done sync sound in Calcutta, I’ve done sync sound in Delhi, I’ve done sync sound in Chennai, in different countryside, I’ve done sync sound in many parts of India. So I know. And I’ve done sync sound in Australia, Malaysia and other places. So I know like what is the difference of Indian context and what is the different in their context. But here it’s definitely challenging. Calcutta is really worse. But still you have to do it, when you do it you have to find the ways of how to do it. Q: another thing I’m very curious of, your own use of ambience.

251 M: see in Indian cinema it’s always based on the cinema first. Your cinema demands a certain kind of ambience, then you go to the location, you think about what sort of ambiences you need for this cinema. You know the script, you know everything. So then you decide what sort of ambiences from this location you’d need. So that’s how you -- I did a film called Paanch. That was probably during or before I started shooting for Lagaan. Anurag Kashyp’s film. At that time the subject was so, the subject was of rough or roughy texture. So that’s why we discussed, like Anurag said that we’ll be shooting in the Bombay traffic and this that, all the noisy locations. Initially I thought how to do because I’ve always been shooting in a controlled location. Shyam Benegal goes to a very calm city and chooses his subject accordingly. For the first time that was Anurag Kashyap, he said that I’ll be shooting in Bombay. So that was very tough to decide like how to do it. So then the subject was that, so that texture of ambiences was going for that subject. So that is how the Indian cinema is related to sync sound itself, even if it’s a noisy location even if that texture is there. You don’t really need a studio. Then you do the dubbing. If you want to have a studio feeling in the whole film, you don’t need the texture, so then you go and do dubbing and put whatever you want to, do it. You see Paanch, even if the dialogues that feel you can never create. I was doing a scene. Two people are talking, there is, well, a deep well and they were talking on the two corners of the well. And that sound was reflected through the water and it was coming up again captured by the mic. Q: hm. M: so that tone even if I’ll try to create I’ll never create in my life. That is the beauty of that feeling. Even if you dub it, you want to create it, you do the processing whatever, you won’t be able to get that feel. Q: when you go to a location for synd recording, even though the story have not tell you to listen to the wide spectrum of different sounds in that location, maybe you can listen to the location in that particular layer. And when you record them probably out of the story you can record some ambiences. Isn’t that possible? Do not you go sometimes beyond the story, or beyond the script to record more information from the location? M: yeah sometimes some interesting sounds you find you capture. Because that’s like partly documenting certain things on location. Q: hm. M: sometimes if some interesting sound is there and later on during the post you might think that it can be used creatively. Q: hm.

252 M: so that can be that normally you do it, some interesting sounds, which you’ll never get anywhere else. So that you’ll normally do. When you listen to something, which comes to your mind and it stays there, that is the normal phenomenon, and you do record it. Even if it’s not required for that film. Q: did you ever do dubbing for your film? M: yeah some part. Mostly it happens like a performance. Sometimes the director wantsto change a little bit of the performance, then you do dub. And then the post work comes to Bobby. I have tried in Bombay. I have tried in almost like twenty-five sync sound films along with Bobby. Q: hm. M: I started before Lagaan. I did a film called Samar. After that Hari Bhari and then Paanch. After that Bollywood Calling, Teen Deewarein. At that time there was no sync sound in Indian context. And at that time there was no post facility. How I did it, day and night sound one sound, time codes, and that was really tough. At that time in Bombay there was no facility for doing post for a sync sound film. Later on everything is there but that process like from Nagra to DAT, introducing of DAT and from post at that time how to do it. At that time real image was coming. I spoke to them, how to do post, there was no post software. At that time Avid was there. And they said like with Avid you can do the post in sound. There was something by Avid before the Protools, Avid – B: Spectra? Q: Soundscape? M: soundscape was there but soundscape wasn’t that. It was some Avid software, I don’t remember what that was. So I spoke to the Hyderabad guys, I spoke to the Chennai guys, I went to Bollywood Calling, I went to Real image there in Chennai. So at that time it was also very tough. I spoke to all the Real Image people, everywhere I asked how to do it. Then during Lagaan Nakul came with a software, a post production software that was for the first time. I tried. But practically because of different realities like Lagaan, they don’t want the other production to do all that things, so I couldn’t do it. Q: hm. M: practically almost fifteen nights we were sitting together to use the original sounds from the Avid. I was talking to him like, “this timecode to this timecode,” all the cuts were like that. There was no software. Q: did you only work with sync sound in Teen Deewarein? M: Teen Deewarein I did the post because at that time I was accessing Nakul’s software. Q: hm.

253 M: I did that, Teen Deewarein. At that time it was almost 2002. At that time postproduction software was there during 2000. But for early films it was like really tough. At that time slowly the postproduction came into all the studios. And since then Bobby’s one thing, probably it’s a unique thing, what he is doing. That dialogue cleaning, nobody really yet understands what is dialogue cleaning. Q: LG. M: most of the people I’ve seen, like in twenty five films I have done, I know some people use boom sometimes, sometimes cordless. But I have been working with Bobby, that is a unique thing, that is a mystery also nobody knows yet. Which is I’m using both cordless and boom, which is a beauty. Slowly as the technology develops and nobody knows yet like how to do it. So that is a very specialized job which, I’ve been doing with him, even if I’ll try to do that I’ll not be able to do that. Because you have to constantly listen to the dialogue tone and match it from one shot to another. Unless you get into that character you’ll not be able to do it. That’s why like I don’t leave him. Q: LG. M: I don’t leave him because for other reasons. Because my thing is, when I record it and when I want to see it in the theater I want all my character’s tone has to be correct. Q: homogenize? (overlap) M: So otherwise it’s very edgy. Like I’ll record it and give it, there’s no big deal. I have been doing couple of films with Rohan Sippy. The first film he couldn’t understand. The second film he understood what Manas is doing with Bobby, it cannot happen anywhere else. So I did Dum Maro Dum, the dialogue cleaning he did but the rest of the things I had to. Because they had a tie up with other studios. I did Nautanki Saala. You go to the theater and listen to every dialogue. It was full of dialogues. And I had shot everything in Bombay. And that too during monsoon. There’s not a single word being dubbed. Just listen to Nautanki Saala in the theater. And that is been done, a little bit of Atmos. When Atmos came everybody thought there are a lot of speakers, a lot of liberty, we’ll put sound everywhere. But that is not Atmos. Atmos is even a sensitive sound you can hear from a source. That is what is Atmos. Atmos is not that you’ll have a lot of speakers and you’ll put everything in the surround. That is not Atmos. I saw this film Gravity. Look at Gravity, look at the surrounds sounds, look at the music. So for such a small sound, it should be heard from the source. That is the beauty. In the Indian context it is not possible. You’ve to go by the trend. Q: but this trend is changing.

254 M: trend is changing. Sensible films are coming up. Some sensible filmmakers are coming. So that is how it’s changing. But even then it’s taking longer time than it’s supposed to be. Q: yeah. M: when the technology is coming at the same time – when the invention of medicine comes the diseases come first or before the medicines. Q: LG. M: so that is how when the technology is coming so nuisance of sound is coming much more faster than the technology is coming. So sensible people are there also. Sensible people are trying to make better ways of understanding… B: nowadays the budget is very less, right? We can make film within less budget so there you can’t take a risk-- M: slowly what is happening because of the stars system when they will try to understand first, then the things will change faster. Q: yeah for example, in Lagaan … M: Aamir Khan, because of him the whole revolution came. Before that Shyam Benegal has been trying since Ankur’s time. Nobody was bothered about that, “oh it’s an art film!” but when Lagaan came things became easier to accept. It was very tough even for the artists to accept. When Amitabh Bachchan… B: cameramen were not co-operating at that time. They were limiting their freedom. Q: hm. M: so there are many things, many factors are there to it. There were some political aspects to it also like which is better not to discuss. So that was the financial part, political aspect. So slowly people are aware. The artists are like, “ok, we don’t have to go for the dubbing!” that’s fine, that’s cool. So that is also there. But the one uniqueness that I found, which is yet a mystery to understand which actually -- that’s a uniqueness in the post. Q: hm. I would like to ask you about how do you treat voice recorded on boom and voice recorded on lapel? Lapel gives a very close kind of tone for the voice. B: yes. Q: but boom includes the spatial information of that location. B: yes. Q: how do you make a balance between them? How do you select? Which one do you select?

255 B: I’ll select both because with the two mics only you can balance the tone with a long shot, close up and mid shot. Otherwise if you’ve to have only one mic it’s very difficult to match the tone from one shot to another. So I prefer both the mics to be mixed. Q: hm. B: and the cordless gives you the body of your sound. And the boom mike gives you the ambience, surrounding. So if you combine it together with a proper proportion you’ll get a better sound. Q: if you only use boom, and the ambience it already includes, do you need to add ambience to it later on during the design? B: yeah, because in boom you have only a mono track. So since you’re playing on a 5.1 or Atmos you’ll need the ambience to be laid over the speakers in the surrounds. So you need to lay. M: but sometimes with boom you concentrate on the voice more, so to give a better feel of that location you need to layer many more things to that location. Q: ok. But that’s only keeping in mind the 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos? M: no even if in case of a mono film also, you can give a better feel of the location. Because if you give a boom that is only concentrating most of the times on the voice. Q: hm. M: so then you get an atmosphere but still you can give a better feel of that atmosphere by adding of layers. B: in a location your concentration is to capture the sound, dialogues as best as possible. M: but according to the characters – B: so you don’t concentrate on your ambiences while recording. Q: ok. B: and you cannot get to judge the balance on your headphone, how it should sound --. How much ambience you need, how much dialogue you need. That you can decide only while mixing. Q: yeah. So by that time the ambience should be recorded, maybe separately in a camera. B: yeah. Because even though there are a lot of outside noises, and the “action”, “cuts” and the crew is shouting, you won’t be able to record the ambience at that time. Q: hm. What about the bodily effects? For the effects, do you prefer to use Foley or do you prefer to keep the original effects? Like for example the clip we’re seeing…?

256 B: we use both. Because if you want an international soundtrack, you have to remove the dialogues and give the ambience and effects separate. This is mixed with the dialogue. Q: ok. B: so you won’t be able to remove that. So we have to use Foley also. Q: over the original recordings to layer, right? B: we layer it. Q: layer it. M: rather it’s more difficult for a sync sound film to create foley. Because the kind of tone you get on the location, you have to create in the Foley a similar kind of tone. Q: yeah. M: so that is really tough for the Foley people, rather. Q: yes, of course. M: some people say if you’re not doing dubbing so why taking so much of time? Rather for a sync sound film you take more time than a dubbing film. That is something called belief. If you believe it, do it. If you don’t believe it then don’t do it. Q: have you ever worked with dubbed voices? B: yeah. Q: did you also work it up? B: yeah. Q: what is the difference between dubbed voice and ..? B: with dubbed voice you’ll never feel it is natural. It’ll never match with the lips. Q: but it has clarity, right? B: even sync sound also has a lot of clarity, there’s nothing like that. Sometimes I feel sync sound clarity is much better than the dubbed track. Q: in that sense the definition of clarity maybe including more information from the space itself. M: no, because some people they say with sync sound you don’t get clarity. First of all they should understand where they heard it. Because maximum Indian theaters are not standardized. So you cannot have like you’ll get a clarity. And specially dubbed voice, you get the mid tone louder, because you don’t get a feeling in that. But you need the information. So that is not cinema. You’ll get to listen to Salman Khan, all the dialogues have to clear in the theater. Those kind of audience, people are different. The punchline and everything. And then they wanted to compare like the Chandan cinema. Chandan cinema’s calibration is not correct. Some people say that at Chandan cinema I can’t hear

257 anything. Chandan cinema is not the correct place to judge some film. You have to go to a proper standardized theater and then tell you can’t hear anything. Q: hm. But it can be challenging to record on the location because some of the closed spaces, maybe inside a room, you have tremendous amount of reflections from different walls that makes it probably very, what to say… difficult. M: yeah. That is there. But in the technology there are different microphones that are coming up, with which you can cut out many reflections. The acoustic cancellation of reflections. B: you can use carpets on the floor. You can cut down a lot of reflections while shooting also. Q: yeah. M: while shooting in initial days those microphones are not there. So people used to do using some acoustic on the locations. Right now the technology has come up. So you get some microphones, which give you the cancellation of reflections. You’ll get a correct tone. Q: you work with sync sound - both of you. I ask you to look back at the kind of films Indian cinema has produced, just look at Dharmatma for example. The whole film is dubbed, and when we go to the outdoor we listen to the voices, which are recorded inside studio with applied reverb. It’s very unrealistic sounding. But those films have been quite popular. So how do you select? M: see you also have to think that -- it’s because Indian cinema is going on since many days. So in different situations they have done it. So at that time the subject was so powerful, so then you don’t see whether its dubbed or not. Q: but subject is more powerful in films like Shanghai. M: yeah. Q: or in films like One time in Mumbai, M: hm, Once upon a time in Mumbai. Q: its subject is even more powerful. So? M: why do they choose sync sound? Why have they not done the dubbing? Because that sensibility comes in this time along with the filmmaker. They believe in that kind of setup. Because Shanghai’s subject is of more realistic kind. So probably that is why he wanted to make it in terms of the visual in terms of sound, everything so realistically. B: Shanghai I did actually. M: Shanghai he did. B: but his point of view is totally different from the other directors.

258 M: because that’s the sensibility. B: he wants everything noisy, as it is real. Q: ok. B: most of the directors don’t want that kind of treatment. They want dialogues to be clear, and they want music. Q: ok. B: in Shanghai you hardly hear any music. Q: but films like let’s say Highway are full of ambiences, full of rich layer of sound, at least in the first part. So that is a very commercial film done by a very commercial director. And the subject is not that powerful in the sense that you don’t need a realistic treatment. But also that film contains sync sound and also contains ambience, such huge amount of ambience! B: that also depends on the subject of the film. M: he has done a lot of films. He must be looking forward to this kind of subject to treat it differently. Because everybody right now, what I am seeing since the last decade, everybody is trying experimenting with different things. New ideas, new technology, new ways of thinking. Because in last ten years you see the changes in terms of Indian cinema, the revolution drastically changes Indian cinema from here to there. Look at ten years back and look at here, even the audience’s sensibility has ((been)) changed. People liked the film called Vicky Donor, it’s a hit. This kind of subject is being well accepted by the audience. So if you look back ten years, twenty years, if you tell this subject to any producer he will not accept the idea, he’ll say, “what is this?! Yeh kya cinema hai?” so these kinds of ideas in last ten years have been changing. People are trying to experiment with many things. Q: do you think these ideas and the sensibility of the directors are only changing the sound of the film? Or the sound people - sound technicians are also changing? M: sound technicians are also a part of that. Even if director has a subject, you as a sound person, you take it to a different note also. Director has an idea, you can take it to a different note through sound. Probably director might not have thought it. So then he’s trying to experiment, he might accept it. So basically it’s a collaboration of many people together to make a cinema, which have the vibes together and you make a better cinema. That is how cinema is made if you look back the history. Q: if we separate out the contribution of the sound people, what are those contributions apart from sync sound? M: in terms of sync sound, the design, the creative aspect everything.

259 Q: for example if we concentrate on ambience, M: hm. Q: do you think that the use of ambience has been changing in the last ten years? M: yeah. Initially it used to be like, I can say the earlier films were more dominated by the music only. Slowly people are coming up with effects, ambiences rather than music also. Some films don’t have music only. B: at that time there was a limitation with technology. Q: hm. B: Like with music, you can play a film and play the music in sync with the. At that time we didn’t have any technology of putting the layer of ambience in sync with the film. We have a loop, that’ll be running constantly. And at the mixing you punch in. at this place you need the bed, switch on the bed. And whenever that scene gets over you switch off the bed. That’s what we had. M: because of limitations you don’t have many things. B: you cannot take a car and run on the studio. So we added some car passing. That’s all. With music you can experiment whatever you want in the theater, you can perform in front of the film. That advantage was there for the music. Q: when we come from mono to stereo and to surround, the amount of channels that are added one after another, B: yeah, Q: do you think that also influences the use of effects in films? B: yeah that also influences. And the main advantage is “Undo”. LG. Q: ok. B: because in digital you can do “undo”. With analogue you cannot do. Q: you cannot. M: but earlier great films were there. B: you said you heard all the reverberations in the studio. At that time there were limitations of multi tracks. For the dialogues, if you’re dubbing at that time you might have four or five tracks for the dialogues. So two or three people are sitting together and doing the dubbing. Because we had a limitation. No we have plenty of tracks. Each character we can record separately. M: but earlier films also, they had the limitations, but they have done great jobs. Like look at Ajantrik, look at Adoor’s films. They have done having limitations also, I mean you can’t beat it. That was a different time. (overlap)

260 B: yesterday Bose (babu) was saying, “Nowadays I am not able to match my own standards!” M: LG. yes. Because he was the master of fingers I have seen. I was mixing one of Shyam Benegal’s films, at that time there was no technology, only Nagra we used to do recording. And music and effects and everything all rock and roll, even the little finger was working a little bit. Q: LG. M: I thought I can’t work like this. And that used to be like one reel. Now you can punch- in any point of time in the mixing. At that time one reel one go is a ten minutes constantly you have to do the mixing. Some correction you have to do in the next run, you correct this part, you forget the other part. So that way mixing is always very subjective. But that sensibility was working. At that time during Mangesh Desai and Hitendra Ghosh an all these times. Q: another very specific question I would like to ask both of you. Do you keep the audience in your mind when you, for example, record in sync or think of a design and you edit the tracks? Do you keep in mind how the audience will engaged with your own work or how the audience will be interpreting it? B: I never thought of that. Q: you never thought of. But – M: no, you think about that. That is why when you design, when you do certain scenes and forget it, and come in the next couple of days come n see as an audience how it is sounding, how it is giving a feel. In terms of design you do a couple of times. I did one reel and I go away. I come back again and “let’s see the reel one. Then you just put this, how is it sounding?” So that is how it’s an ongoing process. Even if you go to bed, you’ll think, “should I put that? I think that might work much better.” A fan sound I was doing, I changed it to three different places. At one place I put that fan, I said, “it’s working…no.” next day I came, I put it in another place, this is working much better in this way. So that is how you think also, if its working couple of times. Even if I go and come back and listen to it then it might work at least for five other people. So that is how the whole thing works. Q: what about you? What do you think? (To Bobby) B: for me the director thinks most of that, how the audience is reacting. Q: but sound-wise? B: sound wise I have to make the director happy. I have to see whether the director is convinced or not.

261 Q: ok. B: about the sound input, which I am putting. M: because it’s a directors people – (overlap) B: that is the directors point of view where it is working and it’s his choice. M: most of the times we do certain things director comes and listens to it and goes, “it’s ok. Yeah thoda sa changes.” (Some changes here and there). That is how it happens. If director doesn’t say anything, then it’s working. And sometimes you show also to a couple of other people, “just look at this scene, how it’s working?” so you get the feedback also and rework on that. That is how – most of the times horror films is more challenging because that has to give real fear. Is it really giving that fear? Q: if you give good things to the audience, they’ll accept it. M: yeah. B: hm. M: but it takes time because – B: because for example we were doing one film. There is a silent chopper. See that Abottabad Bin Laden they kill. They use a silent chopper. Q: ok. B: so we don’t know what is a silent chopper. We never had silent chopper on a set. So we created – M: so it’s very subjective. B: we created a silent chopper somehow. Then the director said, “I don’t want any sound of the helicopter.” It was a comedy scene. Silent chopper means there is no sound. Q: hm. B: that is what is his point of view. CHORUS M: but then you try to convince, even if there is silence? B: there is no sound of the silent chopper. Q: in mono you had only one track, right? B: yes. Q: and you had only one source from where the sound would come. There you put all the sounds. B: yeah. Q: a little bit of ambience, primarily voice, music and effects. But when the stereo came, you have a little bit of space where you can just make a kind of directional choice. B & M: yes.

262 Q: so voice was also kept in the center and effects were spread a little bit. But when the surround came you had much much bigger space. How did you adapt to that extra space you got in your hand? And how did you manage to shift your localization of sound? How did you plan it accordingly? B: for me, when you do a mono film then everything comes from the front. So you always give preference to the dialogue first. Then only the other things come. Here we can think differently. Dialogue is separate, music is separate, n ambience is separate. So we can make a feel that we are sitting inside that same location. Earlier we didn’t have. Suppose we are sitting inside a car. Q: hm. B: inside the car all the sounds are coming from all the directions. Earlier you didn’t have that privilege. Q: what was the experience then in your opinion? B: it was great. Q: no I mean in mono sound - if I am not sitting inside that location then what was the experience of mono sound? It is coming from one source only. B: yeah. Q: what was the experience like in your opinion? B: LG I never worked much on a mono film. Q: ok. M: when the mono is there in front of you, the concentration is always for the information. B: but was it an inferior one, I mean watching a film in mono, was it an inferior one? M: no it’s subjective. See whatever information is there, that has to hold you. But here you have lot of space, even though that is not holding, at least some other things are holding you. Q: hm. M: you get a better feel. When the mono is there that information has to be very interesting to hold you there. If it’s not interesting it will not hold you. You’ll be not interested, you’ll be looking here n there. Obviously you will lose that concentration. That information has to be very interesting to hold you to listen there. B: but still even in 5.1 even with Atmos, if the film is a boring one even with the sound it cannot – M: that is there, so that doesn’t hold you. Why I said, always the content has to be great. If the cinema is great, everything works together. Even if it’s a mono, even if it’s a

263 stereo, it’s a 5.1, it’s Atmos, if the subject is great everything works together. Only thing is that, you have a better space to work, accentuate a little more in a bigger way, larger way. Q: how do you yourself differently perceive that mono sound and stereo sound and then surround sound? Definitely there are differences in the way you perceive it. How was it in your opinion? In stereo you have a little bigger space than mono - how did you perceive it? M: see you are asking me right now, Q: hm, M: so I have to look back. Q: yes. Of course. M: so if I look back to the stereo, Q: hm, M: or mono right now, it is more challenging to make a mono interesting. We have done a film, he was also there, called Firaaq. Q: Firaaq, yeah. B & M: Nandita Das. M: so that was a film, which was a great experience for me. Because after the Godhra incident the city was calm. Q: hm. M: the whole city was calm. So that atmosphere you had to create, that calmness in the city. It was very tough. The whole film if you look back n listen, that is almost like a mono. But it 5.1 it is more challenging to create a calmness even then you have the space it was almost like a mono, for me. Q: ok. M: sound was there. But then you have to very creatively use certain sound which will give that feel of that space that calmness which was almost like a source from mono. Q: yeah. M: that is rather more subtle. Subtlety of sound, rather in a mono, you have to be very intelligent to create that mono interesting. It’s a subtlety of sound. Q: ok. Do you also think like that - in terms of mono and stereo? B: yeah when we work on a film right now we concentrate on the highest technology. Whatever the options we lay that one first. Then we go down back. Q: even in mono, stereo or surround, voice is always in the center, isn’t it? B: voice is always in the center.

264 Q: the other tracks are somehow sent in different channels, right? B: but the voice is the narrating part. I mean it’s the information. It’s the one, which is actually attached to the audience and the screen, the main connection between them. Q: yeah, you put other tracks such as effects on the two sides of the screen and then you put ambience on the two sides of the screen, and in surround sound you put the ambience further away from the screen. What do you as a mixing specialist or as an editor think that happens following these strategies? B: we are not putting further away. Q: ok. B: we are adding more layers to it. Q: ok. B: when you have a mono film you have a fixed dynamic range. Q: hm. B: you have to work in that one. When 5.1 comes you have more dynamic range n more channels. So you can have a very loud sound to a soft sound. Q: yeah. Absolutely. B: that advantage is much better than mono film. Q: what were you asking? A: I was saying that he was the one guy who actually started one of the earlier films of Bollywood sync sound. He has gone through how from the starting the technology is changing and how the sync sound was perceived. The use of sync sound, yeah. B: by the time I came to industry mono had become obsolete. Q: obsolete? B: at that time Dolby stereo already taken over the industry. Q: how did you come to work with editing, voice editing or dialogue editing? B: no earlier my passion was music recording. So there I started using a workstation. Then I did a CD of Indian sound effects with Resul (Pookutty). Q: ok. B: so I mastered the CD. Q: hm. B: from there we started working together. Q: ok B: we started doing films and four five years we have worked together. Then I continued in that same profession. As a sound editor.

265 A: but still editing voice is totally different from what any sound people are doing. You’re concentrating only on voices. B: yeah. Q: in early days of Bollywood - I think you did early sync sounds - do you think it’s different from today’s practice? B: yeah. Very different. Q: All of them are sync sounds but what is it? – B: at that time you had only one or two track in a DAT. Q: hm. B: so four people are talking, you’ll have four mics. Everything is combined and recorded on one track. So you cannot distinguish these two mics. Q: ok. B: so when you speak, his mic is also catching, another’s mic is also catching. That’s a bad sound actually. You cannot eliminate that sound. Because they are mixed into one track. Now we have multi-track, so all the tracks are separate. We can eliminate those sounds. So you get it much cleaner without reverb sound. Q: if you talk about reverb, then that reverb is original. That reverb is already carrying a lot of information from that particular place - maybe it’s a room. B: but that is not the actual reverb. Q: ok. B: it’s an added reverb. This mic is also having reverberation, this mic is also having. Q: yes. B: this mic is also capturing the noise, that mic is also capturing the same. So your noise level has also gone up, reverb level has also gone up. That affects the actual clarity of the sound. So in earlier times the clarity is much less than the current scenario. Q: I think all of these settings will be changing slowly in future. B: yeah they’ll be changing. Q: and more speakers will be coming, B: yeah. Q: maybe on top of the head. How do you then think of your work? How will you adapt again to that change? B: you’ll have to try at that time. A: Bobby Sir will be at the center only. CHORUS LG.

266 M: that is already started right? And there are plug-ins. Like you can simulate half the feel of different space over here, in the plug-in you don’t have to have speakers over there. Like in those virtual sounds, you can have it. B: virtual Barber Shop, have you heard of that? . In the stereo mic you feel that the haircutting is happening all over your head. Q: ok. Then you can have it in binaural. B: yeah binaural is there. But it is very difficult to establish in a theater. Q: hm. A: because people are sitting everywhere. Q: yeah. Absolutely. M: no it’s not that difficult. You just have to very meticulously do proportionately how much information you have about this space. B: that will sound differently to different people. M: No this information proportionately you have to distribute in the other parts also. That is very tough. But you can create it proportionately t different parts. From here also you’ll have an almost similar feel. From there also you’ll have an almost similar feel. Because that information is already there also. So that is very tough. Even if you see Gravity, it’s Atmos mix, if you go to a theater where 5.1 calibration is good, you’ll get an Atmos feel in a 5.1 theater also. Because that is the virtual sound. Because the mix and everything, placement is so nicely done. You can create it in Indian context also, but Indian requirement is different. Not necessarily that they can do it, you can’t do it, that is not the case. But the Indian requirements are different. Q: can you come to something specific that is different in the Indian context? M: In Indian cinema you can create those kinds of feel also. Even that is a very interesting mix and an interesting balance you can create also. But looking at Indian cinema they don’t need those kinds of subtle mix, those kinds of subtlety. Indian requirement is different. So people are not doing that kind of mix. Indian mix is mostly Indian music, which is completely different. Q: hm. M: So that is why the whole thing’s different. Q: but we can think of another thing also. Indian cinema, in recent films at least there are a lot of extra bass added. And earlier times it was much sharper – M: you’re talking about in terms of the dialogues or what? Q: altogether there’s lot of bass that’s added. M: bass comes mostly, I think, from the music section.

267 Q: music. M: yeah mostly from music. They think a lot of bass will give that kick to that scene. So which is not true from my sensibility. Q: ok. M: but mostly people think that a lot of bass information will give much more impact, which is absolutely wrong. B: this bass started coming when we used electronic devices. Earlier times maximum bass was produced by the devices. Q: hm. B: there was no instrument below that. Now you get 40 hertz sound. Q: is it because of the electronic music systems? B: yes. In earlier times we had mono. Mono has a limitation in carrying the frequencies. So we cannot go below that and we cannot go after that. So it sounds like mostly sharper. Q: but people started to use room tone. For example in Dil Chahta Hai we hear room tone for the first time. Room tone has a lower frequency range. If you do sync sound recording in any indoor sequence, room tone will be included. I mean room tone as the electrical hum and general kind of what is called white noise. M: no what is room tone? Room tone makes your dialogue a little lively. Q: lively, yes. But room tone is – M: otherwise the whole dialogue will be dry. If you hear it it’ll be dry. If you add a little bit of room tone it’ll make it lively. So that’s why we have to have a correct choice of room tone. Not like any room tone you put it anywhere. You have to have a correct choice of room tone. Not necessarily, you record the scene here and you have to put the room tone of here, not necessarily. Q: ok. M: you have to think and create correct kind of room tone depending on the scene. So that will make the scene more lively. It’ll be interesting at least to listen to those dialogues. Q: so added room tones means added -- ? M: even is sometimes I have done a couple of dubbed films also. So what I do after doing the dubbing I come here to the studio. I add a little bit of a room tone to make it more lively. A couple of dubbed films I’ll tell you, you won’t be feeling that it’s a dubbed film. Because my sensibility is always sync sound so I wanted to make a dubbed film also to sound like sync sound. And I dub it accordingly also. My dubbing is not always that my

268 microphone has to be here and close performance. I record with a boom, so the dubbing also I do in a similar pattern. Dubbing has a feel of that the character is moving there, here and also I give a feel to that. When the scene is happening – Q: perspective? M: yes, perspective during dubbing. During dubbing also I try to create a feel of sync sound. Q: what about you keeping the perspective during editing? Do you prefer to keep perspective or --? B: yeah I create A: with the combination of the cordless and the boom mic we can create a perspective. M: perspective is not that you drop down the level. [CHORUS] just you create that feel of perspective. So that is very tough. That is actually, to create that perspective from a distance, it’s not the level. With the same level also you’ll have to get that tone in your perspective that is more challenging. Q: but do we need to create that perspective or it’s already there in the sync recording? M: in the sync recording it’s there. Sometimes you want to do more in terms of the large screen, with that large screen if you want more perspective you can create it using both the microphone and combination of its reverb to make it more realistic. Q: so the perspective is created to make the audience – M: will make it believable much more by getting into the space. Q: so you think of an audience then? M: yes. Definitely. Probably technically he is not able to tell it. But definitely every time you think about the audience. B: no that is not what I feel! [ARGUMENT IN CHORUS] I am also an audience, I think my way! And I show it to the director. Q: ok. B: so audience perspective means I mean such sound, through the storytelling. That we can’t decide. Which film will become a hit nobody knows that. A: you also think about the audience, your audience is the director. Q: yeah. CHORUS LG A: for a sound designer it’s the larger audience. He thinks like he’s responsible for his work in a way.

269 Q: if you go through the reviews, at least concentrating on IMDB reviews of recent films, lot of reviewers are also talking about sound. They’re commenting on how they feel about sound, being attentive to the sound experience in the films separately. M: right now things are coming up, because earlier no one was talking about sound. Q: hm. M: because you get to hear it now. B: earlier sound was only music. Q: yes. Earlier sound was thought only as music. As people are giving attention separately to sound, so I think it’s also the – M: yeah, it’s definitely changing. People, even the audiences are talking about the sound. So then if you make it better, if you make it interesting so audience slowly will change. It’ll not take much time. But I said because of the Star system, when the stars think about it, it will move faster. Q: yes, of course. M: otherwise it will take a long time. Because I have been working here since last twenty years. I have been seeing how the changes have been happening. Q: do the new stars accept sync sound as a process? M: I luckily started working with Mr. Shyam Benegal. Because he himself is a pioneer of sound he wants always, even if right now I’m working with Shyam Benegal he’ll say, “I only want to listen to the boom track, just give that to me.” Q: ok. M: when he hears in the monitor and listens to it, he said, “Give me only boom track. I don’t want to listen to anything else. Later on you do whatever, but I want to listen to only boom track.” LG Q: LG. M: it’s because his thought process is different. B: but now he knows that he gets the boom. M: he knows that after mixing he hears everything. But during shooting he wants to hears only boom track. B/A: even in Ramleela Bhansali once made only one person stand, no body else stands, I don’t want to concentrate on anybody. I need this one portion, Supriya’s dialogue. But now you have a choice in the recorder. And that particular out through the ISB? And he can get it. Q: hm. B/A: that kind of thing. Now people are also knowing that you can do these things.

270 Q: hm. M: even the oldies they accept the new. Because they know that it’s something better that they are trying to do. So that is not a major issue. B: but it’s good that directors are now taking care of that. M: right, definitely. Because luckily I have been working with these people like Shyam Benegal, after that I worked with Kukunoor, after that Anurag Kashyap. And I worked with this guy also, “yeh Ramu (Ram Gopal Verma) thoda impatient hai.” He believes in the sync sound, but he is quite impatient. “Why is it taking so much of time?” so that is his thought. Q: Kukunoor is always working with sync sound, right? M: yeah. He came to India, wanted to do a sync sound film. He never knew that in India people are doing sync sound. So I was luckily shooting Hari Bhari with Shyam Benegal in Ramoji (Film City). So Kukunoor came to visit Shyam Benegal. He said, “you’re doing sync sound with an Indian technician?” Shyam Benegal said, “I am working since 1973. All my technicians are Indian.” So then he spoke to me. He never knew that in India technicians are doing sync sound. So then I started working with Bollywood Calling, after that Teen Deewarein. Even though at that time limitation in the post work was happening. I was travelling to Hyderabad, Chennai. Here in Bombay there was nothing. So then slowly things were changing. Q: do you think that the sync sound work you did earlier and the work you are doing now - there is a difference? M: in terms of my maturity definitely different. Q: in which way? M: see at that time you were only concentrating about getting a correct sound. And right now I’m looking at the prospective of film. What is a better thing, which will be better, for the cinema together like which will be working. That is a much larger way. Little bit different, but in a larger way. Q: and what about you (Bobby)? Has your work also change? B: yeah, working style always changes according to the technology and more the options you get. M: more techno things are happening so we will experiment this way n that. That is always an innovative way of handling things. B: you can try out a lot of things now.

271

272 Nakul Kamte (2014)

Duration: 01:07:49 Name Abbreviations: Nakul Kamte – N; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q, Other Abbreviations: Laughter – LG

Q: Did you say that you mixed Lagaan in mono? N: yeah Lagaan was the first film which, well not the first film which I did, but the first and only one for which I started the mix in mono and then spread it out to Dolby Stereo and 5.1. And I think by that time Dolby and DTS was so well entranced into Indian theatres that the need for mono became less prevalent. But there was still a lot. I mean like for Lagaan we used to go and listen to it at some place two hours’ drive away from Chennai in the middle of nowhere, which had hundred fans in the screening, in the theater. And Aamir’s whole thing was, “no, no you won’t hear the dialogues, that’s why make it sharper.” It used to sound terrible because -- I mean mono films had that particular honky sound. That was A- because of the equalization, which was applied to the speakers. And I can say like, “No man this sounds terrible!” Because I’d come from a music background, and it was just way too sharp and aggressive for me. And Aamir said, “no you won’t hear anything!” and I said, “no, let me do it my way and then if we can’t hear anything” you know. So we did. And he said, “Oh! You can hear everything!” I said “yeah! There’s no reason why you guys should make it so sharp that it literally hurts the ears.” And then even in the 5.1 mix, there was a lot of time when he’d say, “no, trust me, this has to be louder.” And I’d say like, “no it doesn’t need to be. I mean just let the dynamics be in space,” - you know. Again that was I think thankfully because I came from a music background, I could understand dynamics and ya know try n introduce them to something which, they would fight as a natural instinct. And I don’t get to the case where I’d say, “ok, if that’s what the way you want it” I’d like walk out and say, “take my name off the front credits.” And he’s like, “what the fuck! This is the first film this guy is doing, and he’s saying to take his name off the front credits, what’s wrong with him?” LG. “maybe he’s got something which we can’t figure out”, you know. And I guess it has come full circle because on Bhaag Milkha, again well the mixing engineer wasn’t there throughout the whole thing. So I ended up doing a lot of the mix myself. And again I think it’s a film which has, since I sat at the board, it again had the dynamics which was missing. Because they’re so used to now keeping it loud because producers want it,

273 Q: hm. N: that way. And it’s crazy, because it’s just way too loud. Hollywood used to be more dynamic and quieter. They’ve gone really loud also now. So that’s an argument, which I can’t use anymore with them. But the thing is like I mean, the Dolby was meant to be where you mixed it at seven, n it would play at seven. Unfortunately everyone’s now playing in it 4½, 5 because in the multiplexes having coming in the rooms, the walls re so thin that you’ll hear bleed in the next room. And this aggressive mixing has ensured that it’s all gone out of the window. But yeah, it’s come a long way from mono to, I mean like—Lagaan was recorded on two DAT machines, now you’ve hard disk recorders. I remember going to an exhibition in England, and seeing this, they were for the first time, it was literally in a shoebox, they hadn’t even got it together, but I said, “This is the future!” Q: hm. N: and I put down a down-payment of it and I got the machine when we were shooting in Australia on Dil Chahta Hai, which was way back and none of the Aussie guys had it. In fact I think someone rented it from me and I made more money on that rental than I did, on that one week of rental than what they were willing to pay me for using it for the whole film. LG. but yeah it’s become pretty standard now. And of course now you have – 5.1 happened, and then 7.1 happened which I didn’t really think work for me. Then you have Dolby Atmos, which was amazing to use. But again I think it’s a little – they’ve brought it out a little too early. And now I’m looking forward to seeing what Auro does. Because I think that is definitely a – its codecs are really good, how he’s beaten the whole thing of comb filtering and all that is quite pretty interesting. But to have that thing where it’s an immersive experience, as a sound designer it’s great! Because I can take the audience to a place where I want to take them. One of the issues over here is that they never have money for post in any case. And with that you’re gonna need more time. And they’re not gonna give it to you. It’s more time and money versus doing your art the way you want to. And it’s gonna be difficult, let’s see! Hopefully! Q: in terms of recording media, such as magnetic, I think you also did magnetic recording in…? N: well I haven’t done optical, but I was on the magnetic, yes. Early days I’ve recorded more than a couple of commercials on Nagra. But again in India there wasn’t this culture of location sound. So we never went into the stereo Nagras and things. But mixing to two, that was pretty similar, you know it was kind of a parallel thing because it was tape based. Lagaan was hell on that because the temperature differences were like, in a single

274 day it would drop, I mean it would be 50 in the day if it was a day-night shoot, a split day, 4 degrees at night. So the machine’s used to freak out. At lunch we used to actually have cars, Q: hm. N: with the AC’s running in there, Q: hm. N: where the camera would go into one and the two DAT machines would go on to the other. Just to keep it cool. I mean I’d have cloth, with Malmal (cloth fabric), this wet thing’s just put over it, n you could see the heat rising from it. It also then became a thing of, “wait a second, if we do this then the condensation is gonna play hell with the electronics.” But yeah, I mean it was, on Lagaan, just that film, I mean that’s where my hair went white! Dealing with simple things like - the actors had no clothing. So I couldn’t have radio microphones on them. So everything had to be boomed. Besides which I just like the sound of booms better. But also when I could wire them up, I would get strange things happening in that sand over there. An actor would be talking, and it would be fine. And then, he changed his track a little bit, and bang! Sand would be getting in his…. It took me a while to figure it out but it was – basically there was just so much iron ore in the ground that it was creating a really RF interference. Q: hm. N: And it was hell you know. LG. It was like Aamir said, “what the hell! I spoke the same line and how is the last take ok?” LG I said, “no idea!” and then I mean it was the only thing possible. But it took a while to get to that conclusion, you know. That was quite a challenge on that film yeah. The landscape was really harsh. But going back to it, yeah, so tape was – magnetic recordings used to happen, I mean music which I’d come from was all still on tape. I think at that time from tape we moved on to something called an ADAT system, Q: hm. N: which was basically VHS tape. But digital. And lots of people hated it. But I think for the price what it did, it gave us a lot of opportunity to edit and slip things in, you know. Shift dialogues up and down to try and you know like lift their voice issues with sync. Time code was a whole game changer because no one understood what it did. The early editors had no clue of, they still don’t have of what to do with it. I have just finished shooting The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. And on that the DIT guy was just unbelievable because Fox would want the rushes twice a day, Q: hm.

275 N: lunch and dinner. And it was just such a relief and a blessing to be, you know, have things where you could lock book the cameras to the machine. I got a letter from the Editor saying, “We haven’t called the thing”. And I said, “wake up!” “Now! We’re in space these days compared to – As if that was a Nagra thing you know. There is no need for it, I mean why waste even paper. I refuse to give sound now. I just burn a pdf file along with the thing on the drive, you know. She said, “I can’t hear the day being called out.” So I said, “it’s listed as D 5, so that means Day 5.” It’s not rocket science. LG Q: LG. N: it’s been a change, I mean it’s definitely been a change. I think the thing with using digital recorders, which give you – you still do a mix of booms on one channel, radios on the second. And then as many isolation tracks as you can to give them more of a chance in edit. But yeah, I mean, from that to Digital Audio workstations has been such a huge jump. It’s bad news in a way because now, since directors have got used to it, they would want anything upto 600/700 channels which is a cluster to mix. I’ve actually seen films -- school students send me their projects like, which they’re doing in thing with 300 tracks, each thing on a separate track and I was saying, why are you wasting this thing. Ya know it’s just… it makes no sense because it just makes life so much more difficult at the end of it. And even if you’re doing a 5.1 mix, you don’t really need that much unless it’s an action film or something. So I think technology- it’s been great. But it’s also like been a pain in the arse at times. I’ve had the director say, “I want that red box”, which we used to have, because then I can make it sharp and it sounds correct. And I’ve actually put up that red box and not even switched it in and, “yeah, now see what a difference it is.” And he just saying, “Absolutely.” there has been no change in what you do at all. It’s just something which they feel that they know, that makes it better, whatever. Q: in terms of the texture – in digital recording it’s a different kind of texture, such as the layers of low frequencies that are captured more elaborately. What do you think about that texture? Is it different from the mono era? N: yeah, I mean. I remember getting a Cooper mixer, which was specked out at 200K on the top end. And the first time I used it, I said, “what is all the aaaa which I’m hearing”. It was just cleanliness which I hadn’t heard. Even in microphones now, you’re getting that extended range and thing. So it does give you a lot more. Still for certain things, like guns and all I still like to use a tape machine. Because the transience and what analogue compression does to it is completely different from what digital does. You just do not get the same warmth. So in a way I guess I am lucky because I came from a generation of

276 analogue. Whereas the kids now have no clue about it, they’ve never used it, they don’t know what it sounds like, they have no idea how sweet that third order harmonic distortion, what it does. I mean they’ll say, “Oh! That sounds nice.” But they have no clue why. They’ve no idea that it’s like putting in onto tape, over-biasing the tape you know, using that stuff. Yeah, it’s sad, I mean it should be like, and it just died out so quickly that it’s just so difficult you know. But I think analogue will slowly make a little comeback in certain areas. In music for sure, because they still – that fatness of 70’s, 80’s, 90’s when they were using tape and without Dolby SR, just running at 30 and over biased. Just added a certain sweetness to it, which is -- You’ve got plug-ins now but unless you’ve heard them how are you going to emulate it? So the kids today have no clue what they, you know! Q: hm, absolutely. N: so yeah that sweetness is gone. It does sound a lot more sterile. But that’s the thing, I like to smear it up so that it doesn’t, and make it sweeter. Q: and then I’d like to ask you about the ambience. Ambience is one particular layer I’m very interested in because it gives a sense of place. N: yeah. Q: Ideally speaking. N: well, you know what, in this country ambience is, it’s a tricky thing. Because wherever you go you’re gonna hear freaking trains, train horns, traffic. That’s something people in the West don’t understand, how loud India is, you know. But that’s just because it’s so loud out there. I mean if you stop and listen you’ll hear traffic wherever you are. We’ll hear crows wherever you are. So there are times in a movie when I’m doing sound designing, it’s also about taking them to a fantasy land. Typical Bollywood is pure fantasy. So for that it’s actually really where do I want to take my audience? What do I want them to believe? I like, I love using silence. I think it’s a very powerful sound. And even ambiences, what I’ll do is like I’ll, if there are night crickets on the scene at night sometimes and if there’s score in the thing, I’ve done things where I’ve actually pitched the crickets to the score. And used it just to duck in and out, just a little bed where the music is you know doing the emotional thing for you. But because it’s in the same key and not really aware but it makes a sense of familiarity, which keeps your audience like ok its night n whatever. And there are times when I wanted to be into what the music is doing. And then I’ll radically change the pitch so that like it. And it gets to where I can irritate you with it! Or I can make you just very comfortable with it. So it depends on the

277 film. I mean it’s depends on what the director wants and how I’m interpreting his vision and trying to tell my story with sound. Q: hm. N: I don’t know if you’ve seen the film called Taare Zameen Par. But I got to that place two weeks before we started shooting. And I’ve actually recorded the kids in school, you know. And that I think is probably some of my best work is on that film. I got no nominations for it, which was perfect. Because they didn’t even get the fact that the sound had you so locked into the film that you didn’t even think about anything except the picture. Which is actually the greatest tribute you could get. But at the same time you want to get recognized for your work and you’re saying, “what the hell happened over there?” - you know. Not even one nomination. Lagaan same story. No nominations except the National Award. But I think Lagaan going to the was a huge thing because then people over here said, “Wait a minute! Unless it’s sync sound they won’t accept our film.” So for some strange reasons someone started this rubbish. And ever since then it’s in/coming, in a big way! But I’m glad because Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai were the first two commercial films, which were with location sound. And I’ve actually been in to Ritesh’s, the producer of Dil Chahta Hai’s office, and had another director tell me like, “oh! The sync sound doesn’t work.” I said, “Why do you say that?” and he said, “Well. I met the guy from Lagaan and they dubbed 90 percent of the film.” And I just looked at him and he is a director who should go unnamed. And I said really, “you fat fuck!” Q: LG. N: To begin with, I did Lagaan and I’ve never met you. And all your films are just fucking rip offs in any case of, you know, foreign films. So what the fuck are you talking about? Q: LG. N: we dubbed I think two minutes and forty-three seconds on Lagaan. Out of the three hour forty minute. Which was fucking great. Considering that we had Indian Air Force all around us, going up our asses. The MiG 21’s would come and buzz us and we couldn’t roll. And those places are loud, and since it was open desert landscape, the sound would go on forever for at least a minute and a half, two minutes. But yeah there was a huge - people like Karan and all told Aamir that sync sound doesn’t work and things. During Dil Chahta Hai I remember when, I hope this you can’t obviously think, but coming to me and saying, “Oh Nakul, fab job! I could actually hear all the dialogues.” I was ready to take a punch at him, and Farhaan just pushed me out said, “Nakul don’t. You will work with him some day, LG but like this, just calm down!” and I said, “what the

278 fuck does he mean by that?” you know, they had complete misconception. No clue about sound. They still do not give enough weight to sound in this country. Some of the younger guys do. But old school no. they still, “yeah whatever. You know do whatever you want with it. It doesn’t matter.” They still think it’s the star power, which makes the film, not the script you know, not the craft as such. But we’ve been fighting that change. And I guess I’ll continue the fight till – Q: yes. Like in Dil Chahta Hai, the first time we hear a room tones, where they’re sitting inside, for example in the indoor sequences we hear the room tones, buzz – electrical hum. N: uh-hm. Q: that was the first time in Indian cinema. Did you deliberately…? N: no. It was just that the lights were noisy and things. And we didn’t have material to clean it up like we do now. So we could only do that much with it. The hospital sequences I did add sound, just to smoothen it out. Because the hospital things were shot on Ganpati day, with the “Visarjan” going outside. And we couldn’t hear anything. So we had to loop it. Q: hm. N: I mean I remember getting there and I said, “guys you do realize that today is ‘Visarjan’ day and you know why are we shooting this scene where everyone is introspecting and quiet?”. LG. And it was just different. I mean I remember in DCH (Dil Chahta Hai) in the club sequence, with Koi Kahe (song), getting the actors to speak over the music, and they were whispering. And then I said, “guys”. I went up to Farhaan and I said that, “Dude you know what, to me their body language is wrong. Because when you’re in a club you’re leaning over to someone and you’re speaking out above the music.” Q: hm. N: “I’m not seeing that.” And we tried a couple of takes, and they refused to do it. And I said, “What do we do?” He said, “I see your point, and yeah if you’re doing this let’s try and change it.” And I said, “ok.” I said, “Place yourself.” In the middle of this I’m gonna suddenly play the music. Q: hm. N: and that’s what I did, I started plying the song. And they said, “What the fuck, I can’t hear myself, what are you doing?” I said, “exactly! This is what is going to go on in the background.” “Oh Fuck! We never thought about it like that!” so I said, “right. So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to like roll sound, but we play the music first. And once

279 Farhaan thinks your body language is right we’re gonna cut the music and then you continue doing it that way.” And they just got thrown. Because they kept saying like, “we can’t be shouting!” suddenly in the silence they just freeze, you know, “this is too loud.” And I said, “But guys, that’s the whole idea of this exercise has been that.” These guys didn’t want to do sync. Akshay and Saif. Q: hm. N: at the kickoff party at Farhaan’s place they said, “No we’re not doing this. We’ll dub it.” And Aamir luckily had just finished doing Lagaan. So he said listen to it tomorrow. And he said, ‘how do I convince them?’ So I said, “ok we’ll shoot it and what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna give them like a stereo reference of it. So I’m gonna have three booms instead of two booms. Left Right Center kind of follow the actors n things, and then tail off n let it come in here, let the middle boom pick it up.” And then on the mahurat thing we did put a little short clip, which I recorded. And they came and they said, “wow! You can hear everything on this!” Q: LG. N: And I looked at them and I said, “Besides you guys are smaller than me. So what the fuck did you say you’re going to do me?” LG but it’s the same thing. I mean Anil Mehta, was the DOP on Lagaan, I remember him coming to me. On the second or the third day, where we had horses coming in and stuff. And I had put out mikes and you know. And he’s saying, “let me hear what’s all this digital what nonsense and thing.” And again he put on the headphones, and he kept on shouting, “No, no, play it. I don’t want to hear what’s live!” I said, “but I’m playing it, do you see any horses running?” and he said, “What?” you know two-three times. Then I said, “what is your problem?” he said, “where is the hiss from the Nagra? I can’t hear the hiss.” Q: LG. N: he said, “This is very clean!” LG So I said, “yes.” He said, “arre baap re! (Oh my god!) This will be completely different.” To him it was how is this sound going to transform his picture. And he said, “It’s so clear that I can hear every little bit of sand. My god, the possibilities!” I said, “exactly.” So we’ve just finished a film together after Lagaan. A small film called Finding Fanny. And the other day we were watching it as a rough thing and he said, “oh you should put this sound there!” LG I said, “right. Now you do sound also!” LG. but it’s great because it started getting them to think. So that’s what digital has done. You know the clarity of it has made people a lot more aware. Visually they’ve realized that ok sound can help you, back you up if it’s a weak thing like, I’ve been told

280 by someone that this scene you’ll have to do something to help me out, you know. So you do use ambiences to set a mood and tones. Q: hm. N: room tones and stuff, I don’t think Bollywood had heard before. Q: no. N: they had no clue about it. It was just noise which was prevalent there. And well now with 5.1, and systems being as good as their when you hear, Hollywood films with HMI whine on them and boost the noises, n he’s saying like, “ok if they’re not breathing,” there’s something to it because, there I think the director is more intent on the performance, and here the directors are more intent on the spoken word being grammatically correct. I mean, think about it. How many people talk to their people doing films Q: LG. N: in real life? Very very few. Q: hm. N: you know what I mean? Q: hm. N: it’s just non-existent. But that’s why I do like the whole new wave of cinema, which is actually not new wave or whatever. It’s just like people with a little bit more sensibility is doing, you know, practicing their craft. Q: what in your opinion is the primary difference in the quality of sound between dubbed sound and sync sound recording? N: I think it’s very difficult to get the performance right again. To me, the interaction and the timing of bouncing off with another actor is something which you cannot duplicate in a sterile room, with a screen and a microphone and no one else, six months or eight months after you’ve shot the film. Because you’re not even in the same headspace. I just finished Marigold. And it was amazing to see people like Judy Dench, 4:30 in the morning she wouldn’t go, she’ll stay there just to give her cues. And when someone asked her she says, “Well how are they going to act if I don’t give them the cues. It’s all about performance.” And it’s a level which I wish some of our actors would take, you know. Because once they’re done with their close-up - yeah but it’s things like that which is... I was really fortunate because this had Bill Nighy, fantastic actor. Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, Cilia Henry, Richard Gere. And they were all just so good at their craft, you know. I mean they were Thespians to the utmost. And just the professionalism and you know on them was fantastic to witness. Ambiences do play a thing. I guess the first Hollywood

281 film, which I did was just a thing called The Way Back, with Peter Weir. And they loved it. Because they said, like I did 5 channel ambiences and sent it to them for the end section. And he actually called up and said like you know, “I loved what you did. Have you seen the film?” I said, “no I’ve been shooting, I haven’t seen it in the theater.” He said, “Well you should try and catch it because even with the background score playing and things”, he said, throughout the film that’s the radios and then you used booms in India and like you can hear the difference. And the ambiences, which you’ve recorded, and even though the score is really kicking in there. You can hear your ambiences and you can feel the difference with the boom. You know it’s not that compressed cracky sounding radio. And it just opens up completely, which was great. Which is why he asked me to work on Dark Knight Rises, because he liked the ambiences I’d given in the I mean he just wanted to give a sense of space. Which is what I tried to give him, but again as I said it’s really difficult because India is so loud that you do not have a quiet introspective space here really. So you’ve got to create that. I have travelled miles n miles in searches of ambiences just to have a library. I’ve been to Majuli, which is an island in Assam with very few people could even there hear the Brahmaputra and boats going up n down. So when I went finally I got some birds and stuff. And then just as I was getting ready, good then there was a thunderstorm! LG. so again it’s like, “Oh Fuck!” then it started raining! That thunderstorm was amazing because I’ve used that somewhere or the other. Because it’s just this rolling thunder! And since it’s on the plains it’s just different from cities where there is a lot of slack back from things. And just the sound is different. Q: hm. Does ambience comes in generally when you do sync sound? N: yeah. Q: do you keep or you clean up that ambience? N: that depends. There’s sometimes when I do use it. Sometimes when I don’t. I mean, on Dil Chahta Hai, I remember getting the AD’s to go and lock up buildings being made. Q: hm. N: And then when I was doing the scene I said, “no this is Bombay, it needs something.” And I actually went and recorded a marble cutter and they came to me and said, “But we closed this down.” I said, “yeah I put it back.” They said, “Why did you put it back?” LG because to me it was the option of whether I needed it or not, you know. And yes I mean it’s everything to give you a sense of space and place. It’s what ambience is to me. Q: hm. N: and everyone thinks, Ah, yeah whatever! They discount it. And then when it’s there they discount it, and when it’s not there they’re aware of it, you know.

282 Q: this sense of place was absent in earlier films. Like – N: (overlap) Yeah. Q: like let’s say Deewar, Dharmatma -- N: I just did a film called Son of Sardaar. It’s back-to-back background score. It’s a hardcore commercial Hindi film, which I said I must do just to know how – Q: LG. N: it works! And I was just like sitting back and laughing at it because the director, when he heard the ambiences he said, “oh wow! This is fab, you know.” And Ajay came in and said, “Dude what are you doing? This is not an art film!” Q: LG. N: and it was just a pump, which he wanted you know pupppup…(sound effect). And he got really anal about it. He said, “No it sounds different.” So I said, “well this is a close miking thing. If I give it a little space, put in a little reverb –“. He’s saying, “yean it’s almost there but it doesn’t remind me of the pump when I was a child.” So I said, “boss I’ve recorded the pumps over there. I can’t do anything more. If the pumps are different than they were in your days, then you know!” get me a pump like that or I’ll source a pump like that, then we can do it. But do you really want to use that expense on this n waste your time so much on this. And then of course the score came in, and then there was no pump to be heard or seen in that thing. LG yeah, even ambiences are there. No, I did use a few ambiences. I did use a little bit of room tone, and a little bit of night crickets in that night sequence. And Ajay did like that. Because he said, “oh wow! It’s just made it a lot more personal.” Q: personal. N: so they get it. But you have to push them. You can’t say, here put in on their face. You’ve got to subtly take them through and hold their hand through it, you know. Q: yeah. N: it’s just because they’re so not used to it. Q: hm. N: but audiences are rather embracing this kind of sound? You know I think the audiences - we do not give the audience enough credit in this country. I think the audience is way hipper. Dil Chahta Hai had like, when Dimple picks up you know her bag breaks and she throws the thing, I had a little cat going off in the surround. And I was doing the thing with the Kodak, the cinematographers’ lot. And three DP’s said, “man I love that cat!” and I said, “great!” you know like out of everyone else in this room if even three people have got it,

283 Q: hm. N: it’s more than I can hope for. Because it was stark you know. Yeah, it’s great. Because that’s, then someone is listening to what I am doing. To me, the advent of all this Atmos and all – when Atmos came they showed me a clip of Wasseypur. So in fact I watched it again last night. And when I saw it in the Atmos theater it was extremely disturbing to me because they had got the guns going off there! And then this ricochet is happening over here. And I said firstly that’s wrong space. And secondly it was so loud that my attention was – oh fuck! What’s happening here and I got distracted from the screen. So that’s a huge thing which, is gonna happen also. I mean with Malayalam things they like it panned here, left right and everywhere. But I said, “boss but my attention is going from the screen. Why would I want to do that? I hate” - I dislike panning dialogues also. But a lot of people want it, “oh no! But he’s walking in from there.” “Yeah! But he’s on screen!” Q: LG. N: you know! I have used it where I’ve had a conversation starting from here, and then coming in. but I’ve done it as an effect, to get your attention to it. Or as a build up to someone walking into the room. I wouldn’t do it on a scene where you know it would just completely throw me off. Why would I want to lose my audience? Why would I want them to lose focus on what the film is? Q: hm. N: I think the main thing you know between mono and 5.1 and whatever was, at least in Indian cinema, was the sound and the picture were never, they were not in sync. The dialogues were never in sync, which used to always bother me as a visual thing. That’s another thing for location sound. But in sync sound you’re always in sync, with dubs you’re not always in sync. Q: hm. N: and to me that throws me off! And secondly because it was that high sharp mixed loud fucking thing, the music was there and the film was somewhere else, you know. Q: hm. N: so there was no integration of the two as a package. I think now it’s a lot easier to bridge the gap between the two. Q: hm. I think more and more films will be made in Atmos. How will the ambience be treated? How is it going to be handled?

284 N: well I think actually Auro is going to overtake Atmos. But it’s very similar in terms of things. I think it’s going to become an immersive experience. So yeah, clean recordings are going to become more and more apparent, Q: hm. N: Luckily there are still places in the world, which you can go which are quiet. I mean I carry a little thing with me wherever I go. Pop it out of the window and just rolling sound. Q: LG. N: you never know when it’s going to be useful and what you can do with it. So sound library is also, I mean Lagaan was Skazzy and we used to have 4 GB drives. It’s now four terabyte’s, a minimum you know just on your libraries. Q: LG. N: it’s bizarre! Q: LG. N: and that’s over ten years! You know I mean Indian films I shoot normally in 1.6 to 2 GB a day of audio data. Marigold the first day I gave in 9 GB at lunch and I said, “fuck something is wrong with my machine!” Q: LG. N: I went through three hard drives on this film. Normally I do a film and a half on a drive. It was amazing the amount they shoot, ya know. And I think with digital cinema having come in, the worst affected are the boom guys because no one shouts bloody “cut!” and you can hear them shaking. LG. three and a half minutes or four minutes on a 17 feet boom with a large shotgun microphone on it, yeah it’s going to shake. Q: hm. N: so I think with technology, with each new thing there’s a new set of challenges which you’ve to look you know be aware of. Q: how did you come to sync sound? N: well it started off with me writing an article for an advertising magazine, which a friend had asked me to do. Because I used to do a lot of commercials. And again it was a question of dubbing them. And I said, “guys, why don’t you use actors instead of models to begin with? And then why don’t you just record the stuff on location so it’ll be in sync yaar” and a few Ad filmmakers said, “Come on. Why don’t you practice what you preach?” so I started doing some commercials with location sound. And it was funny actually because one of the early ones, it was for 100 Pipers whisky. And they wanted a

285 Scottish accent you know, can you hear the sound of the pipers playing? So the agency hired these guys and of course one is Australian. LG. Q: LG. N: and I think the other was Italian or something. And never heard a Scottish whisky in their life. So after much of whisky we gave them our alcohol inspired attempts of Scottish accents. And that’s what they used. And it worked! And a few years later the same guy called me up and said, “hey! I’m doing a film!” so I said, “good luck.” So he said, “I want to do location sound on it.” So I said, “well good luck. There’s no one doing it here, you know, really.” And there were a few people who were doing it for Shyam Benegal. I think Ashwin was doing some stuff. And a few other guys I think had done it. And he says well, “you know what I don’t know these guys and they’re giving a lot of thing of what they want and how it has to be this silent. He says, “I want it real. So why don’t you do the sound mix?” I said, “I’ve never done sound in a film.” He said, “Well I’ve never directed a film. So at least you I know. So I can scream and say what the fuck have you done at the end of the day.” LG. and that’s how Bhopal Express happened. Q: ok. N: there were a lot of the crews who had worked with Mira on Kamasutra and things. So they were used to sync sound. And yeah, that’s how we just went about doing it. Actually Bhopal Express had a whole bunch of people who were now, Homi Adajania was the director’s assistant. Zoya was on the film, Appu was on the film. Reema came and went. Yeah, that’s quite a few directors came out of that film. Q: who was the director of Bhopal Express? N: Mahesh Mathai. Q: Mahesh Mathai. N: who was an Ad filmmaker with Highlight Films. Q: technically speaking that was the first sync sound in India, right? N: no. Sync sound used to exist in India. Sync sound died when the Arris came in here. Q: yes, of course. That was in optical era, N: yeah. Q: like in 1940’s, 50’s. N: yeah. But I think Shyam Benegal, Shyam babu was still doing sync. And he’s one of the people who respect it, the way you get time and things. But he doesn’t want to pay for it. So it’s, “yeah ok, do you want to do your art, or do you want to get paid?” And I said, “Well, you know what, I’ve got kids and I need to feed them also!” Q: LG.

286 N: so he said, “no contest really”. So that’s been the struggle of trying to maintain your integrity while battling the commercial elements of it. But yeah, I was really lucky that Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai came back-to-back and you know with location sound. And people finally said, “Oh! It can work.” Lots of kids from FTII who all leave unnamed, who’ve had opportunities to do sync on films. All shot in a bungalow, 13 kilometers of the track in Lonavala. Why can’t you do sync there? Q: hm. N: and the reason they said was because the crickets were loud, because it was that area. Q: LG. N: yeah, I can understand that at night. But inside the house in the day? What’s wrong with you yaar? You know, I think it was just a fear! Q: hm. N: Which had to be overcome. Q: probably it was in a way a sense of conservatism, isn’t it? N: yeah. Dubbing mein acche kaam kar sakte ho (you can work well with Dubbing). Actually a lot of the FTII guys, who were old school said like, “you fucking took our work. Now no one’s going to give us jobs.” And the only thing they did was they would be Audiographers, they would be there at the dubbing. They still, even now, guys use the term sound designer, Q: hm. N: you’re not even there. You haven’t even heard a thing of the Foley. You’ve no idea what’s going on with the tracks. To me it's something, which I try and get into from when I get the script I’m thinking about it. Q: the early days of live location sound with optical recording and sync sound in digital era - they are different in a way. Probably because you can separate the tracks, N: yeah, Q: and in optical recording it was all in one N: well in optical recordings in those days I think Randhir Kapoor once told me, he said, “we used to go and the first thing we used to do is touch the sound guys feet.” Q: LG. N: and I said, “why?” so he says, “Because if you didn’t hit the mark, your voice wasn’t there in the take.” Q: hm.

287 N: so he was very crucial and very key to, you know with those big boom poles and all operated by optical. He said, “Those guys were legends yaar!” Anil Kapoor on a film, which we did with Honey Irani, I said, “I’m not doing sync sound.” I refused to do it. And Preety actually said, “No unless there’s sync I’m not doing it.” And she returned her cheque. So I was hired again. Q: ok. N: but yeah, it’s fear of the unknown. Q: fear of unknown. N: now of course since he’s done Slumdog Millionaire and whatever… of course it has to be sync sound. “Really?” Q: LG. N: “are you the same guy who said that, you motherfucker!” LG Q: LG. do you think that sync sound has contributed to that particular making of a change in the perception of sound for the audiences? N: I think it has, but it’s been so subtle that they haven’t even realized it because (hesitation) the moment the film is in sync, you’re looking at the lips, you know you’re seeing the performance. It still throws me off. A Salman Khan film. Q: LG. N: not to say that I watch too many of them, but yeah, it’s just a different genre which I can’t really get into. I can’t get myself to get around that. Q: do you also use the same effects on sync or do you use Foley? N: I do use Foley also but sometimes it depends. There are certain films where, I mean it depends on the footwear. I try and get my dialogue tracks as clean as I can. Which means if I have to lay out a carpet and not get footfall then I’d try and do that. I’d rather get clean dialogues and worry about footsteps later. Q: hm. N: and yeah, then we will Foley it. Bhaag Milkha, the horse sequences. I knew that I wanted it very low frequency because it was a - and him running. We did Foley here, we did Foley in Poland. I added stuff to it. It’s a complete mish-mash of everything. But at the end of the day it’s got to be the way I want it to sound. Q: is it not possible to use the sync Foley, sync effects of the body? N: as I said, my primary thing on location is getting the dialogues clean. Q: yeah. N: if it’s a place in which I can’t do that, then I would use them. Q: hm.

288 N: in Lagaan, we did the Foley and then I actually went back and re-cut from the production tracks. Because it just didn’t sound anywhere as close or as good. Q: yes, in Lagaan first time we understood the ramifications of perspective. N: yeah. Q: which was not present in the earlier era. N: yeah. Q: like if somebody is speaking from a distance, his voice should come from that perspective. N: yeah. Q: so that was a new thing. I think that’s now rather a dominant mode, isn’t it? N: it’s become a lot more --. Yeah now you don’t even think about it. Q: yeah. N: you accept it. Q: yeah. N: that’s the thing now. It’s like with anything new, there’s always a resistance to change. Till you do it, you know, everyone’s gonna fight you. Q: in expense of giving clarity to the voice, N: hm. Q: will you suppress the information such as the ambience and other spatial informations from the location? N: it depends on the film. And yeah, I probably would suppress the background to get the dialogue correct. Because I can always add that background in later on. Q: ok. But if you have possibility of multiple channels, like Atmos or Auro 3D, they will provide that, N: yeah, Q: in that case maybe more information of the location will be available, right? N: but I would be recording that separately also, if I like the location, if I like the sound of the space of the place. Yes, for sure. I don’t roll when it’s a noisy room full of lights, with buzz and whine. Because it doesn’t do anything for me. It’s not going to transport my audience into any place except the headache, which I have been listening to, while I’m on set. We try to get it down. But in case they will just make a noise, they whine, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And you try and clean it up but like it’s in a frequency zone, which it is going to affect the voice. So then you leave it. Then you take a creative call, of “ok do you need to dub this, is it bothering me that much?” Or “can I let it go? Or can I mask it with some more ambience, or a different ambience?”

289 Q: hm. N: so those are a lot of things, which you do in post. An luckily since I do post on most of the films I work, I mean which I’m on location of, it’s been good because I’ve been allowed to you know, do things my way. Q: don’t you think that there is a major emphasis on reality - a sense of reality? N: but you won’t even know when I’m taking you on a journey in a --. As I said with Taare Zameen Par, it was all stuffed with, it wasn’t recorded while we were shooting, but before in a school. So it is real. But it’s not real from that day of shoot. Q: ok. N: but I’m transporting you into that reality, because that’s what – I make a world of that, I make-believe a world of that. It’s like cinema, it’s a make-believe world which you sell. Q: ok. So it’s a kind of constructed reality. But in that sense I think it’s rather very understandable that there is an emphasis on real places, real locations, real stories, real people, so maybe people demand that sense of reality in sound, isn’t it? N: when I’ll make that sense of realism you won’t even know it! Q: LG. N: that’s what we do, isn’t it? We sell a dream and we make it up where – I mean it’s like Gravity, which won all the Oscars this time. Q: oh yeah. N: it’s all green screen. And yet you’re believing you’re there with them! Q: that sense of believability, like in – N: I think the sequence where suddenly you get into the helmet and you’re inside the head and that sound transformation is fantastic. I mean that’s why they got that because everyone was just, “Fuck! Wow!” I mean there wasn’t for a moment that – you let yourself go you’re in the film! I mean Indian audience, they won’t even think about it in any other way. Actually internationally also you know. Like I mean Bollywood is much larger than you think it is. The effect it has on people all over the world is very strange. I mean I’ve realized that over the years now travelling and --. I’ve had someone on the street shooting in New York come up to me and saying, who knew more about me and my work than I did! Q: LG. N: and I’ve then gone and given a lecture at this college, and I’m saying, “What the fuck is going on? How the hell do you know man? But you’re a white guy in New York!” LG. Same thing in Philadelphia. You come and give a lecture at UPENN and just wow. You

290 think about it, I mean why wouldn’t they? Because it’s one of the largest film industries in the world. Guys in New York and LA don’t have jobs. They’re sitting at home. So there are even guys sitting at home over here. Q: hm. N: it’s all about I guess, at the end of the day, of how you as a sound designer, what story you want to tell. And creating it. Q: talking about the story, this shift from mono to stereo to 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos is significant, N: yeah, Q: do you think that telling of story through sound is becoming less connected to the screen or…? N: not really. I did a film called Harud a couple of years ago. Q: hm. N: Harud has got no background score. It’s only ambiences. Q: ok. N: and I went up to Kashmir and they shot the film. And it was chaotic. As any small budget film would be. Q: hm. N: so I actually took a 5.1 recorder with me. Q: ok. N: and I recorded ambiences for about a week, ten days. Even a small film, which I did for NFDC in Assam, same thing, which is why I was up in Majuli, I just recorded a lot of ambiences, to make it into that make-believe world of reality, yeah. So Harud had no things, like there was one section, which I thought needed music. And there wasn’t. So I kind of played around with certain elements to give it a rhythmic pattern. Because to me, it needed that to take the story forward. Q: once some places are exposed in front of my eyes, the places I know, let’s say in The Lunchbox: Mumbai - you know how it sounds like. When you see it on screen, you expect more noise, right? So in that sense I find that sync sound can provide more information about the places. N: yeah. Well actually it’s not sync sound really. Sync sound is there for the dialogues, primarily, you know. Q: ok. N: yeah I think the ambiences could have been a lot louder. I mean I remember an assistant of mine Steven doing KANK (Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna) with Karan Johar. And he

291 took me to see it. And I said, “dude, in fucking New York, I have not heard one fucking siren. That is New York, that and the sound of that subway. Wherever you go you hear it. There’s not one siren in the whole film?” and then he said, “No Karan’s actually asked me not to use them, to put it out.” But I said, “but then it could be any city in the world!” specifically New York is so loud and, Q: LG. N: that damn siren is everywhere you go. It’s almost like a sonic signature! Q: hm. Yeah. N: so why wouldn’t you use it? There again I guess that’s the thing. As a sound designer I would fight for that. But then again that’s not a real film. So it depends on the film, you know. Again it’s a thing of director’s vision. Q: hm. N: I try and do my job where I try and give them something which is going to blow them away so that they don’t have anything to say and like, let me do my job on it. And take his vision to another level. Q: how do you perceive this change from mono to stereo to 5.1, 7.1 to Atmos? N: well you know when I started everything was in mono for television. So I actually called myself, my company – it was a pun on mono – and I called my company Hearing Binaural, Q: LG. N: instead of Binaural Hearing. Q: ok. N: because mono was very tunnel-visioned, binaural was spatial information, which I wanted to put in, and I think that’s what I’m doing now. Q: LG. N: To me that was the great jump from advertising to film. I think I learnt my craft in advertising, because you get thirty seconds to tell a story. So you paid attention to each frame. Q: hm. N: and what you wanted and what you didn’t want to tell. And film just gave me a two- hour picture to paint. Q: ok. N: and just opened it up and it just became wider. Q: LG.

292 N: so yeah, in a nutshell, that for me is the thing from mono to 5.1. I think now, as things get better hopefully, it’s only gonna benefit us. Because otherwise there are still some theaters where the left channel doesn’t work, the surround doesn’t work and things. Nothing you can do about that. The good fight is going to continue. Try doing your best so that it sounds as natural as it can. It’s all about immersive-ness I think. Q: hm. N: and I think Auro is going to make that a lot more so. I’m actually looking forward to mixing something in Auro. Q: ok. N: because Auro’s got two 5.1 levels. One at ear level, and one higher. Q: hm. N: so it’s just a spatial space. Q: the way we perceive reality, of top, front, behind… N: yeah. Q: but behind is a bit disturbing, sometime it distracts. N: yeah. Which is again, that’s what we do in post. It’s like how much information do I want. I don’t want you looking back. I want you feeling it. How much is the right level, there is no guidelines to that. You just got to go with your own instinct on that. I guess that’s why people hire me, because they trust my instinct on that. Q: LG. N: because you can argue that point. It’s a point-of-view, it’s an opinion. Everyone’s got an opinion on them. And there is no guaranteed, yes this is correct and no that is wrong. Which why mixed theaters are very important that they be lined up properly so that – but it’s happened to me in the past, where I’ve mixed something and I’ve gone and seen it in a theater. And there’s no surround information. I’ve gone to other theaters where it’s the same print and there’s too much surround information. So there’s nothing you can do about that. You can only be as honest to it as you, Q: hm. N: can in the mix room. Q: hm. Instinct. N: and I mean I’ve also got a set-up also here which is facing the wrong way and all. Q: hm. N: but it sounds great to me. Q: LG.

293 N: I mean to me this is a real room. If I had the speakers facing that way I’d get no information. And it’s a great sounding room, I think yeah.

294 P M Satheesh (2014)

Duration: 2:21:20 Name abbreviations: P M Satheesh – S, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q, Jayadevan C - A

Q: Did you start your career with sync sound after film school? S: Give me a second. I'll just close the door… When I passed out there was hardly any sync sound. And I did not want to do anything, which is just going to be a reference and not going to be used in films. So I did not really want to take the pilot recording route at all. I did not know anybody in Bombay in particular, and just one friend was doing some location sound for a documentary. He was a senior of mine. Apart from that there was not much happening in terms of sync sound particularly for fiction. There was probably an art film scenario, so a few directors would do it and they all have their chosen people. Otherwise it is mostly pilot sound. I did not directly join sync sound, because I couldn't get an opportunity to break in so joined a tiny studio where I could do independent work. It was various music, documentary postproduction, film work and stuff like that with a senior of mine called Niyogi. So I did about five months of work there. By then I got to know Bombay a bit more, and people. And then I gradually moved to sync sound, which was mainly for documentary, television work was just emerging in that scale. So I thought even if it is television it is usable sound from the location, you are doing something that is going to be used, which I was very particular about. As usual nobody encouraged. Nobody wanted to go around slinging the Nagra. It was considered really bad stuff. I think music recording was at the topmost and then maybe mixing. So studio related sound was considered the happening thing and location sound with a Nagra and running around was last in the hierarchy and least fashionable. So I had to really look for it and propagated for feature films and fiction and really push for it. So you keep waiting for very long periods of time and then you get one project, and then you don't know when the next one is coming. Maybe after six months. But still I was ready for it and pursued stuff. Hardly any equipment was available for sync sound. But a few people like Anand Patwardhan and Shyam Benegal had some recorders and mixers that they owned personally, because they were the very few who are doing serious sound location sound. So we had to build it up from nothing. Well I would not say nothing, because there were a few glimpses, like Vikram and Dileep Subramanian, they were doing foreign television documentary work. So I would assist them once in a while or they would send us for the flash and stuff like that. But that was mainly non-fiction. Then Dave Benegal's English

295 August was getting recorded, and that was fully sync sound with non-linear avid and stuff like that which was just coming in. Yes and that's how it started. And then I got an opportunity in Pune itself with Mr. Nachiket Patwardhan, I don't know if you know him. He along with his wife makes so-called art films or serious comedy is. They had a theatre background, so I started with that. I got this opportunity immediately after film school to do a feature film, where they were thinking about sync sound. So I convinced them that that is the way to go. And because their performers were all having theatre background, they project really high. And it was in the middle of the old Pune city, where there's a lot of traffic and it is very noisy. So I somehow convinced and he went for it and we got hundred percent sound on location. But it was really quite a lot of work and a lot of excitement. It was my first time, so I did not want to fail. Controlling traffic on major streets and highways, they did a lot of such crazy things to make that a successful venture. We managed to do it well and it gave a lot of encouragement. And after that there was no looking back. Q: which year was that? S: That might have been in 93.

Q: quite unusual because sync sound is usually understood as the Post Lagaan case. S: that would be the mainstream. Lagaan would be the mainstream sync sound film. People would think that Lagaan was the first sync sound film, but that is nowhere near the fact. Because even a feature film like English August was completely sync sound. And all of Shyam Benegal’s films were done in sync sound, but they were not mainstream films. I would say even some mainstream films were done before but never with starts. You never dared to do sync sound with starts because they control the show. They won't even turn up you know. It's like one and a half shift schedule and the superstar will walk in and say that he only has two hours to get a shot done. Then what sound control are you talking about? And you can't even talk to the director of the producer saying that we have a problem with sound, can we delay its? Can we wait for that? It will be so funny to even ask for that. So nobody dared to do mainstream with superstars, and Lagaan that way was the first. But sync sound has been there for quite a bit in all its glory before. We ourselves have been recording sync sound before that. I was doing another children's feature film, Pankaj Advani’s Sunday, and that was in sync sound. Except for dialogues because the camera was noisy we literally used everything else from the location. Q: I have read one of your interviews, I think in Cinematography magazine, a long time ago when I was in film school. You were speaking about sync sound. At that time we had

296 long dialogues and discussions and debates about sync sound because we understood the coming of sync sound is evident. We were a bit reluctant, or trying to understand what it means. And at that time during this phase the reviews on sync sound came up in one of those film school journals. Did you prefer to record the sync effects alongside the voice in the early days of sync sound? S: yes the thing is that postproduction was in its clearly elementary stage. The concept of postproduction was literally an editor laying tracks on a Steenbeck for maximum a week. A week is like the outer limit. And sound recordist would be sitting next to him and providing the material that was recorded on the location mostly. And there was hardly any concept of a library, of people having a library of sound effects. Except for the only sound effects library that I could think about, in which the only sound effects were like “dhish dhish”, and some crash and some glass falling. These typical sounds were there which would be on stripe in one studio. I used to work in one of those studios. My first day in Bombay at studio wherever is doing music recording, next to which this well- known transfer room was called Arithy transfer room. And these transfer rooms are quite important because they have all these sounds either on Nagra or on stripe tape. And from a tape they will transfer onto another tape how much ever you want. So when I walked in I could only hear the sound of these punches for hours and hours. And these guys were transferring it for various films. And you take that 35mm stripe to the editor and they cut it and place it wherever. And that is when I used to wonder, because coming from a film school background, we hardly get to see these kinds of films but you know they exist. So for hours you hear these “dhish dhish” sounds and only that. Maybe three or four variations but imagine these transfers are going on for hours. Imagine how many films must have been using that! It's quite shocking. Like that they would have a few effects and they would transfer it and charge a good fee for it. And that is how they use to make money. And that is the concept of the sound library. And most of the time you record sounds around the location, or when the artists are not there shooting you go back there and record extra bits. Or similar locations, if it is water related you would go to Pashan Lake, everybody goes to Pashan Lake, and so this is how it used to be. And then you bring it over and give it to the editor and the editor places it in the few days of postproduction. That is nothing much you know. So because of that you tend to record as much as possible on location and then steal your recording creped in pretty soon. I mean we all studied studio, but in India sound was hugely ignored and nobody was interested in realistic sound and location sound. It is mainly this “dhish dhish” sound and dialogue and some Foley and some music. Music is the main, dialogue and music, and if there is

297 any gap there would be some Foley which was against for some serious crashes or breakings and things like that there would be Foley. And footsteps will be like very monophonic, left or right a few tips will be the same, and it would be just one tone. Yes so it was pretty bad. Yes of course Foley guys were there and they were recording, but they never used to be perspectives and very close miking, and tonality wise it will all be the same. And the mixing engineer would push and Foley when there was nothing else, and that is how it used to be. Even now if you work with music directors their concept of sound design is Foley. Till date they would use Foley. For them it is just dialogue music and Foley. There is no other categorization of design or anything till today. So when I'm working with music directors they keep asking "so Foley will come here? So Foley will come there? So why don't you bounce the Foley sound and give it to me?" So then you tell them that Foley is like violin for instance, it's just one aspect of your music. Yes so it used to be an entirely different scenario. A: at that time music directors used to sit for the mixes, no? S: need not be part music work was pretty serious then. Because it was live, you just look at the picture and orchestrate fully there. Like big hole with hundreds of violence, it's an elaborate setup and they're looking at. They don't really need to sit with the mix as such, because there is nothing else. What else is there? When the dialogue comes in music has to go down and when the dialogue is not there to music has to be pushed in. So there is no need for them as such to be there. They had no paranoia that their music will go down because there was nothing else. That paranoia started coming in with sound design. Because then they realized that if they are not there then their music will go down. There used to music full on, upfront, which even now is a battle. It is quite a battle to get rid of those notions and I don't think that notions would banish that fast unless the directors change. Q: in those days, like in the filsm from 1993, you mostly worked with magnetic recording. Using Nagra with single channel or mono… S: single channel or you hire a studio Nagra when you want to tracks. You have to do a production mix of course, you're mixing things down. And radio mikes have just appeared. Q: was it mostly on boom? S: multiple booms. And if at all you have a radio mikes or maybe a coded lapelier mic, like a wide shot it is hidden and wired, so artists can't be walking around. And I remember we used to have radio mics and used to keep the receivers really close, the technology was just emerging so the transmitter and receiver had to be really close.

298 Even if the artist turns a little bit we used to go out of range. So you get a kind of sound. But that was a standby operation mainly for wider shots. If the shot is really wide you can't get any sound so we used to do this. And we always used to look down on the radio mics because its signal-to-noise ratio is not good, transmission techniques were not as advanced. Q: it is evident that there were limitations with magnetic recording primarily due to its signal to noise ratio and dynamic range. How did you manipulate with that? S: no actually there is no limitation. The limitation is when you look at it from a present- day perspective. But at any stage in which technologies involved, at that particular point there is no limitation because that is all you have. And also you are their form another point of development. So it is like you're using the latest. Like now you know, like after one-year people could look down on the technology we are using now. So it is an ever- growing process. So there was no such thing as limitation because cameras and everything is like that. So the setup is such that it is oriented for the devices that are available at that time. This is with everything not just sound. Non-linear editing hadn't started, so it was literally Steenbeck at that time.

Q: or may be even Moviewalah. S: no by that time Steenbeck was there very much. So everything was limited in its own ways if you look at it from present-day perspective. But for us it was quite elaborate. Production mix is something that people still do even now. Often people prefer to mix down boom mikes onto one track and radio mikes on to another track. So it's still valid, it is not outdated. A: but still in India when you're doing location sound you're getting all the separate mikes and you are also editing in that terms. S: right now yes, of course the postproduction is like that. But when you are recording on location and you know that this has to be mixed down, you are taking care of that and that is the way. So you are devising everything like that. So let's say you have three boom microphones, all you need to do is when one boom is picking up a dialogue and the other booms are not in use, they should not be relaxed and they should not be giving handling noise. Because three channels are going into one. So unnecessary handling of an unused boom can create a problem. Though the sound recordist is supposed to take those faders of, but suppose he fails, if they keep quiet you're getting a clean sound on the boom. Then the only issue is radio mics. If you have multiple radio mics, and if one artist is not speaking, they will not be careful they will be careless and they will hit here

299 and there and that can get onto the mixed lapel channel. So in that kind of thing what you do is you don't worry about the boom mics which one to open and which one to close. You leave that, the unimportant booms you keep it a little down but you don't fade out. And you fade out the unwanted radio mics entirely, so you only use radio mics of the artists who speaks. So if the corresponding artists’ sequences are there, only their mics you keep it on. So then you are getting a clean track between the two. In fact it is much easier in the edit. You don't have to select various this things. You will know while editing itself if the sound is good or not and what needs to be edited. In these days no editor can tell what needs to be dubbed, because it has to be after the sound editor steps in and in the sound postproduction somewhere in the late stage we would make a list of tracks to be dubbed. There could be tracks, which are hidden in the eight tracks which are good and which can be used. And that will be only gone through during the dialogue editing states. So I would not call it any limitation as such, and also you don't have the habit of using so many radio mics because you don't have that many channels in the mixture and anyway it is all going to be mixed down. So you use it in a better way I would say. So it is like when you started shooting on video or digital rather than on celluloid. On celluloid you tend to plan your shot very well because you cannot afford to waste celluloid. But with video or digital you keep shooting, and that did not improve any quality, rather the quality deteriorated. Because you don't have to be responsible for it. So I wouldn't think that these were limitations. Even signal-to-noise ratio, because sound shifted from optical or photographic medium to a magnetic medium in a very early stage the signal- to-noise ratio that we get are actually very high. Of course it is not as much as the digital, but that is like 5 DB or 10 DB, which wouldn't make any sense really in terms of difference. Probably tape-to-tape generation loss, it adds a 3 DB noise it adds for every transfer but considering the fact of quality it really didn't count. In fact we are going back to that analog. If anybody gives the Nagra to record on location now, anyone will jump on. Because the way sound is perceived in the analog domain is far superior to digital. As we go forward we realize that. Because if you just hear a venial recording, with its dynamic range which is far less than magnetic medium, but the way you hear an analog sound like a voice for instance of those recordings you will be stunned. And we realize they do we stand now. At our time then the changeover was happening we did not value venial or magnetic as much because we look forward to the digital and its clinical sound. Because we went for signal to noise ratio and tape noise and there is no head alignment and all that, we were quite unaware that this is getting our perceived hearing affected. So after a few years I think in my studio I was playing of venial recording, though many

300 musicians and many people used to say that analog had great quality and all, we were not really convinced. But when I heard a venial recording and an analog recording after a few years of hearing only digital that is when I realized that my god! In olden times valve radios were there and transistor radios were there. And I remember even now very clearly how the valve radios sounded, the newsreaders and everything that sounded there was like a dream. I haven't heard anything like that afterwards ever. Even when I go to Chore Bazar these days and I see a valve radio I get stuck over there, because the sound is still in my head like the newsreaders on all India radio and the music. So I wouldn't say it really mattered. Even the heads that we get in terms of signal-to-noise ratio in the digital domain, we hardly care about that. I don't really consider that any precious. When it was the analog domain and when things were getting distorted, the distortions were never like the digital distortions. Digital distortions are redundant, you cannot use it. But analog distortions would first collar the sound, and not render it redundant. And transience analog would take much nicely, much nicer than digital. Because digital it becomes meaningless when anything goes beyond the limits. But we were completely unaware of that and I don't think anything really limited us in any which way. Even looking back at it now I would consider it the good old days rather than anything limited. Of course tape noise was a bit of an issue, like when you keep transferring from one medium to another which has to happen by the time you mix, but for that what we used to do is we always use good clean sound. For instance somebody is providing us a source material from a consumer cassette deck, and then we would use it only if it is absolutely necessary, like Kishori Amonker’s older recording, which cannot be replaced. Otherwise we wouldn't use cassette purely because we know that the tape noise will add on to the program as we go. It was to avoid anything that had inherent noise that was the way to go. Q: yes. So the integration or revival of analog recordings can be parallel to the digital development. It is a kind of hybrid situation as of now, which is termed as Post Digital. But what I am interested to know is: even though there is a sense of glorification of analog recording, digital recording offers the separation of channels, multichannel recording systems and also the multichannel projection systems. Given those kinds of possibilities, will you not consider digital technology as something that offers more flexibility, creativity and stuff? S: when technology develops, if you have noticed, it always gives you a better option as far as the logistics and the intermediate stages. Be it films or coloring or pixilation, anything in that digital picture media, they don't want to carry the film everywhere. And

301 even with release prints, a person has to carry it to every theatre, and that is the first thing they sold. They said, "Why don't you use digital projectors? You don't have to carry films. It is so easy. And maybe even you can download and show it in cinema halls." This was the first step for digital projection. And at that particular point of time if you really look at it, it was complete crap in terms of cinema projection versus digital projection. The only advantage was logistics and the intermediate stages were made easy. Not the final product and never has it been so. There will always be a catch. They will package it for you and you find it attractive because you don't have to do this and that. All you need to do is compromise a little bit in the output. So if you talk about Digital's intermediate stages, of course there is nothing that can replace that. And nothing in the analog medium could imagine that. And that is how they crept in. So what we lost is, or what one is craving about in analog is the way it sounded, which matters the most. In terms of you as a person who perceives the output, an audience, does it matter to you how they carried the film or the video or whether it was downloaded? It does not matter to you. All that matters to you is hearing, and that is being compromised and there is no doubt about that. But not the path to attain that, they were all easy. Any new technology coming it is easy. Cameramen still crave for 35mm's contrast ratio in spite of DI and anything that you can manipulate; they still talk about that because they have tasted the blood. So it is like that, we have played around on Nagra, and then what are we getting satisfied with. If you really look at what we're getting satisfied with it is a shame. So in terms of the final quality we have compromised hugely, but for what? Flexibility of course and multi-tracks. Multi-tracks could have been in analog as well and cross talks were last of the issue, you just need wider films and you had two inch films with 24 tracks for music recording with loud sounds next to each other, so it was all in place in analog by that time. My period was more of a transition thing. Without digital itself, whatever we're doing now has been achieved by analog on magnetic tape. I'm not talking about 35mm striped magnetic or full-court magnetic but tapes like half inch or quarter inch which were interlocked with any machine be it video or film just the way it is right now. It is linear that is all, but with en number of tracks and you can even edit things. But with anything I would say non-linear editing is much faster than anything linear, there is no doubt about that. Whether it is picture edit or sounded it there is random access at any point of time to anything. So let us be aware of what it gives, but not justify the sound quality ultimately. We are human beings and we have senses and everything is analogue, and we perceive things in an analogous way. So it is our domain and we deviate to digital for convenience sake. Sometimes when people offer digital speakers I wondered what is

302 digital speakers? Because what are we trying to do? Just fooling people around. Because the ear cannot hear digitally, unless we can access the brain directly and by past eardrums.

A: are you saying that we have completely deviated from the organic? S: I would say the way we were used to, the way we played around, the way we were trained, the very studied and the way we looked up at-digital hasn't replaced the way we perceive sound. A: it is completely compromised. Is it? S: certainly. Of course, there is no doubt about. I mean it is approximation. When you had something real, it shows a technology, which is approximation of the real. So because it was convenient it was easy… A: that is why people started coding it on 96 kHz, trying to reduce the approximation. S: yes, you try to get it closer and closer. But you have deviated from something real and something closest. But Digital has other merits, like you can handle it any which way you want. And now it is not just sound. Now technology about anything is getting into digital because it is one universal language. Which means any intermediate stages or even gadgets… You can see for instance your laptop charger and your mobile charger, everything is USB now. That is a very good sign to depict anything. Earlier we used to have transformer-based or FET-based chargers. But now there is no such thing. If you have a USB on everything and it is a standard, then gadgets can be sold are really cheap. Because there is no difference between anything. So the manufacturers who manufacture USB ports would manufacture in millions so they can really cut the cost down. So when you make everything digital, it is one single language and it is so easy. So all you do is an analog to digital converter for video, one for audio and one could be for a weighing scale and for pressure sensitive devices, like that anything you take. It is very easy. It is literally like globalization, it scares you as well. It standardizes everything. It basically doesn't have disparity between two. The variety is gone in various things. I'm not saying these varieties are absolutely needed, but that is what we were used to and that is what we crave for in everything, in human being, in characters. It sees everybody wants cheaper gadgets so why not. Now you have something like this. I remember in the olden times when we were getting cassettes recorders like Walkman. It was this professional Walkman, which is slightly bigger than this, and it was a great pleasure to use that for recordings instead of a Nagra. So in discreet documentary situations you will be using that and according pulse on one track and the information on

303 the other track. And that pulse would be later used to lock the sound to the camera. So to that extent we have. And now when you talk about your recorder you feel inferior about it, because you know that a similar sized gadget can produce top grade quality. So it is no more the size. So how do you reduce the size? So if you have one language across the platform so then you can have a gadget, which is so tiny. Literally one chip would do everything about sound and another chip would do video. And even the developments that are happening in video in terms of digital is like what sound has gone through 20 years back, and it is just wiping things out. Q: standardization was also not a problem with magnetic media because we had RCA connectors, which were standardized, then IEEE connectors… S: but different standards, and now it is no more. Imagine you have a tape deck, and you know how many connectors are there behind it? They were all differently standardized. Starting with Nagra, it had a banana pin. And then it had RCA, and two shell and so many accessory connectors and XLR connectors, so various standards. Now they're trying to knock off all that with a serial bus! Q: at one point of time, if not by Wi-Fi wireless, everything can be connected. All the digital systems in this room can be connected to USB, and they can make array like exchanging information and stuff. S: now Wi-Fi is going to be the killer. That is going to take over everything. Every device is going to be wireless. And it is all going to be Wi-Fi. Your entire building will have about hundred search cameras controlled entirely with Wi-Fi, and nobody needs to go there. You don't need to wire, which is very easy. So every gadget or every tiny sound device will have a Wi-Fi receptor you can control it. Q: so everything will be in sync. S: yes. So it is fabulous but you compromise. It is like the Internet era, it compressed everything. Why do we compress the sound? Sound on MP3? Everything got really reduced because what was more important was access rather than quality of sound. So as I said the logistics and convenience and the intermediate stage could all be dealt with very easily, so we went for it. Now who cares? Even the poor quality MP3s that you play on iTunes, you think that is the quality. You have forgotten what you are using. A: and if you will talk like this people will tell you that it is a very brahmanical view. S: no, but we don't talk about that because we have experience and we know what is good and bad. The public does not know, they just take what they are fed. A: there are two aspects to this. This is a kind of centralization. Because you know there are so many connectors behind a tape deck. To know that thing you have to have some

304 kind of knowledge. Not that any common man can come and connect it and use it. Knowledge is very accessible also. S: it should be easily accessible even if you compromise the best of quality, which is the most crucial. Even then accessibility is the thing. For instance you buy a high-end Nikon camera, which takes 10 Mb still picture and what do you do? To upload you don't have that kind of speed and you don't want to clutter. You want to put it on Facebook and they don't want to deal with a 10 Mb still, so they will compress and in terms of look if you don't magnify it will look quite nice. It might be just 80 K. A: I used to click a lot of pictures with Vivitar and 35 MM… And then I bought a DSLR and now I'm clicking with this. Now I'm not able to click like the older times my whole thing has changed. Now I'm clicking with this squarish composition, with Instagram on my mind. Every photograph is like Instagram edited on my mind and then I click it. Q: so this particular aspect of ubiquity and pervasiveness – for this reason people consider digital so handy. S: of course nobody is disputing that. It's like as he's saying he's thinking about Instagram when he's composing a picture or taking a picture, these pictures are anyway in your mind and gone. And films that we used to admire remained in your mind for a long period of time. Now the content is coming from everywhere so you don't have time to keep anything in your head. Nothing surprises you beyond a few moments. That is not how we were all playing around and brought up, and our lives have not been like that. Okay, if you look at a certain kind of age, this generation issue-I'm not getting into that. Because I'm only talking about the senses that we have, and we have achieved the kind of quality to nurture these senses and all I'm talking about is we are going far away from that. I'm not disputing anything else. When you said about the convenience of digital, of course I did not dispute that at all. So what is priority for you? If the listening experience is the most important for you, then I would hold onto what I was talking about. But if you want fancy projections and multiple projections and various controls with many things combined together, it is only possible in that kind of a medium, there is no doubt about that. And even kids were born and brought up in a later era would only get to see what they are provided, and what is around. So that is their domain and they don't know anything else. But we have gone through something else, and we know that exists and professionalism is always about getting the highest quality. I only talked about it because we are professionals and we're talking about the medium that we are in and we would always talk about the best quality that can be achieved.

305 Q: but I think there is a chance of a mistake if we, all the time compare digital and analogue, because analogue and digital are different mediums. Digital has its own aesthetics. It might be cold. It might be less noisy, you can manage greater noise. It can be ubiquitous, it can be pervasive. It has its own aesthetics. So I think we did a mistake by mimicking or imitating analog from the very beginning, for example 24 kHz, 96 kHz and stuff like that - in camera, developments like 2K and 4K etc. A: I remember reading one of the interviews of Roger Dickens about Skyfall. And he was asking why are we comparing 35mm film with Alexa? Q: yes it is a different realm. So either you choose analog or you choose digital. They are completely two different worlds. One does not need to imitate the other. S: no. That is not the point. The point is that you tasted the best in terms of perception that we are capable of. So when you're replacing that with something else, because it is a progression that is happening in terms of technology development, you always feel that you have not matched the quality of the final output of the analog domain. You have attained everything else, in terms of speed, operational abilities and all that you have attained but you have not attained the final output quality. So you always want to match up to that, because it is only then that this can really become an alternate by all means. Rather than looking at as to mediums. If you really look at technology development and its progression, of course analog is going to be replaced. It is moving forward. So to be truthful to that aspect of moving forward, you can only move forward if you have made everything better. And here there is always a notch, which always holds you back saying "look I am here, analogue. I produced better hundred years back. You have no match to that." It is on that level. Of course the reality of things is like if I get a new software or a new hardware to get to get under the Digital better I'm always looking for that. It does not mean that I'm not working in the medium or anything like that. I wish we could achieve in digital the quality that we perceive in analogue, in whatever way. You crave for that because that has the highest quality experience that you have had. I'm sure even when you're watching a digital projection, in these days it is probably better than analog maybe, but till then you will always feel “oh! Those 35mm days or those 70mm days. The good old days.” So I think that if something has triggered in your perception, something that you felt magical, it will always be knocking at your door if you haven't achieved that through other mediums. Q: one needs to have an experience of analogue texture. If we primarily talk about quality I think we will talk about texture of analogue recording. If one has an experience of analogue recording only then can he or she compare it with digital recording. But the

306 new generation is not at all exposed to analogue medium. They have no experience apart from old recordings coming up in MP3. They have no experience of what analogue recording sounded like. S: see that is one, but let's leave this analogue digital apart. If you look at the new generation itself, they have been using video cameras and sound recorders in the magnetic medium to the Internet era. And in the Internet era they themselves have shifted from CDs to MP3s with higher compressions. It is not that they were not exposed to CDs. They themselves know the quality, but they have gotten used to it because, or they deliberately got used to it because as I said it is handy. You don't need cassettes or various gadgets. Now everything is in one and you can download. So people even use cheap mobiles with those tiny speakers, if you can call it a speaker, and they get used to hearing that and all they hear about the song is its melody. And as long as the melodies therein their head no one is paying attention to details. It is not that the new generation is not exposed to but everything is degrading in its quality. There is no doubt about that. Because you have material bombarding you from everywhere. There was a time when you ask a question to your teacher and they will answer, but now you just type the question and the answer will be there on the net. Anything that you want. And this was like wonderful. Incredibly interesting. Anything will be answered. But now when you search for something your problem is how to limit. Because you are getting too many information which you don't want. So in an era like that, of course you're going to narrow things down. You're not thinking about full-spectrum of things and details of things. Rather than paying attention to detail you're trying to narrow down and focus onto the thing that sticks out of anything, what is most important. Criteria in an ensemble that is what you focus on to. Because you have so many ensembles bombarding you, so you don't have time to pay attention to any detail. I like the melody of this, this is interesting and then there are 1000 other things, so I'll pick one to it on the basis of that and not on the basis of any more detail. So this is in every field. We're narrowing things down and we don't want attention to details. That is where we are going. Because of the bulk that is bombarding us. I would say it is because of that and not because of any reference of… If you're looking for the highest quality of anything, let's say a picture which is going to be blown up you would still go for professional cameras which would have the best quality and also analogue quality as well, or when you convert to analogue format what would stand up the best. And you go for that and surprise the audience. Though it is getting marginalized it is always there in any field. Just because everybody's doing it in a consumerist domain it can work. But if you're building a bridge for instance and you need

307 a crane, you will go for a solid crane that can really take the load. You're not going to compromise with something easy. Because this is a matter of something, which is about strength and longevity, so the parameters are fixed. There is no confusion about that. So if you're looking at your day-to-day listening, how'd you want to listen to? If you're not paying any attention to the details of what you're hearing it is fine, any MP3 would do. But if you're a person who is interested in details then you will choose a format that suits you, which has always been the case. That is why many people remained in venial or some format they liked. And we look up at them and call them connoisseur. So let's not think that the mainstream rules the day and that is everything. That's the distinguishing point we have to make. This is the time of consumerism and things are to reach masses in the cheapest and easiest of ways. But that doesn't distinguish us from people who are interested in serious stuff or value their own receptors. Ultimately we have five senses and it can take certain bandwidths, and whether you want to feed information with that bandwidth that it is designed for or not. What satisfies you? For some people they want that great pleasure of taking it in its bandwidth that is designed rather than just fulfill something. Q: coming back to cinema. When we come to recording materials for film, different elements like voice, effects and then ambience. When we come to the digital realm of contemporary films we see that there are a lot of ambiences. The levels, the layers and the different elements in ambiences have incredibly increased. S: are you talking about Indian cinema? Q: yes Indian cinema. Let's look at contemporary films like say Highway. The first part of the film has a huge amount of ambience in its surround setting. We will come later to the surround format, but probably just the recording format of digital technology. I will ask you whether you think this is right or not: digital recording technology allows for more ambiences, which is one of the elements of the film to be recorded in a much more specific and qualitative way. Do you think this is correct? S: it is right to attribute that to digital format? Now that you have mentioned about Highway or films like that, Highway has ambience because there is no music. Music is not used in the conventional way that Bollywood films would use. So you see so many ambiences for the first time in a mainstream film. Not because of its existence but the nonexistence of music. Because in most of the films that we do there is elaborate ambience, whether it is heard or not is the director's choice. Because when we designed they all want ambience because there is no music composed till then. So they will make us work elaborately on the tiniest of atmospheric sounds. And in the earlier days been

308 meticulously worked on that with all sincerity, but now we don't. Because we know that nothing of this is going to exist. This is going to be overwritten by music. So even when the director says that we need ambience here and there we make a discretion, we do some job where we have some reference music above, we are given some reference music from stock, we won't work on ambience. We will just put some room or atmospheric tone and rest everywhere we work elaborately so that our work is not wasted. So it is mainly because of the music, if you really look at some Turkish films or Iranian films there is no music, so there is elaborate atmosphere. That is when you realize the power of the content. Because it is not making you immortal, like the music will tell you to do this and do that before the sequence comes. Like now get ready to cry and now be ready to be happy. It is going to immortal and tells you to do everything. And all of a sudden you realize that without this it is so powerful, because everything is intrinsic and coming out of the sequence. Everything is coming out of the film that is designed to its surrounding. So you need very elaborate work on atmosphere. The talk about atmosphere as if it is a sound from outside. It is like when you shoot anything or conceive a shot, it's an audiovisual medium. So if you have a shot you have to think about what was to shot existing in. It has to have an atmosphere. And often while writing scripts that is never thought about. Always people are thinking about activities and visual stuff, and not thinking about the atmosphere and the extent to which it can be played around with. I don't know if you have seen this Turkish film called three monkeys. The way atmosphere is playing, it is like: that is when I realized where we have reached. And that is when you realize that shit, at the scripting stage how much work he has done and sound. It is in the scripting stage because without that it cannot be achieved. It is not like after the film is shot you have the greatest of sound designers who you call into elaborate things. You have a limitation. All you can do is fill a job for what has been done. But when you're scripting this guy has conceptualized things, and anything that can be communicated through sound he has used it. Like visuals. Because he has used these two mediums brilliantly and put something together. And when you're watching, that is when you realize what always you can communicate things. Why shouldn't all be upfront and in your eyes, it doesn't have to be. So your question was about the digital medium and how the format is contributing to the atmosphere. Atmosphere is actually a simple recording methodology. You need a stereo recording or 5.1 recording. So I don't think it has any consequence to do with the digital or analog format. It is not like complicated music recording scenario where you have 96 tracks or anything like that. Atmosphere recording is like you contemplate, you think about, you spend time at one

309 place and literally like making a soap which you cook for a long period of time. It is not about jugglery of things and stuff like that, so it does not have the complexity of recording rather it has maturity rather than complexity in using and how to use it. So I don't think the digital domain has anything to do with the atmosphere. It is entirely to do with the taste and if you director wants to use that. And in technique it is far less complex than anything else. Of course if you have a eight track digital recorder or a 5.1 microphone it is easier to put into this recorder because the size is smaller probably. But I don't think that really counts because even the 5.1 microphone is our analogues in nature. So it is not about the digital technology that has to do anything. Digital technology helps in terms of tons of tracks and stuff like that. And in an atmosphere of thing it is not really to do much with the number of tracks. Of course it will have a number of tracks but not as complex as the rest of the elements that we are dealing with in sound. Q: but in the magnetic era or dubbing era so to speak, for example in 1960s to the late 1990s we don't hear ambience at all in Indian cinema. Generally speaking there is no ambience.

S: As I was saying at one point of time that has to do entirely with what was Indian sound. If you look at the history of sound in Indian cinema, it is dialogue and music. Mixing engineers were the worst in the world. And we were all told that they were seniors from your film school, and I really looked down upon each one of them. They had no craft and they were mixing things that were intolerably loud that you can't even stand there. Forget about subtlety, you can't even make out huge difference in things. They would mix to that level and there only skill is to push and pull. Push dialogue in and pull music out. Polyphony and all is entirely western and nothing to do with Indian cinema to be frank with you. We have forgotten what we have taken from the West. And the best need not mean the Americans, it's mostly the Europeans and East Asians like Japanese and stuff like that. But it is nothing to do with our own. We never had that subtlety in listening except in classical music ensembles. We never had that history; we were always craving for everything up front and excessively expressed. Polyphonic existed everywhere in India, you go to market or a road and you will find so much of polyphonic sounds and gradation of things that we should have been the people who have come up with such elaborate schemes of sound. Rather we see Westerners coming to India and we learn from them looking at Indian sound scenarios. Like I've seen in the 90s where Western sound recordists or musicians would come to India and listen and say "my God!

310 This is fabulous. Everything coexists here. This is such a polyphonic ensemble." That is what they used to say, and that is when I started paying attention to it. Because it is ours but we never valued at. We never looked at it in that way. Our cinemas have never ever had that. We started having that because Sound design started coming in India, and then we started putting multiple tracks with various things that were recorded separately and started creating an atmosphere. Particularly Dolby came up with surround so we had a track around and that is how it all started. I was into location sound and in the late 90s I realized that whatever we're recording on location nobody even hears this. It is in the box and never used even by the editor. To use the sound that we record on location and to put that in cinema we realize that just remaining a sound recordist on location is not going to do the job. Because initially I thought that being a sound recordist on location and recording the real sound and giving it to the director would bring in interesting elements in sound, but it did not. Then we realized that this has to happen in the postproduction stage, where the sound you have recorded somebody has to hear it, and somebody has to edit it and use it. That is when I started setting up a sound studio, and mine was the first sound design studio. We started in 98. And then again you're going through every detail, and that is when you put these sounds together and put it across to the directors who'd come for a week’s sound postproduction. And in one week you can't do anything in sound postproduction in those days. Because you need at least a month or two. You can't even ask for a month, which is a dream. So what you do is in seven days you do one really and show it to them. This is being a really bold and taking high-risk. You show it to them and say that this is sound design for reel one and they get stunned. And then we explain that it took seven days for one reel, so we need time, we need a month. And we say that money does not matter, you don't need to pay. My studio was designed for us to work and for us to live over the, including a shower and bathroom and everything, so we could live over the. We wouldn't make any money, not even get the money that we put in. But at least there would be some interesting work in sound - that would be interesting atmosphere in sound, and various sound effects. So we started playing around with all that and convinced the directors, and this is alternate cinema and in alternate cinema it is easy for them to pick it up. And afterwards the mainstream started looking at it, because it wasn't designed for mainstream at all, the studio was not designed for mainstream and I never expected mainstream to come there. And in literally two years’ time mainstream sensed the difference and they started coming in, and pouring in. And it became a 2 and 1/2 months and sometimes three months of postproduction. It was like we really worked hard and earned that. That's how

311 atmosphere comes in. It was like when there is a fight sequence in a street corner, normally they would put typical music to pump it up, but when you put very elaborate soundtracks in these situations and coming from surround speakers the audience feels that they are literally in the street corner, and everything is surrounding them. And that experience stunned the directors and they accepted it. It is entirely to do with taste and how you make them buy this. It's literally like Gorbachev cleverly switching over from a communist era without bloodshed. It is literally like that, by hook or crook we have devised this. They would sense that we could push atmosphere to this director and he would buy it. And a lot of clever stuff is devised consciously and very meticulously propagate by just a very few bunch of people. Everybody ridiculed us and said "in Indian cinema sound? That is not going to happen." Everybody was sure. "That is not going to happen in the next two decades I can guarantee you." So many people told me this. It took only 2 to 3 years and we cracked it. And in 10 years’ time there are sound design rooms mushrooming all over Bombay streets literally. It has no value now and it is almost going that way that it has become a standard. Sound postproduction is huge and that brings in production value of the film, and it is everywhere. The transition has happened meticulously and very cleverly with very few of us doing that. I don't think anybody would remember this and we did not do it for us to be remembered. It just happened and we needed to sell the stuff to them. Our basics where all the films that we had seen from Europe and from film school. So we were the ones who literally push this one down the throat. It did not evolve out of technology or anything. Of course technology was part of it, non-linear machineries and pro tools were part of it for us to afford these things. In the olden days if you have the equipment you are the guy, it was not the man behind it, it was the equipment. Because equipment was very expensive. So to have pro tools you beg and plead from everywhere, and that is how we raced it. And once you have the basic ProTools then you can do whatever you want. Otherwise you can't because you have to hire Pro Tools, and the meter is down and you have to cough up a huge amount of money. So that can't be commercially viable. So once we attained the machine and we were not thinking about moneymaking, and we have our own studio built and we're not paying rent, then nobody is there to ask us we can do whatever we want. This is how it was designed and setup, thinking about the future. And we propagated and propelled and made it. Very vigorously and boldly jumping into fire, literally. With no support from anybody and just passion. Now it is easy to look back and think about it. If you look at the history it has been cleverly given rather than it came out of filmmakers. Nobody paid any attention to it and it was really brutal. For anything

312 interesting in sound in Indian cinema there was no takers. We can talk about Satyajit Ray or a few filmmakers in Kerala like Aravindan and people like that, but you have to leave them apart because they were very few in number and their films would happen once in a blue moon, so that couldn't really make the difference. The difference was made by changing the stuff in middle-of-the-road movies and then soon after in mainstream cinema. In that respect I would respect Nakul's Lagaan. We have been doing a lot of locations sound work, I was doing and Resul was assisting me, and then he took over and took it forward quite a bit. And I moved on to sound design and postproduction. But the change that Nakul made is making a change in the mainstream with stars. That is a huge thing. And that brought in huge changes in the mainstream. Ultimately it is when things change in the mainstream that becomes a norm. So that was Lagaan. Whatever hard work we were doing, we never believed in mainstream so we couldn't be really a part of it as such to our core. We were not and that was the difference. The mainstream changing to atmosphere is because of a very tiny group of us working deliberately, and now it has spread out and a lot of people do it not knowing the history of it or where it came from. A: as a personal question I want to ask, especially in regional films - I worked in Malayalam films - there it is as if without background music cinema does not have an independent existence. If you take out music you cannot watch the film. The old studied sculpting on time and good cinema, cinematic time, but now most of the time background music is used to compress the time. People should not feel time in cinema. This is a very contradictory thing. It is actually going against the basis of film. S: it is like fear and success. You want to tell a story and Indians could not tell a story without consuming 3 1/2 hours, and that is the history. A: it is the weakness of filmmaking that we are facing. You were talking about this Turkish experience of three monkeys, and I've seen other movies, and they can all tell a story without using music. But here we can't conceive a single scene without music. S: that is like if you want to make the audience feel that they have spent this much time or not, and you fear your box office and various other para meters. It is not ethical to say that if you minus the music the film will not hold. That is because you are taking a designed element out of the film. If the music was in there it would have been designed differently and then you would have been able to watch. A: and that is why in regional cinema they are not using sound only because of music. S: no that is because it is an easy way out. A: it is like you can easily make somebody cry by using a violent music.

313 S: yes it is only that. But if you take the music out, and work sound it will be watchable. Most of the time it is the insecurity of the director. From my experience, and what I'm sick of to an extent where I'm seriously thinking if it is worth continuing in this medium is that every director so excited when they come and you're giving them sound ideas. Once you're giving ideas they are so forthcoming. And they will make you meticulously designed such elaborate sound schemes that you wonder, “my God, these directors exist. They are so brilliant.” And when it comes to the mixing room they are shitting bricks. They want music everywhere and they have completely and shamelessly forgotten that they made us designed such elaborate schemes. Out of 96 tracks they would say one track has that sound slightly coming, the sound of a motor coming from as far as a kilometer away, I can still hear that and that has to go down by a few DB's. To that extent they would talk. They would make you do such meticulous work and they would be overriding this entire thing with music that nothing will be heard. And they have no shame in making us to that. And the same director in his next picture will do exactly the same, and you point out that you are going to put music over this and they would say no, that we will decide later and most likely there won't be anything there. Then it becomes just them being clever and using you for their own convenience and not even for the craft, which is sad. A: even my experience is the same for the last 2 or 3 years, it was emotionally very difficult to take it like that. It was the same thing. S: then why did you put it? It is somebody's craft. It is meticulously crafted and it's not easy. A: it is a kind of cheating. They say that we have to work out this way, and you put all your energy into that and later once the BGM comes everything is like… S: because it is their insecurity. The producer is also there and probably it is the last few days before the release is going to happen, so they think that it is just not going to work without the music. In India traditionally it has always been musically oriented. Any form of storytelling is entirely music driven. And that too very obvious and upfront stuff, everybody's into top melody and nobody is into harmony. We are so bad at harmony. If you really look at our classical or any other music tradition, we were way behind on harmony. That came from the West. The way we use harmony in these days is entirely from the West. They were stunned by their harmony because they pay attention to very subtle details, which we don't. We have been like that. Q: our music has been modal. Which means that it can be sung by one person only, and if it comes to multiple people singing the same, our understanding really falls apart? We

314 do not have the concept of polyphony here. We don't have a good concept of harmony in that sense. So when it comes to cinema there is this upfront foreground music, which comes from this perspective. S: yes. I mean if you look at Ray's films, it had atmosphere everywhere. Aravindan's films are entirely atmospheres. Because there is nothing much else like music or anything else. Most of the time it is silent or dialogues. for instance is entirely atmospheric. If it all the sound of wind and all that sort of sport, it is atmosphere. You asked me about highway and I'm talking about Bhuvan Shome, where is the connection. It is in terms of utilization of sound that I'm talking about. Two-track, I don't even think it’s two-track, it is more not track Nagra in Bhuvan Shome. And in highway, purely in terms of atmosphere because there is no other comparison, have we achieved anything in terms of the brilliance or exuberance of atmosphere? No. It is not the technology. It is purely taste. Even with mono I can create as elaborate atmosphere absolutely. Because creation of a stereo is all that makes a difference probably in any which way. So two mono's nicely or cleverly put together atmosphere, you can get stereophony sound. Q: but then you don't have what is called off screen space. If you have 5.1 or 7.1 or Atmos you have in your hand off screen space. But in stereo or mono you don't have that. S: no. The only difference is mono and stereo. There is no difference of 5.1 or 7.1 or 14.1. We're not going to perceive anything on that respect. So it is literally mono or stereo. That is why I said that to create a stereo for an atmospheric sound; I can cleverly put together two mono sounds and get away with it. You can simulate a stereo situation in that very easily, if it is purely atmospheric. So by doing multiple laying of sounds on multiple tracks with mono tracks you can attain a lot of it. Or the maximum is you need a stereo phonics sound. When you go with a 5.1 microphone to record atmosphere, what you're replacing is what you have been doing with mono or stereo sound sounds, but placing them meticulously in an envelope and getting them. And that is being replaced, I wouldn't call it replaced in practice at all but theoretically, with 5.1 which has more elements from all sides and you can get an atmospheric surround feel with one single microphone. But in most of the cases it will not work because you want everything to be as per your desire. So if I stand here and use a 5.1 microphone, I will have the traffic, the birds, the fan, I have everything along with the 5.1 envelope. I don't want them like that. We don't want this fan and we don't want the traffic but we want the bird of course and we want the distant car horn. So what I would rather do is, do a stereo phonics

315 sound of the atmosphere which we are talking in, where I have a bit more control as in I can face the microphone and avoid these fans and a record that. And then I fill in with mono or stereo phonics sounds of the birds of the traffic, which are recorded at different instances in the same room, which are better controlled. I would rather stitch that up then use a 5.1 microphone in an uncontrollable situation. This way I can get a better simulation. Anyway there is nothing natural in this because whether it is a 5.1 or surround that we are hearing our senses are just too. So as long as stereophony is taken care of there is nothing more than that. Q: when the sound comes from behind or from a far corner to my ears… S: all of which are meticulously panned monophonic sounds. Even now when we're talking about 5.1 or 7.1 or even Dolby Atmos, they are all monophonic sounds panned and precisely put. So it is mostly monophonic sound in a stereo envelope. Or you create a 5.1 envelope with these elements.

Q: if you have in your hands five channels instead of two or even instead of one, you have possibilities to pan them around so you can create an enveloping… S: yes. You could put to stereo tracks behind, and put to stereo tracks in front and pan mono tracks wherever. But again this is not like very, really advanced technology or anything. It is not doesn't have to be a product of digital. This can all be achieved as long as you have a stereo recorder. And even till now it is used like that. How many people use a 5.1 microphone? As I said, in an uncontrollable situation it does not work. Even if you record something with a 5.1 microphone, you're going to pump in stereo phonic and monophonic sounds in it to create that. Of course as an output format we have 5.1 and 7.1, and 5.1 output in film format was brought in by digital, that is all. Because Dolby licensed space on film where they put digital sounds, because only digital sounds were possible there. Because you don't have space for analog tracks and a sound head to reproduce it. So that is probably the contribution of digital in cinema, in films or in celluloid. Q: more space. S: no. An absent space in celluloid, the space between the sprockets is being used to reproduce digital sound. So embedding digital information there was a huge leap in sound. But in these days everything is in digital format and you don't have films anymore and hence putting a 5.1 is no big deal. You can even have analogue sound if you want. Now it is free for all and is in a different format structure and it is not about 35mm as such. So what I'm trying to say is this is not anything to do with the format is such that

316 this is in this way, but as a format it is much easier to work on this. Now if you want to isolate 64 tracks on a Dolby Atmos, it is possible. In film output format 64 channels information encoding is purely digital. You cannot even think about that and unlock because it will become bulky to incorporate. But in any case these developments has nothing much to do with the digital or analogue overstress for these developments, these are conceptual developments. Formats have only made it easy for us to incorporate. It is like your science research. They utilize the maximum human perception and surround sound is coming from surround will make you feel that you are standing in that space, which is nothing much to do with technology. Q: yes I agree. But I would like to ask you whether this conceptual development has some sort of a historical thread or tradition? S: isn't this the natural way to go? Like 3-D, we have two eyes and three-dimensional is derived and now where did we go? You have to sell. First of all these are not artistic requirements. They are entirely commercial stuff. I hate the new 3-D's that are coming in. Everybody wants 3-D. 3-D on TV, 3-D on… And it is such a silly stuff, it makes everything small and you can't even enjoy the story. Unless it is a gimmicky film where there is a lot happening like action and special effects, then it is fun to watch it. Apart from that it comes straight in the way of your storytelling. But the new kids have been brought up around this. They want 3-D or if you say 4-D or 5-D they will jump into it. They wouldn't even know what is what. This is where life is changing, culture is changing and everything else is changing. What will you tell children with Facebook and the Internet at their fingertips? They're not even going to respected teachers that the way we respected our teachers because the teachers were the wealth of knowledge for us and for these kids it would be Wikipedia. And constantly changing games. You want something new every second day. So it is a different trip in life. It is going to be like that and it is not going to be our way. It doesn't have to be. We can just be happy about the quality of life that we lived and we consider good. For somebody else it is something else. At least we have the ability to see and understand the era that we and our previous generations have passed. We look at a piece of furniture that is 200 years old and we say Wow, what a craft. We appreciate it and think about what kind of life it would have been in those eras. How wonderful that must have been? The newer generation wouldn't be able to appreciate what that was. They wouldn't even find anything interesting in it rather they would think how primitive it was. So it is a different thing and perception. We see it, find it interesting and value it.

317 A: you are saying that the eight critical changes like using ambience are purely because of the tastes of the directors and they have nothing to do with the digital technology. S: absolutely not. If you look at European cinema of the last hundred years they have been fully playing with atmosphere. What are we talking about? There is nothing new. And we're talking about Highway! It is a shame, because hundred years later we have one film that did not use so much of music that we crave for it. If you look at Iranian films, which now every Tom Dick and Harry is talking about, what are they? The entire cinema is that. So we ourselves don't realize the grounds on which we stand. Like our democracy and everything else in this country. Mediocrity has set the rules. Even intelligentsia is drenched in that. Nobody is able to distinguish, and have forgotten where they stood or where the world is standing. Often the frustration is that we pretend that these are new developments that are happening here. But these are age-old stuff that is wearing out everywhere else and we are struggling to put that across. In a very flimsical/whimsical way we're trying to put it across and even that is not reached. When one film has reached we clap. That is where we are. As a side for instance Bhuvan Shome, once you have seen it is etched in your head, and it is the entire landscape and the soundtrack that is in your head. And when was that in the 70s? Q: yes 69. It was in 1969. S: yes. And we're forgotten, and we think that we have a Highway. That is where we stand. And I'm not old enough to; I mean Bhuvan Shome is not my generation. I wasn't even born then, but things are changing sporadically and we're jumping a lot of stages that elsewhere in the world technology has taken people through certain graph and certain groups. And we have jumped all that and it does not mean that we have experienced or improved anything. A: by not going through we have lost that maturity. S: exactly. So we jumped in straight into the new wave and the Facebook stage, which has no value for anything. Also the format doesn't allow you for anything in detail. So what would you do? People think that they get to interact and read poetry is in stories, but we don't realize that this is a tiny group of people, your friend circle and it is their mediocrity that is being propagated. And you're missing out on the largest of that is happening around the world. And without realizing you're going smaller and smaller and smaller and think that this is your niche world. And that does not make me stay away from it. I don't have to stay away from it as long as I discriminate it. We place it where it should be and use its strength. If we want to propagate something easily to people,

318 earlier it was not possible, but now you just need to put it in there and a few thousand people would see it and propagate it. It is like a chain reaction and it is great for that. Q: personally speaking, I am inspired by the recent developments. And I was really fed up by the ways sound was being designed earlier in Indian cinema. But the inspiration comes from the fact that in recent films - maybe we could here think of LSD and Shanghai also - these two films really triggered that inspiration. These two films in particular are giving attention and respect to primary elements that were never given attention to, such as ambience. So my question would be - although we spoke a bit about it: what is your philosophy about ambience in cinema? S: as I said if there is a shot there will be sound. And that is the sound we're talking about. Dialogue is an element of storytelling but for any short or any video to exist, because we don't live in vacuum or outer space, there will be something that is always there. And it is primordial to play around with that because that is the base and that is existence. And of course like the films you're talking about, in all new Indian films directors are trying more and more not to use music. That is happening now, and it is going that way. Because they have used it in such excess that even heart thumping music can't do a thing in the audience, because it is saturated. If you want some interesting effect on people it has to be sound and music. Just music won't work and that they know. Now it has to be sound and music because they are afraid that just sound will not work. So they don't want to explore that much. So at least sound with music or sound with musical elements, this might be sound design and not music as such, but musical elements. That they would allow. So you can create impact. People are thinking in terms of impact. Because that is commercial again. Because if you can bring in an impact, then it is a market success. So these films, content wise and approach wise they are great films, really bringing in interesting ways of looking at things and ultimately they are addressing day-to-day life more than glamour and glitter. It is getting into the dirty areas of life that we have been living. And that is our story, and they have started saying real stories with real people and stuff like that. So ambience is going to invariably be a part of it, if you want that kind of feel and look and treatment. Because you can't hide away from that. If you pump up only music from the beginning to the end, it is not going to work. The very fact that it is working is because it is dealing with the subjects in a different and very ordinary way. To be matter of fact it is really a very ordinary way. You're playing around with that and making that more exotic and sellable. Because that has not been the history for us, so anything new that you can propagate there is going to be takers for that. So it is great that all this is happening. If you ask what is atmosphere

319 to me, I thrive in it that is my playground, which is my pedestal. And with respect to that I play around with anything else. So for me the ugliest noise and everything is part of atmosphere and I play around with that. My design is primarily with that. The pedestal of my design is atmosphere. And from that I play around with various things. It has been most crucial to me ever since I got into sound design in 1998 and since anything I'm doing is primarily playing around with atmosphere in various ways. And deriving elements of design from the atmosphere and going back to the atmosphere. And deriving transitions, which are very crucial elements of sound design, from within rather than from outside. And as elaborately as possible. Q: personally I'm nurturing this very question. What does ambience serve to cinema? Apart from providing an atmospheric sense, psychologically speaking - from the point of view of perception, what does the presence of ambience in cinematic sound provide for the audience or for the practitioner himself? S: functionally the most important thing is that it brings in the cinematic realism. The realism that is intended in that sequence in the cinema. I mean that is quite functional. And to me it is more a pedestal, because if you ask me in generic terms, that is where I start to design my elements and go back to. But there would be loads of atmospheric related design. So when the design, sometimes it would be with Foley sounds, sometime with dialogues, sometimes with the atmosphere, sometimes with musical sounds or with special effects sounds. So what matters to me is what is effective at that moment in that particular sequence. So depending on the sequence the importance of atmosphere in the design would be derived. But for me, unlike most of the industry when they would just put one single continuous track for atmosphere, every atmosphere is special and for every shot we would be creating atmosphere. We will never cut and paste atmosphere and get away with it, because they're all sounding generic. It doesn't work like that for me or any editor in my studio. The day we hire somebody from outside, because we have so much to do, we see how they work and they will just take a big chunk and just slap it and that is atmosphere, they're just fillers. For me it is not like that at all. The mood of the film and the characters demeanor is directly talking to the atmosphere. And one of the biggest challenges for me these days in sound design is crafting the Walla sound. Do you know what Walla sound is? It is a Hollywood terminology. It is basically for instance in a short if you have people around who are not important, like just extras or peripheral things. Or suggestion of peripheral things, like in a teashop, your tea maker, it is a tight shot of you but the things and the human voices that are happening around, the people around and what they talk and how that is placed and not interfering with the dialogues

320 of the story. But that would give a strong presence of what is happening around. It is not just the calm frozen moment, it can be dynamic. It can be dynamic to dictate the story and the mode of the story in the frame. So for me the challenge is to get these guys to the dubbing room and make them talk. Often it would be deliberately scripted then and there, and then spoil it and give it perspective, and place it in such a way that it is not distracting the story. Some words would stand out and suggest what kind of an atmospheric it is and the nature in which people speak. So this is the biggest challenge for me now. Because traditionally in India what people do is just go to someplace like a restaurant and pick up some voice and just put it over there. And often when you're mixing the director will find this and say, "Why is this? People talking. I don't want that. Bring it down or take it off." And they will subdue it. But my task is to record it and cleverly manipulate it and place it and destroy it and push it back nicely, it would really bring in some interesting moments in the film and make it much more dynamic. So that is an area that I work in. Q: is it not possible if you can record it directly from the location where the camera also records the visual elements? S: No. It is not a documentary situation. As I said you are a tea maker and I have a close-up of you, there is nobody in the background. They are not even called in that particular day. And if you want to tell them what to speak and all that, people would think you are nuts. The director would think you are nuts. Time is money here and you're talking about a background orchestration of sound. What is needed itself is not being picked up properly.

A: and most of the time it does not work also. S: it is like you are talking, and I'm not even allowed to record your talk with controlling everything else is not even properly allowed or given time. Forget about all that, it is never going to happen. And not only that, if you're not recording in a studio, what you can do is record in similar spaces elsewhere or later and then manipulate the stuff. But I must tell you in feature films everybody likes it when it is entirely controlled. Like everything that is in there is planted. Ultimately people like it that way because it is put together as per somebody's imagination. So you want it to be orchestrated in the perfect way that you wanted to be. I was recording for ’s Reluctant Fundamentalist, and because she has been working in New York they have a habit of recording and budgeting for wallas, so we could really ask for money for the first time. Otherwise if I tell Indian producers that I want to record these peripheral voices, they will say going record

321 anywhere. Nobody is going to give a budget and call all these extras to a studio and an assistant director or somebody sitting in scripting it to say this and that. So I was lucky to… A: but don't we have mostly these crowd dubs here? S: those crowd dubs are like when you see 20 people shouting "Inquilab Zindabad". It has nothing to do with what we're talking about now. Like if we're talking here, and let's say my door was opened and somebody is talking in the corridor. Or in that building somebody shouting or two people are talking to buildings away on the terrace, which is in the shot, and I want to simulate that talk between the two, while a conversation is happening in here. I will only hear certain edges of the conversation and it has to be nicely crafted and a lot of thinking as to go into it. A: in Hollywood films you often hear it, like in hallways… S: of course you will hear it in any other industry. Not only in Hollywood, in any other industry people will pay attention to that and take effort and spend money to do that nicely. And make it sound interesting. And we would watch these films and always wondered why it is never there in our films. It is because we don't take care, it is as simple as that. Q: I remember in Jacques Tati's films like Play Time and other films, the ambience is much higher in volume than that of the voices. Sometimes you don't even get information from the dialogue but you get more information from the ambience itself. The ambience not only gives idea about the narrative, but also provides information about the places and helps you navigating through the space by getting rid of the narrative, because you get to recognize the places. The dialogue doesn’t carry that much amount of information compared to the ambience. S: depending on the dialogues. Q: yes depending on the dialogues. Sometimes the dialogues are not even audible. They are like murmurs. S: yes that is true. Q: in Indian cinemas there has not been any experimentation in that sense with dialogue. Dialogue has been always upfront. There is a primacy of dialogue in Indian films in general. S: no. That is because our culture has been spoon-feeding. As you said in spite of taking all this care and dialogue being the highest-level sound, still producers and directors would think 10 times if it is really communicating. "I think the atmosphere of the sound effect there is coming in the way." Even if dialogue is like 99% or 95% and the sound

322 that you're putting might be 20%, even then they would be thinking. But that is changing in terms of music at least when you're mixing music and sound in many of the new Indian films, you don't take the music down the way we used to do conventionally, dialogue and music push pull. That is gone. Now music is there and you have to make an effort to understand the dialogue. Of course, the atmosphere is not pushed up so much to say the way you were talking about. But that in films like Paris Texas you can have like heavy wind and the artist's murmuring something and whatever few words you're able to hear out of that would be enough for you to communicate what is being presented. Those films like Highway could do, if they wanted. A: when you spoke about Highway, I felt that there are many films before Highway that were made using a lot of ambience. In fact I wanted more of ambience in Highway and I wanted the geography that they were going through. S: that could have been a feast. You rarely get an opportunity like that. And you need time as well at different geographies. I was doing in animation film in which music wasn't heavily used. It is called Arjun the Warrior Prince and it is happening in various places in the country and we could put atmosphere from different places. We painstakingly went and recorded at different places and utilized that. But in this film there was much more opportunity and was not used that much at all. A: and the dialogues could have been inaudible sometimes - like in the truck sequence. But still it was upfront very conventionally. S: it is the spoon-feeding thing actually. And the idea is not to bring the dialogue level as such per se for the gimmick of it. Sometimes it is not necessary that you to pump in everything. Even when you give verbal abuse, I have noticed sometimes, it is so obvious even if the abuse is not there, from the way the guys behaving it is obvious what he's saying. And I notice these things because when films are sent sensors and they say bad words are to be chopped off otherwise they will give an A certificate and it comes back to us to beep it or whatever. I asked the director “What is the need to beep?” Let it not be there. Nothing is going to be lost. Everybody's going to get what the guy has said. Even if he's just hummed it, it is obvious what is saying. But somehow it is getting hammered in. Audio as a medium to communicate in films is heavily underused in our country. That you see, even people like us who are in sound, when we see these Turkish films and all that we realize how much of it can be done in the scripting level. Then it's hammered, we have to do that, we have to follow that. The guy is showing a house near a railway track, but you never get to see the railway track. But there is a window shot always so you hear the sound of the train. And everything is worked around that. And finally his wife is

323 jumping onto the track from the house and killing herself. But in physicality there is no track over there. It is entirely conceptual. A: just two or three shots where that guy is walking on the tracks… S: but all that is a pretty short. You never show the house and the tracks in the same shot. So it is conceptual and if you have put it in the script then it has to be designed accordingly. So there is no deviation from that. Of course this is being taught to us by all the great masters that we have studied the French new wave and European and Japanese films. But over a period of time working in the industry, you have forgotten all of this. And you have lost your ground and you are in some other reality and when you keep watching these films that are happening now, that is when you realize “Shit! Where have you reached?” Even during workshops that I take at FTII and SRFTI, students ask me about the scripting stage and how sound should be incorporated in it. And I've been getting sick of this question of the involvement of sound at an early stage that I tell them “look, this is all talks. It is all concepts. But finally a script is written, a film is shot and cut, and a locked picture is given to you. It has nothing to do even with the script in terms of sound.” So in terms of sound unless you get a locked edit, you need to know what short is coming before and after, to that extent your design is crucial. That you don't know unless it is locked because film has gone way away from what is being talked about. So what is the point in discussing these things in the scripting stage? Forget about scripting stage, even after it is short I cannot discuss sound design with the director because he does not know what is coming. So I tell them what is the point? You don't concentrate on those things, rather concentrate on postproduction, or post locking. This is what I have been telling students. And then I see these films and pity myself, thinking, “Where have we reached?” This is what I need to teach students of cinema, if this is where it is going. The degradation and things have happened to that extent. We do fill up sound and we do sound design after it is locked. That is where we are. So most of the design is coming from me and not the director. Of course they are very smart because if you design something and presented to them it triggers a thought process in them. It is not that they are incapable of thinking in sound, it is just that they are not used to it anymore, and it is about the ground reality that they are all thinking. So even those people who have a sound script simply forget about it, and the entire postproduction of the film is a new reality for them, and reorganize or reorient themselves. And as I said, once you give some ideas on top of that there will be such fabulous and interesting sound ideas coming from directors that you just need to trigger things. And then again it diminishes and vanishes in the mix with the music. But there has to be some really

324 radical stuff that has to happen. But of course I understand where you're coming from, looking at all this, I'm not being negative about it, I see changes happening. But the paces at which these changes are happening are really slow and scary but it is happening. And I feel that in the coming years you will see more experiments happening without music. Purely because they know that people are saturated with music, so something else. Not for the sake of cinema or innovation in cinema. Of course Dibakar has been doing innovative stuff, there is no doubt about that. I wouldn't categorize that as part of this talk of staff. A: but Dibakar is in the editing stage itself putting all the stuff and editing with the noise. Namrata was telling me that they designed the thing there itself, and was giving in to the designer for more enhancement of the design and better sounds. But they used to give their ideas in the editing stage itself.

S: that depends on the director and the editor, and what they can think about. A: as you said it's completely the taste of the director. S: which is fine. If it comes from the director, we don't have a problem because we will take it way ahead. But that is happening more also because the editor is into sound. And that also does not mean that if the editor and the director was not get the sound guy wouldn't do it, or anything like that. But certain things are to happen at the structural period, if they incorporate certain things keeping in mind the sound. Every editor has to and rarely editors do that except very few people. Others who can't even think about sound will cut and then you are limited. It is like you have an architect and structure of a building and as an interior designer the shape of the house is defined, you can play around with paying, with the furniture and what tiles to be used on the floor but the spacing is done. My sitting room is in the shape. I can probably knock off the kitchen wall and make the kitchen a little open but beyond that I cannot. But if the editor incorporates I can decide the shape of this before it is constructed. When the structure is coming I can play around with the layout of the house, it is literally that. So I is an interior designer get much more scope in playing around in defining the spaces. So I would think that if the editor and the director think about it while the edit or they incorporate a sound designer at the scripting stage itself, then he's going to come in. Even when the edit is happening or even before, he will start talking about it and defining the sound and come up with interesting stuff.

325 Q: we have to make an editing of our interview time because I'm taking a lot of your time. So the final question would be: how to use the extra channels provided by surround sound? S: that is a good question. I hate playing gimmicks with sound and giving directions to every sound, because for me when I watch a film the story is most important and I find success in a story telling when it engrosses the audience into it as much as possible, and not taking them out of it. So if the subject does not demand, I do not play around with the sound by unnecessarily giving directions to it and making the audience aware of these directions if that is not there in the plot. And if it is there in the plot I would do that nicely and modestly rather than making the audience jump out of their seat, unless it is a horror film where the target is to make them jump out of their seat. Then that is a different story. So for me giving directions through extra channels are entirely to do with storytelling and I would mainly focus on the storytelling and modestly play with sound around that. And within that I would play a lot with it, using its scope in terms of channels. It does not have to be giving directions but it can throw in content, and play around with polyphony in surround sounds and even putting full spectrum sounds. Not just base sounds or atmospheric sounds, but putting more content into that, without distracting the audience from the plot of the cinema or the subject. So that is very crucial for me, but of course I would like to play around. Like when I experienced Atmos I realised that for certain films it would be so incredibly interesting to play around with and they chose that kind of films to show us as well. A: Gravity and all that. S: and also there is this other film, I forgot its name. It was in the waters about surfing and stuff like that. I forgot the name. Because there is this volume of water around, and it is another state of matter, and various things happening there and precisely doing things. If you are precise about the direction and if you equalize the sounds and give perspective in the right way, nobody is going to turn around. They know that and are aware of the presence of things, which is the challenge. Rather than planned something over there and people turn around, almost that you know. If you bring them in the right spirit and the right awareness you can plant anything and it will all go for the frontal story. Nobody is going to be all of a sudden jerking and checking around.

A: the correct perspective. S: yes. Then it is obvious. If you see something over there and it is true to that, there would be things happening and it will all be helping the story moves forward.

326 Contributing to it rather than distracting the audience. So that is my trip entirely with atmosphere, and for that as many tracks, I don't mind. I don't need these tracks really to have direction in the back because that it even asked once to the Dolby guys that when they have 7.1 they have for channels in the side and back and three channels in the front. And your directivity is all to do with the front. Frontal you have much more sense of direction than back. So I was asking them “Why do we have for channels in the back and three in the front?” So my trip is not to have as much directivity in the back with channels, rather if I have more channels I can play around with polyphony and various things in that. And for the envelope, for the size it should be a comfortable number of channels as well. But my trip is not to play around and make you aware that I am here at various points. Q: so what role does ambiences play in this particular scenario with expanding channels? S: since they're giving more and more channels in the back, in the surround, I think beyond the point it is not going to be any more the number of channels. You need sufficient enough, that is all. If you keep increasing that to en number it is not going to do anything more. It is actually to support the film that is happening in the front. So if we have two more eyes at the back will our film experience be any more… Q: surveillance. S: yes it would reduce to that. I think what we have now is good enough. Now it is not about technology. In India it is not about 5.1 jumping to 7.1 or to 14.1 Dolby Atmos. We do not use even the available 5.1 nicely. We don't have the time to use it nicely, the production will not allow you to use it nicely even if you don't charge. They just don't have the time or the interest for it. What are you talking about? It is not about technology development for us, it is the craft development that has to be in place. Often we are far behind in that, not because we are not at par, they can be at par and produce as good as anything international but given a challenge as a spark, not on an average. We are far from international levels on an average, but if you really pick out to be can be at par. It is a tricky situation. If somebody tells me that you guys have not reached the level the world has reached, that is wrong. We have reached that also. But our average film is still pathetic. Of course if you tell me that in olden days it was only dialogue and music, and now there is atmosphere, and Foley, and sound design, but when? How many years did it take? Q: what roles will ambience play in those expanded channels? S: again you are linking it more to technology. Again I would say would say it is like concept and directors and it is not technology. As I said even with 5.1 we could have

327 been doing as much atmosphere, it is not about Dolby Atmos or 64 tracks or 104 channels. That is not going to make much of a difference. It is conceptual and creative call that the directors and the sound designers take. If they gave a little more space and reduce excess use of music, of course everybody's going to do atmospheric sound and they will take it seriously. Because in India unlike in Europe or places like that, we have such rich atmosphere. There is so much happening here. Even in the remotest Himalayas due will find 1 million things, like bells of cattle and so many things. It is polyphony everywhere, it is cacophony. We should be masters in handling atmosphere, and the subtleties of atmosphere, rather than keeping silent. If you're doing a European film and in it you woken up in the middle of the night, what will you hear? Nothing. You hear the fridge and you hear the tick-tock of the clock, you hear interior but you rarely hear exterior. But here you play around with exterior, there will be Azan going, and if it's near the water still be boatmen's calls and singing like in West Bengal for instance. I mean in the middle of the night you wake up, there will be like nocturnal birds and bats and whatnot. It's tropical and full of creatures and sounds. So atmosphere should be our cup of tea, it is our feast to play around. And again it is not the number of channels that has exponentially made any difference. Why I caught Highway is because you brought it in. The film has less music or hardly any music, and not the number of channels that has allowed you. Even if that was a stereophonic sound the way you're going to perceive this film on an aircraft or on the Internet or an MOV download, will be two-track. It will still make you feel exactly the same. You would think wow rich in atmosphere often. Even though they are often repeated sound library and not genuine, I'm not looking at the quality of care atmosphere that they have put in, but only looking at the amount of atmosphere that has been put, the length of atmosphere that has been put in the film, you will feel the same. Even if it is a mono output in a C grade theatre the atmosphere will be exactly the same. You will feel that this film has a lot of atmosphere and you'll feel that the film is powerful as opposed to the rest. Q: what are those extra channels doing? Why are they here? S: no. I'm not saying that it is not making… As I said when you're sitting in a theatre with surround sound channels it'll make you feel that you are sitting in an atmosphere of that sort. It directly takes you to the location over there. And again believe me, I can give it to you in writing, from the 5.1 to the 7.1 or Atmos, the impact is not as much as you think. The impact that the creative call is bringing in, nothing will bring in. None of the number of channels or increasing the number of channels in the back is going to bring in. They are peripheral. 5.1 to 7.1 you will find nothing in terms of atmospheric

328 impact. Of course it is Dolby Atmos it has much more channels all around, you will feel that you are drenched in that. This is the difference. But with the way you associate with the film, you will have a cinematic experience in an Atmos theatre. But cinema, the way you perceive with atmosphere and sound and the story that you will feel even in two- track front. There is no doubt about that. You will associate the film in all those elements except the experience of hearing that and viewing that. I want to ask you, this film that you talking about, if you sleep on your computer with two good speakers, what way will this film be different if you watch it in a big stereo projection cinema? Q: lot more details will come in. I can orient myself more especially. S: size. Q: size. S: and the experience of watching it. Q: yes. With other people. S: but the content is the same for you in both? Q: about that I am actually a bit doubtful of. S: but the content is the same, it is only the experience of the content, is it not? Q: the transmission of the content means to me that I have no information from my behind when I listen to it on a pair of headphones from a stereo download. No information about what is happening in the surround channels even in my left and right. What is coming is entirely from that two channel mix of that particular content. And also I think that it is degraded in terms of mixing because a lot of information has already been compressed to make that stereo mix. So I'm not getting the entire spectrum of what has been produced. S: yes that detail, or the experience of watching it, it will take you to the location a little more than a frontal stereo. But even stereo information placed correctly, you will feel it as something coming from equidistance and it will give you most of the information from the center and you wouldn't miss much of the… This is more to do with the experience of watching rather than anything else. Q: that makes me develop another question which is rather peripheral: there are more and more complex and complicated designs like multichannel sounds where many elements are coming in, and they are being played mostly by the new generation in smaller devices like an iPad or iPhone with mostly a pair of stereo headphones. How are we going to perceive these complex, multilayered designs in smaller platforms, and how is it going to be compensated? Do we at all need a complex design? S: that contradicts your own…

329 Q: yes. S: for me many cinema halls are not aligned properly, rather most of it is not aligned properly. So even with 5.1 when you put atmospheric sounds in the back, it all integrates to give you an experience that you're watching something in the front and everything else is surrounding you. If it is not aligned properly while the film is going on, surround track, which is supposed to be an atmospheric track, because these speakers are not aligned you hear something and look back. It was an atmospheric peripheral voice, which has no significance but it shoots out of a speaker because it is not aligned correctly. And the other speaker is a mismatch so it does not reproduce the base and many things properly, so there is an imbalance everywhere. The more you complicated the more… In our country 5.1 is a big complicated thing. Theatres won't align anything properly. Even the frontal speakers don't. And you might be thinking that I'm having a great experience going to a cinema hall in sitting there, and that day the subwoofer might not be playing and the left side might not be playing at all. So you get satisfied with that experience because you're not going there to check if the speakers are working or not. You just want to see the film. So in whatever distorted, fluctuated way that you hear it, as long as it is more or less okay it all gets integrated. So this is why I'm saying that it is not the number of channels that you provide, it also has to be properly aligned incorrectly placed. And its fidelity is to be… If the Twitter of a speaker is gone it cannot reproduce high frequency. And in most of the case one speaker's Twitter is not there and one speaker's sub is not there and another one is distorted completely, it is a mess in this country. And they don't even want the Dolby guys to come there and align it for a paltry amount. They are least interested. Forget about all this, the loudness at which the film is mixed and the film is to be played, in most of the theatres now to protect the speakers they don't want to play high sound. So they reduce the sound level more than half. The experience that you talking about, forget about the atmosphere, the main sounds that are standing out like dialogue and music, even those are like hardly there in the prescribed level. So this is all just like an ideal talk, and what we confront the something else. And you as a connoisseur might be going to the right PVR cinema hall you know, and you know that screen number one is the right one. Or maybe I know that because I know the Dolby guys who are aligning this, and they would say to go here and that will be the correct, and so we going here it. People hear this 5.1 in tiny speakers which cannot even reproduce anything, placing it all around along with your gas stove going and the TV is on and your mother's watching television in the side room and various other things are happening, and you think you're hearing a 5.1 atmosphere, and its crap.

330 And that is where it is all going anyways. Companies want to sell it as 5.1, so you think 5.1 on my table! There has to be a right distance between speakers and the position of the speakers have to be right and various other things, so in a country where mediocrity thrives, what do you do? This is how it works! Everybody's trying to push you to sell things. I have seen sound studios with fancy looking speakers with a tiny speaker inside which cannot even reproduce anything, and they will say that they have a 5.1 room. We can design 5.1. This is how it goes. Of course basic technologies needed, as long as you have a surround channel running, one or two or a few channels it is well and good. Giving more of that is not going to make any difference, it is not really needed. Human perception itself is limited to a number of sources that you can identify. For fancy sake you can put en number of channels in the rear and satisfy yourself. But that is not going to make any huge difference to your perception. And now the main issue is standardization. We don't have standardization in anything now. Earlier Dolby guys used to standardize things and they used to scrutinize. Now it is free for all. Yes. Now nobody knows. What format? Where? How? Nobody knows. It is in a mess and it has deteriorated… A: it is like winning a lottery now. If you can hear your mix correctly and cleanly outside, it is like winning a lottery. S: every format… I mean you don't even know how to put compression formats on the Internet because size wise it is compressed, one small tabletop speakers, headphones- headphones still true to that some reference you have, but it is a real mess. If you think that Digital has done a wonderful thing, at this point of time it is a sheer mess. And this is a process of development; it will go to some extent and come back to standardization. It is always from requirement that we invent things. Now it is free for all, and it is everywhere. It is like the Internet, you don't know what to do with it. You know that it is good, it's providing everything. Now how to get things correctly and the way you want it? We will have to move to that direction and understand things rather than playing around with gimmicks and 3-D. Like the need for 3-D comes from the six-year-old son of yours. What does he know? It is cultural and it is around. What is the buzz? He watches TV and he hears from his friends. He comes back and says "Papa, I want to see 3-D not 2-D. I want a 3-D TV in the house." So we go and don't even think about what we are getting into. Q: are the sound designers aware that more and more films are being played back on the Internet and smaller devices?

331 S: we are in a mess. We are in a mess. Because how to get an output correct? And it has to be perceived the way we have mixed it, which is impossible. Yes we are doing a mix for aircrafts, another mixed for the Internet assuming that the speakers would be laptop speakers or tiny speakers on the desktop. We're doing another mixed for DVDs, and these mixes are not compressed much these days because there is a good chance that everybody has a home theatre and subwoofer so it might be able to take it. But that doesn't mean that everybody will have good wants. Everything is kept for a modest and a middle-of-the-road kind of stuff. It is a mess and we don't even have a single theatre to choose from to watch a film after we mix it. We don't know what to do. So is about the issues in the areas of problems that we are facing and not about the number of channels. We are fighting for the crucial and rudimentary stuff, for the audience to receive what we had intended at the time of design, and the kind of levels we had kept and the kind of mix we had done. This is a big battle. And in any given day these are my primary concerns than having a few more channels in the back.

332 Pritam Das (2014)

Name Abbreviations: Pritam Das –P; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter - LG

Q: When you started your work digital technology was already in use by then. P: correct. Q: did you do any project on optical medium or analogue medium or magnetic medium, like an independent project or anything? P: I have never worked with the optical medium. Professionally no, optical medium means where there will be optical print at the end. But while recording, while doing work, in the last stage there will be optical recording because re-recording will happen. Q: in magnetic medium? P: magnetic medium I last used at the institute, we had a magnetek. LG. We did some projects like our dialogue project on that. First we used it while our continuity project, we used stripe tape for that. The final print was on stripe tape. And we used to record on Nagra. And dialogue project also we used to record on Nagra. Magnetic and optical recording, optical recording now happens at the final stage of a film. So magnetic recording I did last at the institute only, almost seven to eight to years back. Q: when you used to work with magnetic recording, for eample recording on Nagra, you would transfer it from Nagra and mix in analogue. Once you started working with digital technology, what was the primary difference that you noticed between these two mediums? P: Primary, I mean there is the factor of convenience for sure. For instance, in magnetic recording I am not able to see what is happening/how is it coming out. Ok? Q: hm. P: I have to judge the take on location and I have to stop and re-take if required. But in digital I know that the sound starts from here. When I cut at this point I don’t need the rest of the sound on the track. So time is a factor and it is clearly very convenient. And now with the digital technology you can do whatever you feel like. You can do any possible thing with a sound, by moulding it in any way that suits you. Earlier it wasn’t like that, you’d have to record it that way, no possibilities of moulding, like if you want to record ten sounds on magnetic you’d need ten players as well so that you can play all those different sounds.

333 Q: is this moulding of sound that you are talking about in anyway advantageous for your work? How exactly does it facilitate your work? P: it’s advantageous in terms of time, big advantage. Q: you mean time management? P: yes, time management. Q: ok. Anything other than that? P: other than that I think if anyone is interested to do anything in magnetic, they should go forward provided that he has access to all equipment and time also. I think now no one has these two things. Almost nobody has time these days. Q: ok, if we consider a situation where we have time in hand, let’s say it’s an independent project and it’s not commercially driven, it’s not under major pressure, and let’s say that time management is not a factor here, what other factors do you think will be challenging in that situation? P: there is a difference between when I am completely aware of digital technology and when I am not, even if I have time in hand. If I want to execute something in magnetic it takes a long time, if you are considering time. Then I have to think more than working in real time. What I was telling you, as times are changing it’s like we are almost acknowledging that we are much more complex now, or maybe we can handle a lot more complexity. So trying to give real meaning– earlier you would give one sound and you will focus on one sound only, now you are trying to give an impression that it’s a real thing. So you hear everything and then choose your element to hear. I mean that it’s not spoon-fed. Q: hm. P: it’s more psychological. Like if I am making you listen to one sound you have to listen to that. That is one, ok? Q: hm. P: and whether you like it or not, that is the one you have to hear. Correct? Q: ok. P: it’s presented in a way in which it sounds natural, doesn’t sound designed or formed, that is a psychological sound that happens inside the head, ok? Q: hm. P: so your effort to be with that sound I think will be less. What I am trying to say is that you are not being forced to hear only one sound. I think forcing someone to hear only one sound was a way. Q: yeah.

334 P: now it is not. Q: yeah, you are given more chance to select. Yeah, it is a very important point, right. But what is ambience according to you? How do you define ambience? What are the elements that you think altogether envelope the concept of ambience? P: Generally it depends on where you are shooting. Q: hm. P: I mean if it’s a historical space that you are shooting in, you cannot put an airplane or phone ring or this n that, all that you cannot put. Basically primarily ambience is determined by the location, where you are, but primarily by the story. Meaning that the story demands that this guy, or some guy who was at the seashore with his girlfriend, he has come back to his office. He went to meet her there, then he has come back to the office. But the connection communication that he had with her it’s so powerful, the idea of the story that he has to carry forward the emotion inside the office. You can put the seashore sound inside the office also. So it’s unreal, it’s not realistic. But again you are playing for the emotion of the character, you think it helps if you put the seashore sound inside the office also. Q: ok. P: correct? Definitely first of all it will be determined by the story or the script. Q: hm. P: where you would want to put the characters in, where you want the audience, is it the real location or it is some imaginary location. You fix that. Once you get to know that, then it’s easier for you. If it’s a real location, which is mostly the cases, then you know that this kind of place will have this kind of ambience. And within the scope of that, there can be different layer of ambiences. Something to suggest that this is bus stand, this is the train station, ok? Q: hm. P: something to suggest the time. Something to suggest the psychological state of the characters is in. Ok? So the ambience could be of varied levels, ya know. Q: ok. But the ambience that was present during monaural era – for example let’s say the character would go to meet his girlfriend at the seashore, but other than just a little sound of sea waves no other ambiences were used in the monaural era. So standing in present time if I ask you – if you are told now that at the seashore that boy and that girl are talking, then the ambient sounds that you will think of putting there will surely be more rich, more layered and multi-dimensional, isn’t it? P: at this present time?

335 Q: yes. P: correct. Q: then you will surely think of adding more elements to it, not only the sounds of the seashore. P: yes. If there are people around the seashore then those sounds, how much silence is required, Q: maybe a ship’s horn can be heard, P: yeah, I can use these. But again you have to cater to the story first. There is nothing called “you have to”, that you have to naturally establish this. It’s up to you and your director to decide whether you need to depict the reality as it is. Then you take out elements so that you can concentrate more on the dialogues. Is it like that treatment, which is needed in the film? So it all comes I think from the story point of view. Q: but there is a reality inside the story also. You mentioned a few times, “real”, P: yes, Q: so that reality is the story’s reality, isn’t it? P: yeah correct. Q: to achieve that reality to be convincing, there isn’t any way other than ambient sound. P: of course, not. The moment you put background music, means you are trying to tell the audience that they have to feel something like this now. They are not exercising their choice, you are not letting them. But having said that, there are certain situations where there is no option other than using background music, such restrictions can appear. Again it is wrong to say that you cannot do because again it’s a – LG Q: ok. P: I think it’s quite natural. Q: now you tell me something about yourself. When you started doing sync sound, how did come you think of using ambience sounds? I mean what was your approach in recording ambience and using it? P: I think it’s natural in the true sense. I record according to my understanding from the location, he is giving example of using small sound effects like sound of walking on dried leaves, those small elements are really very important to me. So I scan every track and keep extra effects for use. So that when there is no dialogue, say there is a movement of a character or the thought process of a character or during some action there is no dialogue, some sound effects at that moment should enhance or reveal the emotion in every way. It’s not only the expression on the face, but also how he is putting his foot

336 down on the ground, the sound of it. Is he tired or is he exhausted, or is he upset, or is he feeling very happy, is there energy in his step – all that. How do you convey that? Not only by how he is walking or by the kinds of sounds that are coming. When it’s sync sound and the actor is performing and the director is looking at the monitor and hearing what the actor is saying, if you are looking at that sound and the picture voice, it means he has got that emotion captured. Correct? For me, dubbing can make it either worse or better, it’s never the same. So with the dialogues there’ll be certain effects, which I think comes naturally, that is the word. Q: yeah. P: LG. so naturally the sync sound, the location sound. What was your question? Q: how do you use ambience in your own work? P: the first film for which I worked as a sound designer is LSD. So I think in LSD, at some places the use of natural sounds is a lot. According to the reactions of my/our friends/colleagues who are also working as sound designers and even others, they also mentioned that the sound design was “adbhut rokomer” (strange). Q: LG. P: they meant in a good sense, they felt that every space was depicted perfectly. It’s like I am not distracted by the sounds coming from behind me. It’s present in such a way that I am always glued to the screen, but still I am with them. Q: absolutely. Q: so how was it achieved, this “glued with the screen, I am with them?” How did you achieve this? P: I think everyone has their own emotional baggage and emotional story. Like actors also they bank on their own stories when they have to cry, they have to laugh and everything, they will naturally bank on their own experiences. Correct? Now suppose you were in some mood at one point of time. Q: ok. P: now if you can concentrate on what are the sounds happening around you, those sounds, they are in no way related to an emotion, but still they are happy. So I mean few sounds can be enhanced in a way that they are so connected to your emotion and something so banal that you disregard and the fact that while disregarding you are more with the character. Q: if you are capturing and representing an actor’s realistic situation, say the character is at a bus stand, is it not true that then the sound will emote more?

337 P: yes that’s what happens generally. Say for an instance someone is over-grieved and sitting at the bus stop. So there will be noises from the bus stop like bus horns, conductors screaming the names of destinations, and there might be some passenger sitting next to you who will play music from the mobile phone. LG. you can disregard the mobile sound. I mean you can design it in a way so it sounds like that. Mobile sound is such that it penetrates. You can select a song, select a tone, which can in anyway disturb. Q: ok, I understood. P: so whether you want to put that ringtone on that passing character or not, that’s a creative choice. Q: hm. P: ok? Or say the horn, in Bengali we say “bhopu,” you want to make it very near or very far depending on what the visuals are, and its constantly honking, constantly raving. Something going on constantly affects after a point of time, the moment you’re holding the shot for too long then it starts affecting you. So I think the capability of understanding is something that we possess individually, each person has his own understanding sound-wise, picture-wise, cinema-wise. So first of all I think one should clearly understand one’s own self, to understand what affects me. Then if you really can disintegrate that, to understand how it is affecting you, then you can make it happen for others. But you have to know that basic degradation process. Q: ok. Q: what’s your personal suggestion regarding the use of ambience - your personal dhyaan (meditation)? How will you suggest to the assistants who are working under you, to use ambience? I mean apart from framing the emotions. Like you said about attempts to capture a realistic situation - how will you do that with ambience? Will it be more miking or more depth or perspective or what? P: perspective is very important. It really gives you the feeling of the real. Q: hm. P: if the perspective is not there then there is nothing. So two kinds of ambience is generally recorded, one for using in dialogue clean-up which is recorded only for ten or fifteen seconds. Suppose there is some noise going on which you don’t require during the dialogue part. Say there’s an unnecessary horn, so you have to cut that horn out and put the ambience, for which that ten to fifteen seconds does fine which is there above the character’s head, sounds from that location only, so that the sounds are similar. Q: and room tone?

338 P: yes. And the other one is ambience. Ambience in the sense I mean this should be recorded from the camera angle. In postproduction it is possible to manipulate the positioning of the sound, like making it distant if it’s near. But if you have recorded from far, then it’s difficult to bring it closer. Q: hm, correct. P: so that is one point. If there are some elements, which are needed to be recorded cleanly in the ambience, they should be recorded as close as possible. Then you can make it far anyway. But something that’s recorded and it’s coming with reverb and delayed to you, cannot be controlled at that time. Q: those are the spatial information - say the reflections inside a room. P: yeah, the reflections you cannot cut…. Q: so you’re suggesting that all the ambiences should be recorded from the camera angle? P: yes it should be recorded that way. But at the same time you know that some effects should be recorded because you are not sure, because the camera will be shooting from multiple angles, so in that case the flow will be maintained. So you can always make it far. Depending on what is coming along in the edit. Q: ok. P: but if don’t have that option you have to use the far sound. Q: ok. Now I’d like to ask – how much ambience? I think that the way some designers use sync sound, like the way you record sync sound, or the way someone else does - how much ambience would you prefer using? How much should be the amount of ambience? P: I think the whole thing should be done with ambience and effects only. Very little exceptions. The filmmakers I have worked with like Dibakar Banerjee, Kanu Behl, their approach is such that it is only naturalistic. Like the way the film Shanghai or LSD is. They are wholly naturalistic, the whole film probably has a four to five minute background score totally, not more than that. Q: Shanghai? P: yes, Shanghai. So the whole film is based on natutal effects and ambience. Q: spatial effects and ambience? P: yes. So I think it’s the approach of the director, the demand of the script, and the sound designer’s work experience. Mostly it’s the director’s choice. Q: so just because you have digital technology in your hands you are able to record ambience.

339 P: correct. Q: if this would have been the Nagra, say the optical direct recording, which used to happen in the 1930’s or 40’s films, would you have been able to record ambience that way? P: yes, I would’ve recorded, but I am not sure if I could use that. Q: how could you record so much depth, such multi-layered, huge volume? Do you think the Mumbai street sound was recorded on Magnetek? P: yes, of course. Q: were they clear? P: yes, clear. Q: was not multi-miking possible? P: yes, not multi-track recording, so it used to be that you could not do much loud recording. Q: what extra facility has then digital technology provided for the process of ambience recording or sync sound recording? What is the advantage of using digital technology in sync sound? P: What you have recorded on a platform and whether you want to clean one frame of it or ten frames of it, it’s so easy. I want it to start with the thirteenth frame, or I want to fade for one minute twenty frames. How would you do that in magnetic technology? Q: ok. But another factor is miking, and the tracks. P: there is multi-track in magnetic also. But why go into complexities. You can go into complexity only if it’s so superior in quality. So that you know when it has to be there, but it’s not like that. Q: ok. Do you now prefer sync sound over the dubbed sound? P: I think all the time. Q: LG. why? P: I think when the actors are performing, they are with the character, why should that sound be replaced with something else? That has to be performed again, and he might not be in the same mood. So it’s never the same. Dubbed it can be better or worse, it will never be the same. Q: of course. What can be the betterment through using dubbing? P: but betterment is very subjective right? It’s better for you, it’s not better for me, and if it’s better for me it’s not better for you. So it’s like someone’s vision again. Q: but technically speaking is the clarity and the crispness of the voice right? P: but crispness in voice is there after dubbing. It’s more crisp than in the location sound.

340 Q: but you mentioned earlier that a particular ambience, the one which is giving the room tone from above the actors head, that you wouldn’t get naturally if you dub. P: no, say even if it’s a dubbed film, I’ll record that at the location and later I will put it here. Q: but that manipulated ambience and dubbed voice, and ambience directly recorded with sync voice - the live voice – which one would you prefer out of these two? And why? P: see if I am recording location sound then I don’t have to work too much to make it sound natural. Q: ok. P: ok. And if I have to record dubbed voice there will be a lot of processing needed on the voice to make it sound like natural. Q: ok. But then why did people get into this wholly difficult affair till this time? P: people never processed the dubbed voices earlier. Did they do? The reflection that happens if anyone is speaking loudly in between two large walls, in dubbed voice you will find they were applied. Q: ok. P: but when you record it here live, it will be recorded. Q: Do you use stock sounds? P: yes I do. Again if I am using stock sound, I have to take it through processing to make sound like coming from the screen. But I definitely use it. The thing is that now digitally it is possible to bend, change any sound and you can make it sound like anything. Q: of course. P: and it can come in from anywhere. Ok? So that’s not a problem at all. Like some psychological effect sounds that you want to put, which obviously is not there, or may or may not be there at the location, which you are thinking later, “that’ll - I’ll introduce this sound”. For instance say there is no sign of construction where the shoot is happening, but you can still put a tile cutter sound, distant. Now I have not recorded a tile cutter while shooting. You can process it and make it sound like coming from a distance. Q: if you are recording ambience, then why would you need to use stock sound? P: because some elements will not be there at the location. Q: why? P: like if you want to put that tile cutter sound. So you can’t call a tile cutter person and ask him to cut a tile so that you can record the sound? You will not. That’s not feasible. Q: ok, I understand - sound which is beyond that diegetic space, P: yeah.

341 Q: which is not happening within that reality, those sounds. Ok, we spoke about dubbed sound. Now surround sound. P: hm. Q: now you are mostly mixing on surround sound? P: yeah. Q: how do you use ambience, effects and voice in surround sound? P: actually I did this first for LSD. It is not possible to do in every film. When my character goes out of the screen I want to make the voice coming out of the screen and be with the audience. Q: ok. P: where the character goes, the voice should go there. I mean that’s how I feel. Q: hm. P: and it should not be distracting but at the same time it should be my way also. I also have to make sure that it should not distract you away from the screen so that you have to look around to find who is talking, it shouldn’t be that way. You should still be glued to the screen and it sounds like ok. Q: ok. That goes to voice. And effects? P: same way for effects also. Q: and ambience? P: ambience is generally engulfing, you keep that “space” feeling, spatial feeling. Q: ok. P: how far you are in a space and ya know what kind of a space it is. Say if it’s a longer scene, like a one-minute or two minutes scene, for me for a point of time you psychologically disregard ambience sounds. Then you go on to the dialogues and effects, which are happening, which is more dramatic. Effects, ambience and dialogues – depending on the scene or the story someone has to choose that which could be more dramatic, and does it at that point of time need drama? Or it should be all benign and banal. I mean there’s nothing to it, it should be like that. Q: the sound design that you did for LSD or Shanghai sounds banal but at the same time it sounds extremely engaging. How is this happening, this “banality” that you are talking about? Naturalistic sounds like dogs barking, a train passing in the distance, whatever is there at the location everything is present in the soundscape. P: hm.

342 Q: so how did that “banal” design become so engaging? Why did your friends feel that it was strange? The strangeness not necessary means sounds only capture a location to truthfulness. P: this is I mean it’s hard to explain in a way. Sometimes it works in a way that banality that all the unimportant sounds make you pointed to the story. I think that might be one of the reasons in some places. In some places sound should be really really pointed, not disregarding the sound. It should be directly pointing towards the emotion of the character. I don’t think most of the sounds are important for disregarding solely. Also it’s a balance basically. You have to keep the balance, you might like hearing a sound but you might not put it because it’s not important. You have to concentrate on what the character is saying. There are some sounds, which are individually very interesting for me. Like the car backing sound is very interesting, different cars have different sounds. Then we all human brain behaves strangely to siren sounds, it’s like a fear, and it readily grabs our attention. If at all that attention grabbing is required somewhere. So if we can choose the elements that way, what according to you will be the attention grabbing sounds. You may have a list of sounds like that. And at one point of time you’ll start thinking that at this location, is that out of my list? What could be the element, which could be a grabbing attention kind? Q: ok. P: so you can put that and make it sound like it’s from that space, so you are making use of being attentive to that. P: If you are getting say amused by the sound, I hope the audience will be amused by the sound. Q: but this distraction that you are talking about, P: the creative distraction, Q: how will that distraction happen in surround sound? Like you said that you don’t want to make it distracting. P: yes I don’t want it to be distracting because when the sound source in a 5.1 theater, in a surround sound theater where it is placed, where the coming of it and the loudness of it, asks me to turn my head then I am out of the story. Ok? Q: ok. P: if it does not then it’s ok for me. Q: That’s a very important point, a very interesting perception, or perspective. Yeah. So you are trying to say that whenever the audience will turn their head looking for something, which should not be there, at that time only they are getting distracted.

343 P: hm. Q: so how do you achieve this? How do you try to attain this? P: I never put anything in the furthest corner. Q: what does it mean by a furthest corner? P: it means sending sound sources to the corners of the surround. Q: not the ambience, right? P: ambience is not a very pointed sound. There won’t be any element in the ambience, which will be pointed. And if you have to keep some effects, it should always be in ratio with how big the place is, they will be stereo sounds which I’ll keep in the surround, so I will not put that in the spread in the last speakers, I will put 25% in the rear and 25% in the front Q: ok, this is a really important point. Then what is the use of surround? Stereophonic was enough isn’t it? P: but then it will not become engulfing, how will it become? You are saying that you never had to look back outside, but the expanse will still not be there, isn’t it? See my point is if a bullet is passing by the side of me head, I do not turn my head to see the going of the bullet. Q: hm. P: it should give me the feeling that the bullet has passed. And if it’s hitting something behind it should sound like – what I am trying to say is something more dramatic should be there on the front so that you don’t have to turn your head. And how much drama is there in front and how much drama can be there behind, that’s your judgement. The moment you put more drama behind then you are distracting your audience. Q: ok. P: so you can put an atom bomb blast behind. But there should be a nuclear bomb blast in front. So you are not distracted by that, but you can hear that. Q: ok. P: ten blasts in front and one blast behind, so that you are not distracted. LG. so you have to create more drama in front. Q: what will happen in Atmos or Auro 3-D? P: see I have not worked on anything of mine in Atmos. Q: but you will work eventually, right, in a couple of years? P: not couple of years, I think for the next film I will do that. I think it gives much more option to me to localize sound. And then it also makes me more responsible. Just because I have a fun tool I cannot fool around with it.

344 Q: how will you then use ambience? P: the use of ambience will be the same. But the use of effects will become more localized. Again I have to be very particular; again it should not be more dramatic than the elements on the screen. It should only give you the feel of that space. And the effects also, what is happening behind. Somebody is killing someone behind but something more dramatic is happening in front. But you should never turn head back. Q: but say for instance in Dharmatma, or say in any other films from the dubbing era of sound. These films would be carrying sound effects creating major drama. “Dhishum Dhishum Dhichkao” these kinds of dramatic sounds are not used any longer. Why? P: this is because we have come to know from time that this cannot be real. Q: ok, real. Did we have a different perception about reality then, and for this long period of time? P: cinema has always portrayed larger than life to us. And probably because of that, what we could not see happening in our own lives, we would see that happening in front of us and be happy about it. LG. One guy beating up a hundred people, how is that possible? But still you see we laugh at it, we believe it also. Q: ok. But do you think that kind of – P: again do you think that Dharmatma, Q: yes Dharmatma, Qurbani – these kinds of films, P: will that film work right now? Q: no. P: why not? Q: LG. because people will laugh about it. P: why will people laugh about it? Q: LG. P: because we know that they will not believe any of it. The dialogues the throw, nothing will be believable or real; it will all be very theatrical. Now people are all going for reality. Q: all the people are going for reality! P: yeah. Q: but why? This is a basic question. Why do people want reality? P: because I think reality is much more appealing and more cool, that’s why everybody has come to know. If you see Hollywood films also, the way they show they make it believable isn’t it? If it’s theatrical no film will sell! You have to make it believable. And what are the elements to make it believable? You put that person in that space first. How do you do that? You make it through sound.

345 Q: ok. Now the last question. I know that it’s a little stupid of me to ask this question, but I am really keen on it. Imagine you could not use ambience, you are forced not to use it. But you feel you should be doing that. How do you think then about your film’s sound design without using any ambience? P: is that dubbed sound or sync sound? Q: sync sound. P: if it is sync sound then the dialogue track will have ambience. Q: yes. It will be in the dialogue track. P: say you are not shooting inside a room, or say the room is not properly acoustically treated but there will be ambience sound, there will be traffic sound. They will be minimal but will be there, it will not be dry. Q: ok. P: so if you are talking about a dubbed film where there is no sound at all, Q: like Rituparno Ghosh? P: yeah, only dubbed, if you are talking about them yes, they will be like that. In case of sync sound there will be ambience noise in the track you will be using, if it’s not being shot in a studio. Q: do you retain the voice, which you are recording on sync sound, and the effects as well, in your mix? P: mostly. And I put extra layers on those existing ones. A space has a particular psychological effect, something will be there for the story - there will be a few elements like that. Q: if the ambience was not there you could not have related to the space, isn’t it? P: it can be done through the voice. But after a point it will be boring. Because now I think we can handle so much complexity that we don’t want it so much. How strong the story is? Q: why are you giving so much importance to the story? P: because what are you working for? Q: you are working for a particular situation maybe. P: no, if you are working for a film it’s the story. That priority should be clear to you. It is not the honesty or the sincerity of the sound or technology of the sound. It has to serve the story of the film. See that is the prime, most top-level priority, after that comes anything. Q: ok. Why are people demanding Atmos if that’s the case? If you only want to follow the story in Atmos, then the visual screen and stereophonic sound was enough for that. Or

346 maximum 5.1 was enough. Then why are the 128 channels required? Is it only for the story? Definitely there are some more things that people demand. P: hm. What you are trying to say is Atmos is not helping build the story? Q: no, it is helping the story but it is doing a lot more, not only enhancing the story. It is going more than the story, beyond the story. P: what is beyond the story? Reality. We are being more real. You are putting the character really inside that space; you are putting the audience really inside a place. With the Atmos it’s happening much more appropriately, correctly. You are really putting it. I mean basically two guys are working inside an iron furnace, but we cannot give the audience the heat, we can only make them feel. Q: LG. P: correct? But this guy is sweating and ya know hitting the iron rods and everything or doing something around. And all these very loud noises happening and they are screaming at the top of their voices too, their dialogues and all that. And there is one liquid metal pouring from here, another pouring from there; they are engulfed by that sound. It’s only coming from the front and you are watching. So basically if the story is at such a point that whether the same story is treated in stereophonic sound or 5.1 sound - if you do that kind of an exercise, then you’ll know how it is helping. Logically obviously it will help because you are putting the audience in this thing. Q: what is the advantage of the audience getting situated? P: then everything is the same, then why are you putting an effort of building a set worth 1 crore? What is the need in making the set look the same look real? Q: believability? P: yes. Q: so you are trying to make the audience believe in the space. P: yes. Q: so much of expense is only to make the audience believe! P: correct. Q: what a situation!! P: it is to fool the audience. Q: so much of labor just to make a fool out of the audience? P: how will you make a fool of the audience? You have to make them believe first and then you can fool them. If they don’t believe then how can they be fooled?

347 Promod Thomas (2014)

Duration: 00:53:52 Name Abbreviations: Promod Thomas – PT; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Jayadevan C – A; Other Abbreviations: Laughter- LG

Q: I was thinking as you are working mostly in mixing and also you worked in sync sound before, PT: and music also, I did music recording also Q: music recording also, so probably you can just - PT: when I started my career it was all mono mix happening. Q: hm. PT: and also it was not enjoyable when you go to a mono theatre. It had filters. All the frequency above 8K was 12K and all the frequency below 80 hertz were rolled off. So it never gave me any enthusiasm to join a mixing studio and also there was no automation. Q: LG. Hm. PT: it was from tapes and you’ve to remember the whole film, and try the things, ya know. And also its all reproduction is from one speaker. So basically it was first very difficult to make a small sound audible in a mix that time. So you’ve to plan a lot, enhance it a lot n get the best recording to enhance or make the small sound audible in a smaller kind of situation. So that time it was very difficult to mix, because of the automation is not there. Q: hm. PT: and the whole thing has to be played back from one speaker. As soon as the multiple speakers comes you know multiple sources comes, you hear everything. Ok? When there’re like you know in real situations, what you do is you have so many things that are happening in a real environment. So what your brain and ears together focus on things and even if the source is less in volumes you just adopt it or just gather the important things from that ya know, even if that level is low. So you can omit the other sounds using the directionality. So in mono mixes the whole problem was you’ve to create everything, you’ve to play everything from one source. So that’s why the importance of ambience was not that much in that time. It was difficult to create ya know ambiences audible in a situation. And lots of ambiences were sounding like a tape source also. Q: hm.

348 PT: ambiences sound good when it comes to so many speakers. So the space is always created with multiple speakers. At least you need two speakers or at least four. If it is played from four speakers you get the normal kind of pace you know. Q: why do you think that ambience sounds better in multiple speaker set up? PT: see in one source - one speaker - it’s called “Masking”. Nowadays when the films are getting mixed all the main ambiences are coming from other surround speakers, little elements are coming from surround speakers. So you automatically hear that, you keep on hearing that, Q: hm. PT: and still you search for the main information. Q: hm. PT: that shows a good sound design and good mixing. In good mixing nothing overpowers, but still you get the mood of the rest of the thing. So earlier it was from one single source. So if you actually mix only you’ll come to know the difficulty to reproduce a multiple layered sound in a single speaker. Actually you’ve to mix and see. If you try to mix a mix with one speaker you’ll find the difficulty in this. Making the whole fifth or sixth information audible from one speaker it is the most difficult thing. So if you have done that very easy to handle the multiple speaker environments. Q: yes. PT: for example mono mix was the toughest mix for me. Q: toughest mix. PT: I just never could adopt, it still has to better you know. Why that is not coming this frequency is not overbuilt. The space is not there. Is that ambience audible enough to create the feel of the thing without the effect, if you close your eyes also you should feel that space ya know, that was not possible. I never used to get a satisfaction in mono mix - you know what I mean. So when the stereo came it was better. And even now I believe that a surround mix is comparatively easy than doing a stereo mix. Stereo mix is a tougher job than a surround mix. Q: why stereo mix? PT: you’ve to compress and limit-- see in the mixing we use the compressors and limiters ya know. When the compressor or limiter comes, compressors actually decide how disturbing or how impactful the sounds can become, you know. The transience you know. So if the loud sound comes your compressor limit has to be correct so that the soft sound below should be audible. If you remove the compressor for example like ya know if a soft sound follows a very loud sound close to that, you’ll not hear the soft sound. And in the

349 same way if the soft sound is before the loud sound also then you’ll not hear the soft sound because you’ll forget it. Because as soon as the big sound comes you’ll forget the soft or small ones. Q: yes. PT: that’s how the brain works. So this is why compressor limiters are very main criteria, main thing which is which we should know in mixing. Everybody always depends on compressor limiters in mixing process. And mono or single channel this thing, which is very critical to - like all the things are depending hitting those limiters more you know. In stereo it’s little less of compressor limiters and in 5.1 you don’t you can have a little less usage of compressor limiters that way. But when right now we are using best of the compressor limiters to enhance the sounds in 5.1 or even in Dolby. Speakers are getting increased more - yes we are using the best of the dynamics you know or transience in response of the sounds. Q: what about stereo? May be you can speak a bit about stereo because in stereo we have three speakers or four speakers. PT: stereo is only two speakers. Q: two speakers, but isn’t there a center? PT: no. Front and center, isn’t it? Q: hm. PT: whatever sounds comes given fifty-fifty percentage to both speakers will come in the center. So here in film since it becomes difficult to have only two speakers, so this way we need a center speaker. Because the lip sync is very important and character should come from the center of the screen. So you’re giving all the image spreaded signal like stereo files like basic ambiences, basic frontal ambiences, staccato sounds of music everything is from the front and the ambience sounds of the music and film is given to the surround speakers. And they’re mostly depending on four speakers for reproduction. Q: hm. PT: not two speakers. Q: yeah. PT: and if you increase the number of speakers, then only you’ll get the real feel you know otherwise when you move close to one speaker you don’t hear the other speaker. So you feel that old sounds are from the speakers, you’d lose the image. Q: hm. PT: so image is like main thing you know. So in stereo reproduction it comes from two speakers you know and there’s a phase between and for example all the sounds suppose

350 we’re talking here like you know. And it will still sound the indoor because there are certain reflections from some walls and all and the floor. All this information is coming to our ear. And ear is analyzing and giving an idea that this is a closed room. Q: closed room. PT: because of the frequencies in the reflection. Q: yes. PT: and a time delay of the reflection gives a space-size you know. Q: size. But when we are recording this on stereo, PT: yeah, Q: for example this microphone and this recorder and we play it back in a stereo, then that information will be compressed in a stereo image, right? PT: yeah. Because it’s using two mics to pick the thing. Q: hm. PT: say you can actually make use of a two mics and expand it to four mics also. Like earlier the Dolby pro logic? Q: hm. Yeah. PT: they were using two channels. They were all encoding into two channels. LTRT channels. Q: yes. PT: so that had actually four channel information. Four-channel information is given and encoded into two channel using phase techniques. Q: hm. PT: in here also you can decode into multiple channels with from two mics actually. Even right now there are developments in the microphone that come over stereo mics, which can decode into four or something. Q: so in cinema, the stereo meant four speakers, isn’t it? PT: this I’m telling that in 5.1 and I meant the four speakers on the corners. I used for the image of the ambience. Q: hm. PT: or the music, Q: hm. PT: the ambient sounds of the music are played from both the speakers. And main information of the dialogues and effects, which are coming from the center of the screen is given to the center speakers, that way. Well ideally you should go for a multi-channel recording. Like ya know for Quadraphonic recording

351 Q: hm. PT: or a like 5.1 recording, you can use the microphone like that. And also you can have multiple stereos to place it. Like you know some sounds you can place like one stereo sound can be for the front, one stereo sound for the surround and there can be a 5.1 or a Quadraphonic ambient image, ambient sound which can be filled for the whole speakers. Q: yeah but I’m trying to understand that in the late seventies, PT: hm Q: and early eighties, when some films were using stereo, for example Sholay was four- track stereo. So I think not many films took up that four-track stereo but normal stereo - Disco Dancer was in stereo, 1982. Attenborough’s Gandhi was in stereo. What did that stereo mean? Did that stereo mean four-track stereo or two? PT: those were four-track stereos. Q: four-track stereo? PT: Quadraphonic sound. Q: ok. In how many spakers did that Quadraphonic sound use to be played back, in four or two? PT: yeah four speakers. Q: four speakers, ok. How did they use to be placed? PT: they generally used to have three for the front and one for the surround. Q: ok. PT: for the film production. Q: in which way did the four speakers use to be placed for the stereophonic sound? Were these two placed behind the seats? PT: starting of Quadraphonic was like four speakers one speaker each on one on the corner of the room. Q: ok. PT: and the center image was virtual. Q: of course. PT: or the sound which is given fifty-fifty percent to each of the- Q: yes. PT: front speakers were coming into the virtual, like that way. So that was again difficult for the film because when a person who’s sitting next to the left corner of the screen or right corner of the speaker will find that sound is coming from this corner. So they had to use a center speaker for that. And nobody bothered even having a single channel for the whole surround. So that’s why in the beginning it was mono channel surround and three

352 LCR’s and subwoofer was filtered, low frequency was filtered and given to the sub woofer channel. And Dolby pro logic and some other, I forgot that name, one more format was there, ultrasound something. Q: ok. Ultra stereo? PT: ultra stereo something. So that format was also like that. Q: hm. PT: but Dolby succeeded because and at that time again the problem was the noise you know. So it was mostly on tapes reproduction and optically recorded on to the film. So noise reduction was the main thing. So then Dolby used a spectral noise system to eliminate the noise, enhance the sound and recorded and played back with decoders. So the noise was less in the reproduction. So that became a standard. So later when the digital came the 5.1 Dolby and 5.1 DTS became popular. Q: yeah. I think Shahenshah was also in stereo. Was the stereo mix done in this era by putting off ambience? I don’t think that there were much ambient sounds. PT: yeah. Most of the films were not depending on the ambiences you know. Q: of course not. PT: it’s a very less kind of ambience but they were very particularly recorded, ambiences were recorded at that time. Here now we are using multiple layers of ambiences and balancing it n getting it, so earlier it was like, particularly we want a bird with one this kind of particular bird. That particular sound was recorded and it was like you know it was played in the proper kind of an- and in mainstream commercial film in India it was not even used that way you know. They were just using some kind of birds or some - Q: some stock sound? PT: yeah some water sound drain like that. Stock sound they patch it and in the mixing it’s little kind of audible to you of those things were giving the mood of that. So our films are mostly depending on the music. It’s a drama kind of thing ya know so mostly we were depending on the dialogues and the music for the whole and you know we are taking our audience into a trip you know. So like you know that’s why the ambience was not popular also. In mono it’s very difficult to make the ambience audible in a clean way. And our reproduction, when it goes to theatres there again is noises. Noises all around you know, AC noises of theatres didn’t have a good standard. So we’ve to compress everything and everything was audible like you know the dynamic range between the softer sounds to loud sound is very less. So we are pushing everything and compressing everything and in that survival of a small ambient sound was very difficult. And in between if you hear anything that’s ok, like sometimes you hear it and sometimes don’t

353 hear, that was the situation. But for multiple speakers and standardization of the speakers and when the quality of the theatres is increased. Right now also we have a major problem in recreating a real situation in a film, because our theatres are very noisy. So the noise level of a theatre is above than the actual level of an ambience, which you hear in a real situation. So you’ve to again increase it. And the problem will be when it played in a good theatre you feel, “why it’s a loud mix?” So even a small ambience is very loud. Why? Because we are trying to compensate for the bad theatre halls in India. Q: how was the mix of stereophonic sound? Did you put the voice in the center and music in the two other channels? PT: yeah. Q: ok. PT: and ambience is mostly in the left and right and little width into the mono surround. And left to get the space and center is having mostly the dialogues and the spot effects and the main effects, the center effects. Q: ok. And how was the music in stereo? PT: yeah. Music also like little violins like you know strings and all coming through the surround and definitely surround. Q: how was it in mono? PT: everything was in one channel, Q: one channel. PT: not very heavily limited compressor audio track with the frequency cut above 80 hertz and below 80 there’s no frequencies, like all are filtered out. Because that is the very limitation of the mono tracks, mono recording has that limitation you know. High frequency will get clashed in optical reproduction when it pass through the lab know. The high frequency was not reproducible because of the labs limitation, it will cross over post modulation distortion you know. And again if you keep the low frequency it’ll become muffled. So they all lower frequency levels. Then? Q: when surround sound came in 2001-2 the scope of sending different sources into different channels expanded. PT: hm. Q: so what kind of changes did you practice yourself – for example how did you manage to mix in a surround sound in the early stage of surround sound mixing? PT: I was not there in surround mixing in 2000 time like you know I’ve joined after 2005 I think. Q: hm.

354 PT: and 2003 onwards I was working as an associate and assistant in mixing, after my experience in location and music. I was generally getting music mixes, song mixes for the films. Because people were not aware of the possibility of surround, for the music. So we can actually see whatever mainly you’re a time delay you know in a small room the speakers are very close, you can keep anything and do surround. But as soon as the room becomes big, Q: hm. PT: and because of the distance factor people who are sitting close to the surround hear more of the things, which are put into surround. So that can distract a person who’s sitting on the backseat. At the same time a person who’s sitting in the front side will lose the image, lose the information which is mostly ya know going to surround. So you need to have a multiple like now its Atmos at times, with Atmos everything’s coming. So when it was started it took a little time to get maturity in the mixing for initial days. In the starting it was like everybody was like trying to place n pan something into surround - it was disturbing too much - and the tonality changed drastically because in the theatre from where you’re mixing because of calibration and all it’s different. When you go and watch in the theatre because of some problem it’ll never sound the same. And also the pre-production theatres were much bigger than the mixing theatres. So the delay factor, because of the delay the music, the staccato elements, the rhythmic elements which comes into surround were getting the rhythm, the delay effect you know half the things are in the front and there’s a time conflict between the front speakers and the back speakers it was a big issue. So later they got aligned you know in a processors actually they can delay the surround speaker in the processor itself and make it a little more closer. And that value changes according to the size of the speakers. But still you have to take precautions to put the music elements because you can’t keep the music element only coming from the surround. Q: hm. PT: and you have to keep majority of the elements from the front. And ambience things also again when the music is playing here you can’t place the ambience only here like you know there’s again a lot of elements are there and lot of few elements coming from here. So that’s how in every film you think a little and you know decide what all things to be put into surrounds and how much of the thing should be coming to the surround. And also when music comes all of the small ambiences get drowned. So then it’ll be working around that, again you’re trying to give a dynamism for that and compressing the elements lifting it to a level you give the information of the space through the ambiences.

355 Q: are the ambient sounds usually sent in the rear channels? PT: not always. You have to send to the front channels. I prefer uh having different elements you know. In mono time you were needing very less channel of ambiences and half of them were rejected and we used to use only main information which is audible, which did not sound like a noise, which was used for the ambience like coming from a single channel. It’s very difficult for the ears to because from one speaker you can maximum hear two or three sounds only. So if I had more information it became a noise. Q: hm. PT: it started disturbing the first three information, main information. And it will distort you know. So you can’t make from where out this additional sound is coming. You feel that the original sound is not good, it started clashing or it started masking. So it’s better to have multiple speakers in reproduction. And if you pan too much again the problem is that the person sitting who’s on the back side will get that sound more and even ambience if you keep it at low again the problem is it will not come in a bad theater properly because the noise level is high. So it’s very difficult process. LG. Q: LG. But how do you look at it? For example the event is happening on the screen, which is a two-dimensional space, PT: hm. Q: in front of you. PT: hm. Q: and sounds are coming from your behind. How do you relate to that sound? How do you think to make a kind of coherent spatial geography? PT: you have to carefully use it because I’m not fond of using so many minutes of surround but at places you try to enhance it because when again you are using the masking techniques you add sounds into the front and so that you don’t feel that it is expanded too much into surround. So you’re using like a balance between the front and back you know. So when you add a sound another like main elements are coming in the front ok? And if that the sounds are quite high then even if you pan a little extra into surround you don’t feel any problem. Then only you’ll actually make that ambience audible in the whole mix. So that’s how you’ve to work around and you can’t sit idle and just pan it and get a mix out of that. So you’ve to work around and use limiters, compressors at the right ratio and push the levels at places to compensate for the covering the thing n all. So you are not supposed to enjoy like image is in the front so you’ve to again attach to that front image only.

356 Q: if the ambience is directly related to the screen, for example we see some landscape and we expect some ambience to be there, PT: hm. Q: will you place the ambience of that landscape behind or on your right or left side or in the front if the visual information is in front of you? PT: see a lot of information has to be put in the front side only. Also your supporting ambiences - feel of the ambiences should be on the surround. So for example a space always can have an extra element from the back you know. Which should come at the right time, that’s also important. So you should not like make the surround audible and - Q: yes. PT: So for example when you’re showing water like a lake then you can have water sound in the front. Q: hm. PT: and you can have a little wind and leaves or trees sound around that, leaves sound or something Q: hm. PT: those can be on the surround. So that should be at a moderate level. And bird can be of two types - one can be a chord below beyond that space and one can be here also know. So you’ll get a balance of that selecting the good sound, getting recorded and placing it, either you use stereo recorders to record or multiple track recorders. Like for example if you’ve a like you know in a recent recording act you use the 5.1 mic you know. So I got so much of wind sound, which is moving wind sound for the landscape from that. I have to record it like for quite a long you know four five hours after that I used to get ten or fifteen minutes, which actually you could use for the purpose. It was multiple 5.1 miking. And another place where sheep’s were there know? Q: hm. PT: I tried so much of recordings in stereo but when in the post know I found that stereo ones were not working too much better. And you place one here and one here is again like it was not together, not after panning also, it was not actually in the correct spread. So I used my actual 5.1 files for that which was recorded from the location with sheep’s and the goats are moving in with sound and all, those were working better. Because the image was correct and it was moving to in between. You could actually feel those moving here and one is coming here and one is behind, one is in the front you know. So that is again straight 5.1 recording. And you’re only adjusting the levels. And also I’ve used the bus sounds, travelling sounds. My 5.1 files were sounding better, bus travelling sounds

357 were better than the stereo files placed one for the front or one for the surround, one file kept in between. This 5.1 miking was sounding better. But though it had a problem of like comb filter, do you know comb filter? Q: Yes. PT: when multiple frequencies come and it’s a head kind of mic you know. Q: hm. PT: so all those things has got little effects but still it is sounding better than a normal stereo file manipulated one for the front or one for the surround or placed in between or whatever in a percentage. This 5.1 actual file only we’ve to trim it, the ratio you know. You want to reduce the surround or increase the surround you know, you just adjust the level of the surround it will be sounding better than the other files. Q: do you think of an audience as a mixing engineer? Do you think of an audience when you send your information to different channels? Do you think how the audience will be reacting to what you’re mixing? What is your idea or concept about that off-screen space that you are talking about? I mean an off-screen space, which is beyond that visible screen in front of you. How do you think the audience will react to your mix so as to make that off-screen space present? And how do you mix according to this sense? PT: See first of all I don’t get an introduction - I don’t want anybody to introduce the film before the mix you know. Q: ok. PT: I generally ask the designer to complete the thing and I don’t like to involve with the edit person the design person before I’ve to mix it. I actually watch the film as an audience. Q: ok. PT: and even without sound also I watch the film as an audience and I don’t want to involve in the pre-design stage of so many films. And after that I keep quiet and when the design is get completed then again I see it and find out how much it got improved, and after design we’ll come to know how much of the music is required. Q: hm. PT: in the pre-stage it’s very difficult. A lot of films are depending on music, that’s a different case. But actually after design you’ll come to know how much of the music is required for the film. So after that in the mix process generally you’ll get elements for the surround from the designer. Q: ok. PT: which is actually expanding the space itself,

358 Q: hm. PT: or enhancing the situation. Enhancing the situation can be more surrealistic also. Q: hm. PT: so psychologically it can affect the audience giving extra abstract sounds also. Q: hm. PT: so that way you place it you know. And lot of sounds is again frequency dependent you know. So your front speakers decides how the surround sound is working you know. It is not only independent of the front speakers. If you’ve got a front sound, which got a particular character, then a certain amount of another sound, which comes from the surround will only support that. You don’t feel like it’s a separate thing, like you feel like it’s a single sound. And it’s the same single space. Q: hm. A singular space. Do you think directly that audience is separate from you or you imagine yourself as an audience, as a part of the audience when you do mixing? PT: so you’ve to have multiple characters in the whole process. One is like you’ve to tell the story with the director or the designer. Q: hm. PT: second is that you be as an audience, and you analyze it whether it’s working whatever director and the designer, they did together whether it is working for you. Q: Yes. PT: so you try to solve the problems, if there is anything there you try to just solve it ya know. In the mix process you suggest things if you want more sound something or you want to remove something you remove it or with the sync available thing you can clean it then you polish it and you enhance the whole mood and you can… Q: yes. I’m just trying to understand this process how that off-screen space is created, PT: hm. Q: in multi-channel surround say 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos so forth. How is this off-screen space, which is created by ambience? This space was not present in mono; was not even present in stereophonic mix, PT: hm. Q: but which is now available, PT: hm. Q: for presenting in surround sound set up, PT: hm. Q: how does a mixing engieer conceive and realize that off-screen space for the audience or create for the audience? What does he think how it will be interpreted by the

359 audience? So as a mixing engineer what is your concept of the audience sitting in that off-screen space created by you? How do you imagine the audience in that space? Because in mono you knew that there is no off-screen space - everything is coming from the front and audience doesn’t need to interpret it in which ways it is coming from the behind. What do you do to create that off-screen space for the audience? Is the question clear? PT: tch – see always you hear a sound from all around you know in real situation. Ambiences and there’s a lot of elements you should make audible from the backside. And without neglecting the front you know. And also lot of reflections, reverbs, Q: hm. PT: need to be put into surround but it has to be in correct amount. As soon as the sound comes to the surround it becomes very big. The space becomes big and if you add the reverb of the frontal elements reverb, add into that it means the space is big, that the loud sound is big that’s why you hear it. Q: hm. PT: and also when there is only one sound that sound is big ok, when there are five sounds that sound become small. This is how we work. LG Q: LG. PT: so it’s very simple to for us to talk. But to really do it then only you’ll understand it. Q: some surround sound mixes that I have experienced myself keep the elements, which are not at all related to the visual references or the visual cues. For example wind, you cannot see wind. But you keep wind in the rear speakers... PT: again it’s very difficult to choose a wind sound also. Very difficult if you’ve to choose the correct kind of wind. And how much of the wind element is there, how much of the speed is there... Q: hm. PT: and whether anything is moving in the visual or you’re just putting it just for the sake of design or just because the director enjoys it. LG Q: for example in The Lunchbox. PT: hm. I haven’t seen that film. Was it good? Q: I think the sound is very clean and… A: too clean. Q: too clean actually. It could be noisier. A: because it’s happening in Bombay...

360 PT: it’s because our noise is more you know like we’re so much used to hear to big noises than people who live abroad. A: this was done by a foreigner, isn’t it? Q: I don’t think that without imagining the audience you can make that surround space. PT: hm. Q: how can you do that? If the audience is freaked out – “what is happening from my behind, what is happening on my right, what is happening on my left?” - If the audience is freaked out of the mix, then it’s not gonna work. A mixing engineer needs to think of the audience… PT: see that depends on the situation know. So there are situations also when we have to enhance the surround, for example if the whole thing is happening inside the stadium so you can catch hearing on the backside and a lot of elements on the front side. Still you if you give too much frequency you can feel. But in some situations you can’t use that much of level on the surrounds. But when the music comes again there are abstract elements, which is not actually in the real, the music is not there but you’re going to work through the psychology of an audience. Q: hm. PT: So those elements you can expand into surround. And when there are frontal elements when you expand the music through surround, you’re actually trying to protect those frontal elements also. It’s not eating that space you know. So that way you’ve to design that’s how mix itself is another design you know you’re placing in the things in the right speakers and the right element. Q: right now a lot of sync sound works are happening. Sync sound is practiced mostly by the new breed of directors, and I think more and more sync sound works will be coming. People are embracing it much more. So when sync sound comes, probably there’ll be more elements that you can handle. How do you treat sync sound tracks compared to the tracks, which are dubbed? Your handlings of the elements are different in each of these cases, right? For example, will you treat dubbed sound differently from sync sound in your mix when dubbed sound comes? PT: in sync sound actually the dialogue is more real. Q: hm. PT: and there is quite a lot of information in the center itself like it need not depend much on the Foleys or a lot of elements come from the center speaker itself ya know. And also when you go for a sync sound you actually record a lot of soundtrack from the location, which can be used as an ambience and effects for the film. So those elements

361 also will come. So in a dubbed film you generally don’t get this kind of very accurate stuff from center. Q: hm. PT: but most of the dubbed films works with the music and all, it gets a lot of support from the music side. It’s made for you know the audiences. Q: LG PT: so you don’t need a very accuracy in those things. You tend to be very clean and clear. And sometime exaggerated. Q: hm. PT: so you support the ambience and you just change the ambiences with the space you know. So you try to create the mood from the ambiences. And dialogues, I try to make it more realistic ya know, all the dialogues. And exaggerate it when it’s required. And ambiences also again trying to make it more realistic - trying to fit the whole thing edit- wise or level-wise trying to make it close to the real situation. Then enhance it where it’s required. Q: with sync sound you have effects, which are also recorded in sync. You have voices recorded in sync. And you have those ambiences, which are already recorded with the voice. Will you keep that ambience or will you prefer to add ambiences later? PT: see you’ve to add ambiences later also because it’s in the centre. Q: ok. PT: so whenever you record something you’re always trying to record the main part ya know which is the dialogue, which you don’t want to dub. Q: hm. PT: even if you don’t get any Foley also it’s fine. But when a situation like the vehicles are passing or something is happening in the water, those sounds you can’t eliminate. You’ve to try to record that also, that’s the main sound. So rest of the things like wind or bird or air, they’re not trying to record that, you know. So those elements are actually there. Like lot of mics are not very Omni-directional. Their directivity is there. So you try to record the main sounds. So then you’re actually suppressing the ambiences from the main mono source, so you’ve to enhance those elements later in the post. Q: if you use 5.1 microphone, PT: hm. Q: during the shoot,

362 PT: you can’t use it when the dialogues are there. You can’t even do a MS miking when the dialogues are there. Dialogues need to be recorded in mono only. But if there’s a crowd sound, you know. Q: why will dialogues be recorded in mono? In normal situations when we hear somebody speaking, we not only hear their voices, we also hear a car passing by, we hear a train horn from a distance… PT: see you can’t recreate, record sound exactly like the way you’re hearing. Also it’s not possible for you to get a control over the time you know. So when the time changes and the noise changes, in one shot there are cars and in another shot there’re less cars, so all these thing will come. And when an angle changes again the noise level changes. So that’s why your boom itself is not placed like this. Your boom itself is placed from top to bottom. You only focus the sounds below it, not only the frontal or back side elements you know. So you try to eliminate the other noisy sound, those are actually noises for the sync sound guy, even though later he has to create for the bird you know. Q: is everything recreated in that sense? PT: everything needs to be recreated, lot of elements in the front is there. Q: hm. PT: and you have to prepare there also, same kind of extra birds are created there only. Q: hm. But when you recreate the whole situation, the complete situation of that particular geographical location, you emphasize something, you emphasize a voice, PT: hm. Q: and then you give less emphasis to the other elements such as ambience and effects. Perhaps you can add music later for some emotive cues or for underlining some emotional situations. The whole process of deconstruction - how much of it would like to become realistic situation and how much of it is more imaginary? How much you’d like to achieve in your role as a mixing engineer? To be realistic or imaginary: which one do you prefer? PT: you’ve to get a balance between these two, you know. So it has to be realistic. Then only people can relate to it. And also you have to be imaginative, to get the mood. You can enhance ya know, you have to show the things, spaces behind you also - you have to be imaginative for that. And also for placing the correct sounds at the right time and for that you’ve to be imaginative, you actually are manipulating but you know that because of your experience only you’re doing this. Q: hm.

363 PT: you’ve already experienced the real space and the real situation and now you have a little real experience. That’s why you are recreating those things with extra care, Q: hm. PT: so that in minimum time, Q: hm. PT: within a cinematic time you’re giving a capsule for the audience. Q: why is there a tendency to give more real information, more real situations, and to capture and frame more real locations in recent films? Why is it happening in your opinion? PT: like which films? Q: like… A: he is saying that now people are using lot of ambiences. It’s like than any time else. Why people are like using more ambiences? Means like people are now very much particular about ambiences, all the designers are putting like a lot of ambiences. Q: hm. A: even during the songs also people are putting ambiences LG. Q: yeah. PT: see the number of gadgets, supporting your lifestyle is getting increased you know. Earlier you know we only used a mobile you know like grandparents, how many things you had at home you know very less things. And so we are increasing our facilities, like every time we have more things more gadgets for us. And music wise also they are increasing their tracks you know. All the things are already created, all the instruments are being played and every tune type of thing is already used. So you’re trying to achieve more things with more things you know. So you’ve to compete with that. So again you’ve to add. A: it’s because of technological advancement. PT: and earlier there were limitations. We had to use very less tracks then and I told you know one speaker. So you can make only two or three sounds audible. So you had only very less tracks, limited tracks. And you play around that. Q: with the advent of technology you could be more imaginary. You could be more abstract. Let’s say animation films. In animation or games, you have technology available - you have 5.1, 7.1 stuff like that, and you go for more abstract representation of real places. Why is cinema not going in that direction? Cinema is not going in the direction of animation and video games, but taking a documentary approach. Look at the new sounds for the new films.

364 PT: which films for example? Q: so many - Highway, The Lunchbox, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara - so many films have a huge amount of ambience sound use. Why is it that? It is just not a trend. This is what I think is the contribution of the sound people. Why did sound people suddenly change from giving less information about the real situations to giving more information about the real location? Has something change in between? I don’t think this is just digital technology. Digital technology is obviously giving some advantages to do that kind of stuff but there must be some intrinsic changes that happened in the mind of the sound designers, mixers and sync sound recordists. They suddenly started to give information. Why? A: even in Dil Chahta Hai, Lagaan… Q: why? A: this much ambience they didn’t use. Highway and all it’s like full of ambience! Q: yeah! PT: Is it so? I couldn’t find so much, it’s crowded and all... A: much more than Lagaan and all. PT: But is it overpowering? A: no it’s not overpowering. I felt I need more ambience. PT: I found it less… A: I found like that I need more ambience. But when I compared to Lagaan and all I found it more, much more. Even in Lunchbox I wanted more ambience. Q: more ambience, is it? That means we are becoming hungry for ambience. But why is it so? A: even Kai Poche has a lot of ambience. Q: hm! A: Kai Poche is like a very good amount, very decent. Q: do you think that there was some sort of a filter? Is it now opened? If it is so then why is it opened? PT: they’re always trying to compete with the music, hm? Lot of people have a feel that if the music comes all single elements will get disappeared. So they add so many things. Q: that can be a reason. PT: In recent of my mixes, like when you go to theater, in Indian theater you feel half of the things are not audible. So because of the noises of the ambience. So you add more elements so that some of the elements at least will be audible and gives the identity of the space you know. That’s actually the reason. Insecurity! LG

365 Q: LG, insecurity. A: yeah we all do that. PT: it’s because there’s no the playback accurately, so there’s an insecurity. Your music guy will come and kill you or the theatres are very bad so you don’t… A: it’s like a cinematographer who cannot shoot very low opening, he has to light it up otherwise it won’t be seen in the much of the exhibition theatres ya know it’s like that. Q: ok. But you yourself are a mixing specialist. Do you prefer more ambiences or not? PT: I want to have everything correct. LG. Q: correct. But what is that correctness about? From where does that sense of correctness come? PT: because I don’t like to have a noisy environment and I want to have like for example the best technique is like suppose you need an ambience, ok? And I don’t like to have it in a single track. I want half of the elements of that in another track. It’s divided into two but not giving the intensity. For example if I want around ten close, I don’t want to have ten plus ten twenty close you know. I want it five in one track and five in another track so that I can give a spread. Or it can be a 5.1 file. Got it? And it’s a wind, in a simple of wind also I don’t want very intense, very low- loud wind also which if I remove it will get noticed. So I’d like to have two layers. So which I can manipulate and you can make it like smoothly going out and it’ll cause the mood you know. So also that’s how the intensity of the thing, it’s not increased the crowded feeling, you know, like if you add more ambiences the noise also get increased, so unwanted elements. So you’ve to be very careful with that. So you need to have a clean elements of the main situation, and to give the spread if you want to have separate layers for the front and back then you should add A plus B, its together now it should come to a correct value. That way. It’ll be very under control. When you lay them, you’ve to select very carefully while eliminating the noise factor. So if the noise is there then reduce it. When the mixing is on reduce it. Q: hm. PT: if it has started disturbing the music, if it’s started to disturb the mood. And when you eliminate the main element that’s also getting separate from that. So immediately in the theatre you don’t hear it. Q: LG, but I think in one point of time, within a couple of years - if not a couple then five or ten years - most of the systems will change. I think you have to add more speakers for Atmos. PT: yeah Atmos and all is coming so… Q: how?

366 PT: every time this problem was there you know, with so much of difficulty we moved from mono to Dolby SR, Dolby Pro Logic and with so much of difficulty we shifted from that to 5.1 and 7.1 and now again with difficulties we are trying to move into multiple channel speaker system. Q: what are the difficulties? PT: so first of all in the process itself you need to have so many layers n so many technical aspects, to be like you know you can easily mix. You’ve to pan everything and also calibration of the room which is the mix room and calibration of the theatre like pre- production rooms and all those become very difficult if the speakers become more. Q: what is in your opinion the ideal sound for cinema? Mono or stereo? PT: we’ve not reached that ideal sound. LG. Q: LG. I have talked with a number of people, they prefer… PT: by the time we will be reaching the ideal speaker environment you know we are not going to be very ideal people. CHORUS LG Q: no that’s a different thing but generally there are some fascinations. I have talked with people who are fascinated with mono sound. PT: hm. Q: I have also met people who are fascinated with stereo but 5.1- PT: ideally what I feel is there should be only three channels in the front and one subwoofer channel. Ok? Q: hm. PT: there should be three channels again on the side speakers. Q: hm. PT: and two channels only in the back speakers. Q: ok. So 7.1, isn’t it? PT: no it’s not 7.1. Three plus three - six, nine, plus two - 11.1 is more ideal for the situation and to enhance more into on top sound you have four of them on top. Q: ok. So 15.1. PT: 15.1 is more than enough. Q: ok. Fair enough. CHORUS LG PT: or you add one more to the surround. 15.2. Q: no, point-two is the subwoofer, right? PT: yeah 15.2 like dual subwoofer.

367 Q: hm. PT: this subwoofer supporting there, subwoofer supports you. Q: ok. PT: so 15.3 or 15.2 is more than enough. Actually if it’s more than that, it’s truly very problematic. Q: LG PT: so you know people are just increasing and that much of challenge should be enough. And depending on the size of the room you can actually play it back on the playback actually. You should have a virtual mixer on the pre-production. So that stretch will come later but I don’t know. They’re all like going ya know in different directions. Q: ok. Thank you.

368 Resul Pookutty (2014)

Duration: 02:01:19(1) & 00:10:07(2) Name Abbreviations: Resul Pookutty – R; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter – LG

Q: As far as I know from our film school, you used to work with audio restoration in the beginning. You restored the Mewar recordings. R: yes, I did. Q: how was the experience? R: you know, looking back at it I think it was one of my best schooling. What is outside the realm of films and film institute and studies in sound. Q: hm. R: the romanticism that we had about - you know - sound and its role in storytelling. The only restoration process that I have gone through was the best schooling that I’ve got. Q: ok. R: I chanced upon those recordings of Mewar dynasty. I had a friend who was a Dhrupad singer and he was studying Dhrupad. He wasn’t a friend, he was basically a cook. It was through him that this whole thing had come to me. And I sent them a proposal and I got the job. When I went to Udaipur I chanced upon these recordings from 1940’s to say the 70’s, recordings they have done over a period of twenty years. In those times one of the best recorder called Phonograph. It is a Valve machine. And these were the performances that was done by the court musicians in front of the maharaja. So it was essentially Dhrupad recordings. So Mewar court used to patronize one of the ancient form of Indian classical music as we know today, Dhrupad. Q: hm. R: if we date back to its history then it starts from Tansen. And he was Akbar’s court musician. Now I don’t know what happened and when it happened, ya know, from Akbar they came to the Rajputs’. And we know that the Rajputs were the only ones in Indian history who fought against the Mughals. Q: hm. R: seeing his courage they gave him his kingdom back that was the history of the Mewar dynasty. Q: hm.

369 R: and it’s very amazing, you know. Like Akbar was a Mughal king, he was a Muslim. Tansen was a Hindu who was practicing what we know today as the ancient form of Indian Classical music. Q: hm. R: history changed its hands! It came to the Rajputs who were Hindus. Q: hm. R: now by the time the Dhrupad family, Tansen’s family had taken over, went over the changes, they became Muslims. Q: hm. Such as the Dagar brothers. R: so they used to practice Islam and there was a lot of things that’s combined. So it was very intriguing historically for me. Q: hm. R: and at the same time I heard a lot of music. Around 300 hours of music I heard over a period of two years and it sort of encouraged me orally. And I didn’t understand many of it in terms of its classical nature and text and it is a very closed format, ya know. What was very interesting was the existing maharaja’s father was a musician. He was a sitar player. Q: hm. R: he used to play Rudra Veena. So he had a lot of interest in music. So the last well- known brothers Dagar brothers, they were called Dagar Bandhus. Q: hm. R: Moinuddin Dagar and Aminuddin Dagar, they were like the exponents of Dhrupad as we know today. So they used to perform one raga. Say for example, raga Lalit. Q: hm. R: so they would perform and they would say, “This is how it is sung in Khayaal… this is how it is sung in Thumri, this is how it is in Tappa.. This is how this is in this.. This is how this is in that….” Q: hm. R: “this is how it is in Southern India.” This is a Dhrupad tradition. I thought it was the best schooling. So the maharaja, what he has done is – one side of the school he had Dhrupad recordings of one raga. Q: hm. R: then he called some unknown musicians, probably known musicians at that time. I mean quite unknown for me and for the musical circling. For the local musicians who is

370 like you can say a khayaal singer, he was called upon and asked to perform the same raga. Q: ok. R: so A B roll, you know. It is on your quarter track recording, on one side it records two track. And when it is full turn the other side then you have another track. So the maharaja was such a brilliant and evolved soul. And what he did is he made a listening copy. He kept the original recordings as it is and he had a listening copy. And there were a lot of interesting conversations between them. And I have heard with my own ears that how the sound of the conch came out of there, nasal. And it is even disbelieved, even today. And I have seen and had first-hand experience with all these things. You can catch hold of the throat of a Dhrupad singer, but he can still sing. The notes are not coming from the throat. It is believed that from the navel the sapta swaras are coming. Q: ok. R: so they evolve. 40 years, 50 years of a lifetime from the early childhood of 3 years, 4 years you are going on practicing. I mean maybe you would do a performance at the age of 40, as in when you evolve that much. In terms of your poetry, in terms of your understanding, in terms of your raga structure and more than anything the microtone ornamentation of each raga, ya know. They believe that in sa re ga ma, the sa and the re are meeting somewhere. Q: ok. R: so the microtone ornamentation of sa is meeting the microtone ornamentation of re – Q: hm R: when you are able to find that, that’s when you become a musician. You know we are talking about serious practice. Q: hm. R: and they also believe, which is quite true, because I have my close friend now who is Dhrupad musician. They believe that when the sapta swara’s are emanated, or when you are able to emanate sapta swara’s your Kundalini will rise and you will see Brahma. Q: ok. R: so when you reach that level is when you are performing. And you’re listening to those people, you know, my two years of entire listening is solidified there. So for me it was not just a project that I was restoring. Technical aspect, yes. A good part of me was that I studied in analog medium, you know. Q: yeah, hm.

371 R: I knew it in and out by the time I passed out. I mean I only used analog in the film school. And in this project as well. I only did one documentary in my life in analog, using the Nagra. Because when I came out it was the transition period, of very early period of digital. So I’ve also learnt what is digital. Q: hm. R: the basis of my knowledge comes from analog recording and analog technology. And I know why something is like that. Just a sheer experience of having this command over these two mediums. You see the peculiar nature of Udaipur is that there’s lake there, the Pichola Lake. From 14th century till today the whole palace is built around that. The palace is some 5 or 6 centuries old. 80% humidity, and the magnetic tapes are falling off. Q: hm. R: so my initial thing was to restore those tapes chemically and to find the same recorder. I mean look at the vision of this man. He had two recorders. Not just one, two recorders. And it was valve recorders. I had no clue about valve recording. Because we hadn’t studied it. Only one thing I knew. If you sit on a valve machine everything will blow. Q: LG R: if something is not blowing that’s not working. I connected both the recorders to see. Ok this valve is blowing here, this is not blowing. So just pull that up and put it here. So like that I got one machine working. And from there I started dumping material on the digital platform and the whole restoration happened like that. So I made an inventory. I didn’t know how to restore things, I didn’t know how to archive all these things. So I made my own devices and my own way and I realized that there was no order. It was all jumbled up. So I had to listen to every tape. I had to restore all and made sure that it can be run. So very delicately I handled everything and I managed to dump everything to the digital medium. Then after a year I got a call from the maharaja again and he said, “Look there are a few more tapes that we found in another cellar”. Q: hm. R: so I go there and I find out that those were all the missing tapes. Q: ok. R: From that earlier order, you know. So then I thought ya know it is very improper of me if I just keep it there. Ok, this man had the inclination to keep his father’s legacy but it has to come out to the market, everybody has to listen. And I being fortunate, ya know. So I got a musicologist come and have a look at all those things that we had. And

372 we launched a music company and sort of brought out some of the best renditions of Dhrupad that we haven’t even heard of. So like in today’s time if a singer is able to master seven or eight ragas that means you are a practicing professional singer. Q: hm. R: whereas these people knew thirty, forty ragas, you know, the ragas that we haven’t even heard of today. And their various rendition, you know, its own nature. And it is unbelievable stuff that I heard. I was being very very fortunate. So it wasn’t a job for me, it was a separate two years of life. Q: from there you came to work with sync sound, right? Was there another stage or a couple of stages in between? R: this is one of the things that I have done. In the film school I had formed two opinions, you know. That’s what the whole film school has done to me. Listening of course has come from the rigorous practice that we had. And when I was studying I used to wonder, when I see a European film or even a Hollywood film for that matter, even though it’s a trash film I find those films were believable. They were closer to life. Q: hm. R: there was something about them which I couldn’t sort of figure out for a long time. Then I realized it was the sound, the way the sound has been done. You know it has the ability to make certain people stars. It has the ability to make people believe that one can fly, you know, one can do super human things. And it was the sheer understanding of it. And I realized that it is mostly like live sound. Q: yeah. R: when you have live sound everything has to work around the original performance that you have captured. Even in acting it’s the same. There is soul in that performance I believe. If you are not using that performance of an actor you know I feel it’s like translating somebody’s work and what is lost in translation is the original itself. So for me it is that. And also I’ve felt that it is one idea that even we as Indians have, even Italians for that matter in a very strong way have a great tradition of dubbing. There is a tradition of ADR in films. Even with all that I would say it’s the biggest injustice that you can do to an actor and also to an audience. Q: yeah. R: you know audience is coming and buying a ticket to watch a movie because he is fixing an appointment with you. And the least that you can do is to respect that, you know. We go for a musical performance and if Michael Jackson comes and plays a CD and does lip sync with it, we won’t like it. For me it is exactly the same thing. So going back

373 to it I always believed that either I should have been in Hollywood or I should have been a professional in the 70’s in India. So I am in a wrong place in a wrong time. Q: LG. R: and I need to change it. So I decided for myself that if I come out of the film school I would do only live sound, period. Q: LG. R: I’ll not work in a film that I’ll have to dub, period. And the second thing was that, while we were working in the film school, the school always had a principle that you have to record the sound for your film. Your film is special, your film has your own sound. They will allow you to listen to the library sound but they will not allow you to use something from the library. So nothing from the library you can use it. When you are doing the music recording if you go and touch the equalizer they will knuckle. My professor used to knuckle my finger. Q: LG. R: because that is not to be used. Q: hm. R: “Go inside. Listen to the instrument. Make the mic hear what we are hearing, that’s your job.” That was the most important aspect. Make the mic hear, ya know. So I come from this very pure school of recording. Q: hm. R: those two things were very very solid for me. So coming back to that library, I realized that there are no qualified libraries for Indian sounds. There is nothing whatsoever, I mean people had personal collections because they would keep using it. And everything was centered around a mixing room, so there no concept of a sound designer as such. Q: hm. R: so you would be the sound recordist who basically will do the dubbing and do the Foley work and supervise everything and put in some sound effect. And everything else was done in the mix room. So even today in Hollywood the mix engineers pretty much hold a huge responsibility and a huge name and a position because of the same work culture. So a lot of things used to happen in the mix room. So all these sound mixers who had a command over the craft used to have their own collection. Q: hm.

374 R: so there was no collection available on a commercial basis. So when I came out I thought I’ll create one library for Indian sounds, so that was the idea of Indian sound effects, so my library of sounds have come out. Q: hm. R: so these were the two things that I wanted to do. And I only did these two things. If you ask me about the kind of work that I’ve done, these two things, nothing else. Q: LG. When we first heard the work in Slumdog Millionaire the thing that struck us, me personally, was the multitude of sounds, layers after layers, which we never heard before. This was a new experience of understanding the locale, the realistic environment that an Indian city offers. How did you conceive that layering of sound? It was not there at least in mainstream Indian cinema? R: See when I got the film, I had a poster of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting in my room, you know, in my film school room. So for me it was like, “what’s going on with me?” Q: LG R: and before I started working on Slumdog I saw Sunshine. And I was shocked by the film. I loved the film. I thought it was like a modern day Solaris. And I heard the sound. And I realized that this man is so sound. This man has belief in sound and its ability to move people. To work with him you have to be somebody else. And my task was basically to record live sound in Bombay. And we had discussions and all that. And I had no clue and thought it was a traditional film shooting. And just before this I did a film with Aamir Khan, you know. A film called Ghajini. Q: ok. R: on location, in Bombay. And to shoot with a star like Aamir on the street of Bombay, it was the most difficult thing you know. I thought I had mastered the art of recording sound on location with that film. So I went with that arrogance also. And the first day of the shoot I was looking at things and I couldn’t fathom what was happening. There were four or five cameras, constantly rolling you know. And I was trying to record everything perfect like the way you would do in a normal Hindi film. Q: hm. R: it took me a week to sort of figure out what to do. Q: hm. R: and I thought I had to do un-learning in/with this film completely, forget to record. Forget about how you professionally record a film. And my whole understanding was that – see, for example, you and me walking down the street and human brain has the ability to ignore everything that it doesn’t want to hear. So we are walking down the street and

375 there’s a lot of traffic, a lot of honking and there are a lot of people and everything. But if you are in an engaged conversation we will only be hearing that conversation. Q: hm. R: but if you keep a microphone there, microphone doesn’t have the intelligence of the brain. Q: hm. R: it will hear everything. My whole job, the whole idea behind Slumdog was that how can I make the microphone hear in the way I wanted to hear? Q: hm. R: so constantly I was analyzing how the human brain is processing sound at a given point. “How is it doing it?” And I was doing that. And I did this with a multi microphone and multi- tracking. Which I thought was a disastrous decision in the first place. Because in the noisiest environment you would choose the minimum number of microphones. Q: hm. R: because you don’t want the noise ratio in a high. Q: hm. R: so you’ pick up the minimum number of microphones, you wouldn’t pick up uni- directional microphones and all that. I did that for one week and I thought it’s terrible. The whole film was an unlearning for me in the sense that I forgot this aspect. Then I started recording the soundscape of Mumbai. We are given a scene and we have shoot here, I would record the soundscape of that particular acoustic environment. And within that the film is happening, within that I am focusing on one element, which is the spoken dialogue. And for me it is not just the spoken dialogue, everything was for my interest. So there was no concept of re-take. Or there was no traditional concept of taking a long shot, establishing shot, then a close shot, then a coverage, this that. That concept wasn’t there. There was an event enacted out for the camera to capture. And especially when we were working with the kids and most of them were untrained kids you know, from the slums and all that. We couldn’t rehearse and we couldn’t you know sort of know camera positions, movements n everything. Danny decided the camera angles. There were two cameras Danny would constantly look at. I take the feed from those two cameras. You know in film schools we always have looked down upon television guys. And when I passed out I did a lot of television. Very initial part of television when you are doing multi-camera work n multi-track, what you have done was live recording, live mixing. You look at 7 or 8 multi-cameras, and they’re switching and you are doing mixing accordingly. That came to my help.

376 Q: ok. R: I would mic up the whole area. Q: hm. R: and I would visually be watching what was happening. I would also capture watching what Danny is looking at, what the main cameraman is covering. And I would have multiple microphones, multiple booms, multiple fixed microphones, lapels. I had a 7.1 DBA hollow phone, you know. Which would capture the whole environment for me as it is. Q: hm. R: so sometimes I have done like 20-25 tracks of recording and I would be live mixing. I’ll look at it and I’ll mix it. I thought I was making the disastrous decisions in the professional career. Q: LG. R: and I then thought, “ok this is like a small film which these foreigners are making and which would run in some festivals and nobody would watch it. You know my reputation will be intact.” Q: LG. R: that is actually what I thought about that film. But when saw the first cut of the film I thought it was something very special. This is something special. And Danny had a different idea. Danny came to India and he saw people working and how Indian films are done and he just loved it. After the film is shot we went back and he said, “We will dub the whole film.” I said, ‘What?!’ I just got the shock of my life. He said, “It’s so fantastic!” I said, “What is fantastic?” He said, “We will make them enact. You know you guys do it so well”. The microphone is just there you know into your mouth, “fantastic. Just dub everything.” I said, “then?” then a new performance will evolve. Then we pick up and choose, ok this performance is good than that one, like that. I thought this man is mad! Q: LG. R: “and what happens to every work that I have done?” I said, “Danny everything is there, you just have to listen to everything that I have recorded.” So I called up the sound editors in London, who thankfully has won another Oscar this year for Gravity. And told Glenn that look this is what Danny is saying and ya know it’s shocking to me. So please pull up every track. Then he came back n said, “no we have listened to all the tracks. We thought the ten mixes were fantastic.” And of course few scenes we had to dub because of diction. Q: hm.

377 R: especially with Irrfan and I had a huge problem with Irrfan during the shoot. So whenever one line would come up and Danny would say, “I know what you’re going to say.” LG. because I have told him exactly the same thing during the shoot. So Slumdog for me was about how professionally or how well it could be recorded. When I was sitting in the Kodak theatre that day where all the nominations were played out. There was Wall –E, there was Batman Forever, there was Matrix, there was Quantum of Solace, James Bond. And there was Slumdog Millionaire, I mean this 12 million dollar film. And I still thought that I wouldn’t win the Oscar because there was one mistake I could still hear in the film on the very first shot. I could hear a wireless mic switching. Q: LG. ok. R: nobody heard it but I heard it and I know it’s there. And I thought I would lose it because of that because that’s a technical mistake. If I am an Academy member then I wouldn’t vote. You know what I mean? Q: hm. R: As if I would lose it because of that mistake. It has happened. Q: LG R: whatever has happened has happened, you know. And I kept analyzing, why? Why was I given an Oscar? I thought it was that one idea. Q: hm. R: so I keep telling students that you need to have an idea, a strong idea. The execution of that you know can be not so professional, it’s not well done you know. It can be bad. But the idea will still cut through. Some of the biggest compliments that I got from people are like, they told me like they could smell Bombay, because of the way the sounds are being played out you know. I think that was the beauty of Slumdog. A huge contribution done by Glenn Freemantle also, cutting and putting all the tracks together and creating a multi-layer aural experience. Q: but you also have worked previously before Slumdog in films with sync sound, for example, if I can remember, Black and Ghanjini. How was the experience different from Slumdog in that sense? R: like I said, all other films are very traditionally shot, you know. Q: hm. R: there was one camera, there was a long shot, there was a close-up and there was a mid-shot, you know. Q: hm.

378 R: scenes were played out in front of you beforehand so we knew what was happening. So we knew how an actor is behaving and what is the acoustic environment. And for a film like Black it was more sensitive, it was more sensitivity ya know. It was more about how low I want to hear and how high it can go. It was the first time for example a mission like Quarter Drive was used, it was the first time in India a 24-bit recording was tried out. Q: ok. R: and I chose that because of knowing the nature of Mr. Bachchan’s performance. Mr. Bachchan listened to a lot of classical music you know he is very operatic. So his performance in Black is very operatic it seems you know. He just speaks so softly and suddenly he would go like that high. Q: yeah. R: so I needed something. And it’s also about touch, you know. Q: yeah. R: these sounds were creating meaning. These were the meanings of the film. So I wanted a system where everything can be captured, even this minute sound can be captured and the loudest expression can be contained. Q: hm. R: so I chose a Quarter Drive with 24 bit recording and 48 KHz. And I custom designed a board ya know with cooked sound. I mean that was the board that won me an Oscar again. Q: LG. R: so that is it. And also for me, especially when I am recording, of course I am trying to do justice to an actor’s performance, period, that’s the first and foremost thing. I listen to them very carefully when they are rehearsing n all. And I choose the microphone as per what they are trying to do. There were situations where Bachchan would tell me that, “Resul, I am going to use my eyes in this sequence.” And I exactly knew what he means, so which means everything that he is saying I want the brilliance of that track to be recorded as it is. I want it to be extra brilliant. I want the higher harmonics of his vocals to come through, I want them to behave in a wooden room. I want that to be captured. So I immediately chose you know 9 and 82 microphones, which you wouldn’t do in indoor scenario. Q: hm. R: See I have thought unconventionally. I mean I didn’t know I was thinking unconventionally, now when I look back it was unconventional. Because you wouldn’t

379 choose a microphone that would give a tunnel effect in a situation like that, you know you would choose a modal one microphone or a shotgun mic in a situation like that. Q: hm. R: but I didn’t want that. So I needed to have also people with me who’d understand all this. My boom man Ghulam Sheikh who was bang on there. If you would make a minute ya know two degree shift my sound will change, and he knew it that it will change. Over the period I have also trained people in such a way that they are with me, ya know. They are with me in the heart and soul of what I am doing. Q: hm. R: so for me Black was all about meanings of sound. And what would a person be hearing when he is deaf. The questions that I analyzed are what is darkness? Is darkness absence of light? Then if it is, how do you capture darkness in cinema? You need to throw some light. So is silence an absence of sound? So do you need some sound at least to know if it’s silent? And that some sound, is it just above the track noise? Because there is no silence in cinema you know, there is always the sound of an SST. You see, so is it the sound of SST? Or is it something that is just above the SST that an audience won’t perceive? Why are we hearing a pin falling, which you wouldn’t hear in natural life? So there is something else. So what is that which is working? Q: hm. R: what is the conscious process that an audience goes through when they’re watching a movie? That is what I experimented with Black. And especially analyzing like what it is! What is the difference between film and television, you know? I realized it’s the rhythm. Television is beat. Q: hm. R: it goes with anything. It’s like the music that is going on there. You know it’s there, television in a house it’s there. It doesn’t bother us. But film is rhythm because it comes into you. Like I said, when the audience have taken an appointment and come to you they are coming with something. What is that they are coming with? I realized when you sit in a dark room, people are hearing, people are listening. They are listening to their own breath. They are listening to their heartbeat. And that breath is directly related to what you see on screen. So there is this conversation, which the audience doesn’t know. What I did in Black is completely playing around with this rhythm. Like at least I manifested it. So some time with a lot of sound, some time with absence of sound, you know I have put in a microphone inside a Shankha (conch shell) and captured what is the trapped air inside a Shankha and I recorded pieces of ambiences and I removed all the

380 living elements from that ambience, and just kept that as an ambient track. So people heard those sounds and they haven’t deciphered it, what it is. But I know what I have done, and this is what I’ve done. There is an absence of life. I mean it’s also helped me while I’m sort of trying to understand what deaf and mute people do. Then we were travelling from Chandigarh to Shimla. We had to travel from Delhi to Chandigarh, we had a driver. So this blind man who was with us as a trainer, you know we had to travel in that small propeller planes. So you’ve to walk to the airplane. Q: hm. R: so as to hearing anything he said, “I’m hearing some hmmm sound”, which means he is hearing, the sound is muted. When he was at the location we just moved an HMI light around here. I said, “did you see anything?” he said, “I saw some flash, something passing.” So there is something. Or it may be an impression of something. And I did play with those impressions. You know I closed ambiences, I opened it, I switched it on, switched it off. And sometime just with spoken dialogue, spoken words. Just picking up how vibrations would behave you know in a particular place. Just spoken words had to be designed at places. So I seriously worked with that in Black. And when it came out, first time in Indian cinema, people thought that good sound can also bring good production value. Q: LG. R: so that’s set the ball rolling for me. From there I haven’t looked back. Till then I was struggling. Even though I have done similar better jobs, difficult jobs. It is not about you know you doing a difficult job. It’s about that small little step that you’ve taken on the way, which would completely shift and change the way people think about things. I mean it is over many years, you know a film like Highway for example, that has done that wonder again you know. When wrote during that weekend only is that “Go watch this film for Sound design.” So it took someone 15 years you know to capture. So I’ve been working on the oral literacy of the Indian audience. That’s the only thing that I’ve been doing. Q: hm. I have experienced Highway on headphones. Even in headphones while watching it on YouTube or some other online medium access in Denmark (it is very difficult to find Indian films even in theaters in Denmark), I understand that the landscape is presented to me through sound using a multitude of layers and a rich amount of ambience. It’s not only inspiring, but it’s also a kind of a reference of how sync sound can be used, and for the use of ambience. So again: how did you come to that presentation of sound in terms of these rich layers of ambience?

381 R: see again in Highway I was analyzing landscapes. When it’s a road movie it’ll move from one place to the other and it travels over six states of India. And of course ambience has become a huge play. It starts from the very rough and rustic Haryana and then travels down to the cool valley of Kashmir. Now there the question is, what is silence to you? Is silence like no sound? Or because of Dolby and digital projection these days there’s no SST anymore. What is the SST now is the ambient noise of a multiplex. It could be the adjacent cinema, it could be the AC noise. Or it could be a wrong surround speaker that is fluttering away, you know. It could be anything. Q: hm. R: and all the times we had SST we could bank on it, we knew that 45 db is going to come from the SST. Now we have no clue. So everything is silence. So then I thought, what is silence in cinema? Silence in cinema is something that you have to arrive at, it doesn’t exist. And silence doesn’t exist for me. I have to arrive at it. And that’s what I’ve done in Highway. And for me silence is landscape. Sometime I’ve built landscape and then mask it. Because there are so many other elements that you don’t experience in silence. Sometime I just thin out everything. And I’ll show you the snippets of that ambience, you know. That is what I have done from state to state, you know from moment to moment. I just sculpted oral elements and sometime I just you know put it all together, so that it is cluttered with a sense of rhythm. Sometimes I just took everything out. So I’d just gone in and out of the characters mind, just played with that even in the very beginning, the kidnap scene. It’s like BOOM, the first gunshot goes overhead and switched off, just come out. How we were able to shift focus from one thing to the other. And what do you want to see in a picture? That was again another question that I was dealing with in Highway. What do you want the audience to see? It’s driven by sound. And I was trying to anchor the picture with sound. That is done through sheer sculpting of ambience sound. It can be anything, it need not necessarily be culturally true, it need not necessarily be the sound of that space. It was anything and everything. It could be wind, it could be some chanting, I picked up anything and everything. And we did a lot of recordings. The sound of the truck for me was, you know, I was that to be hugely alive. So I did like a multiple microphoning and just went around with the truck and recorded. The truck was talking to me at levels, at points. And I did it a bit commercial. And the film per say was a very dark film. Q: hm. R: I mean if you look at the one line subject of the film - the story of this film is to get kidnapped, which means sexually abused. It’s not a mainstream subject, you know.

382 Q: hm. R: and I wanted that film to be accessible, I wanted people to come and watch it. So first half of the film I kept it thoroughly realistic. I removed music - so much music was there. I mean the kind of economics that worked for Rahman, I mean when I remove one piece of music then people think that, “Hello, 10000 dollar gone man!” Q: LG R: I just didn’t listen to anything. I said, “Do you want people to come and watch this movie? Or do you want this movie to be a music video?” so the second half of the movie I made it like a musical. Q: hm. R: so the darkness of the movie is still there but it’s held a back. So it doesn’t come across to you as a shocking dark movie but it will come across to you as a movie where you feel this can happen to you too. So that was the approach in Highway. Q: now coming to a more conceptual or theoretical question - may be a little bit philosophical - but I think I must ask you this question. What do you think that ambience does to cinema – the role of ambience not only in cinema in general but also in your own work? R: ambience just to life, for example, why you feel about anything in a particular way in a place? It’s because of the ambient sound. Q: hm. R: why do you think you feel calm when you go and sit on a seashore? Why do you think you are calm when you are in a valley, when you look at mountains? There’s a Japanese saying that, “All deep things are silent.” The ocean, the mountain you know, everything is silent. What happens when we go there? I believe in those places we are hearing longer expressions of sound, you know. Q: hm. R: and when you’re in a city what happens, in a city like Mumbai or Pune or Kolkata, you feel jittery. Everything is like you know that you’ve to do, you’ve to just finish this. You are hearing shorter expressions of sound. You are also hearing high frequency sounds more than low frequency sound. This is not so much of a frequency issue but it is expressions’ issue. When you are listening to the valley birds they are longer chords, they are not short chords. So all longer expressions of sound is going to put you at ease. We have a constant interaction with what we are hearing outside, whether or not you are listening. Our body is constantly interacting with what is around us. I’ve come across a

383 very recent study wherein they found that the cells in your body, every cell in a body is spinning on its own axis, like the way the earth is spinning. Q: hm. R: it is termed as some Matrix, I forgot what it was. And when you feel pain in a muscle in a part of your body, which means that the equilibrium is lost. So you apply external heat or something, that’s the modern pain management treatment, and you put them back to its original spinning frequencies. I think ours is 8 Hertz to 432 Hertz. And this 432 Hertz is a very very strong frequency. That is the equilibrium frequency of this entire universe. That’s the base frequency. And if you hear any piece of music that’s is tuned to 432 Hertz you have peace, calm. The new researches are going towards that. The base frequency of all the musical instruments is not 423, its 448 now. I mean many centuries ago someone has said this. And we’ve moved away from this you know. Q: hm. R: the old norm, violence that we know today, were tuned into 432. And there is a whole school of thought that is trying to go back to this base frequency of 432. And once you go back to it everything is at ease, everything is at peace. So for me it’s a variation. Every ambience sound that you are hearing your body is constantly interacting with it. And you feel in a particular way in a particular place is because of what you are hearing there. And I constantly analyze this. It is this experience that I try to put it across through my audience. And the difference in cinema and life for me is that I make them hear in cinema. And in life they don’t generally hear. Everything that you hear in a film is being consciously put in there. Nothing comes accidental in a film. Everything someone has thought about it consciously and put it at that level, at that distance, that frequency in that place you know. Geometry is being defined. And we are today talking about 3-D sound you know, immersive sound. And for me sound is already immersive. Sound has this beautiful quality of allowing yourself to go inside a picture. For me whatever happens in the picture – whether it is the so-called three dimensional – it is two-dimensional. It’s touched from left to right, you know, you scan it from left to right. So it cannot go to the three-dimensional plane. And that plane is only a projected image, ya know. When you see things in real life it is a two-dimensional picture. But when you hear something it is already immersive. So the kinds of new experiments that are happening with the sound format in cinema is about how you can make an already immersive element? What is the three-dimensional experience of sound? Is it making an already immersive element more immersive? But this can only be done with ambience sound. And it is not real. The immersive experience that you hear in a cinema is not real. It is making an already

384 immersive element projected a more outward immersive experience and make you believe that it’s an immersive experience. The real essence of an immersive element is that it is already there and it is constantly interacting with your body. Q: how do you differentiate between the two perspectives: when you call “realistic” and you say, “this is not real”? For example, you made a statement that though you wanted to fast up the pace of Highway you wanted to keep a realistic representation. The immersive quality of sound is not real you said. R: no that’s not what I said. See three-dimensional sound experience say like a Dolby Atmos or a 3-D oriented sound for example, they call it immersive sound. Q: hm. R: you know the three-dimensional sound in a tagline for commercial aspects they call it immersive sound. So I was talking about that. Q: hm. R: I’m saying sound is immersive. It doesn’t have to be extra immersive as the tagline says. And what according to them is immersive? According to them immersive is a height layer that you are listening to somewhat in one plane, which is the plane of the picture. Ok? My point of view is sound is already immersive, even in a mono film, in a mono track it is immersive. Because we always played with sound that are outside the frames. You look at Tarkovsky’s films, you look at Bresson’s film, they only did that. It had created meanings. Bresson would sweep a time, years with just one footstep, like the way he did in L’Age Dor for example. He would sweep time with just one sound of a slap. We as filmmakers always thought, what is the sound outside the frame, which can create meaning? We were always working with images as sound. So for me sound is immersive. It’s spherical in nature, it is already allowing the audience to go immersive. Then what is the immersive nature of this three-dimensional sound? Are you making an already immersive element, more immersive? Or are you going to give me a geometrical expression of sound? What are you doing? And if you are going to give me geometrically specified things, I’m saying it may not be real. It is not real. Q: hm. R: but it is an experience. For example, in Auro you hear a sense of height. They divide the screen into two. There’s always been a 3/2 aspect of the picture screen where the sound is coming from. They have managed to divide that into two planes now. There is a height layer, there is a plane almost on above the screen and goes up over the head. Q: hm.

385 R: so what is that it is doing? It is giving me a sense of height. If I’m in a room I’m sensing reverb coming from the top, which actually if you are in the real experience you are hearing it like that. But you are not sensing it like that, you are not perceiving it like that. I’m saying even in a room where I’m just playing with a two-track reverb like the way I played in the last sequence of Highway where the girl is narrating about what happened to her, I just played that. You are still sensing the height. So it is already immersive. So what are you going to do? What are you doing for making it to be extra immersive? Is it the sense of height? Or is it that I’m able to point the sound there or there, as you are doing Dolby Atmos? Q: hm. R: or am I able to pull sound out of the screen? So those were the aspects that I was saying. Q: how do you see this particular transition from mono to stereo, a small history of stereo, and then to surround and into Atmos? R: I mean it’s more driven by business. If you are seriously looking at the philosophical aspects of sound it’s there, already it is there. Q: hm. R: rest everything is an exposition. It is a filmic exposition of what is already there. You know you’re just making me more aware of it. When I do a film in Dolby Atmos what I’ll feel more kicked about is that I can pull that one layer of ambience just off the screen. Imagine a situation, if you are in the water. Q: hm. R: there are water lapping’s which I could put out of the screen, which goes into the first two objects in Dolby Atmos. I think that’s a great possibility. You know I can just put something up there, in that lane. It’s a great possibility. Like I said I am building the canvas, the landscape. I have more planes now. I mean those planes are already there. You know we always worked with that. In film some people have only worked with those planes. I’m just giving a physical expression to it now, that’s what the technology allows me to do. Q: in mono the sound was coming from behind the screen. So it was more or less connected to the screen space. In stereo the speakers were a bit widened, and the sound was coming from the two corners, more or less. But in surround, sound started to come from the behind, while in Atmos or 3-D it’s not only surrounding our behind, it’s even on top of our head. How will you explain this transition and widening of the space?

386 R: like I said, it’s more exposition of our experience. It’s like what were we as human race? We were hunters. We were more tuned to the sound that was coming from behind us because we were hunters. I mean that’s why I respect Bresson the most, what you see is what you don’t hear. What you hear you don’t see. Highway I worked fully with that concept. What you see you are not hearing. So what is this immersive format trying to do is exploring this possibility of human brain. That we are 35% more extra sensitive to the sound that’s coming from behind you. Q: hm. R: and it has a danger in storytelling because suddenly you are elsewhere you know. Q: yeah distraction. R: no how you are able to control this and yet create the feeling that you are enveloped in sound is the possibility of the medium. And people have experienced that in Gravity for example, to a great deal. Q: do you have any comments on this extra space - off-screen space? R: see that’s what I’m saying, we always worked with them. Sound design is all about that extra spaces, those images those were not there on the screen. We have always dealt with off-screen sounds. Now I am able to concretize it. For me what sound does to picture? When you see a picture is very abstract, it has abstract meaning. Or let me put it the other way. It is very intangible. Picture becomes tangible the moment I put sound into it. So what am I doing by putting sound? I am concretizing the meaning of an abstract. Q: hm. R: you see, now I’m able to put geometry into it, with the new sound, with the new format. I can geometrically play sound. When I’m building that canvas I can build planes. Because I have so many sources. Q: hm. R: the theatres is no more the two dimensional picture that you see. You know it’s a whole Parabola. It’s an old thing that makes the screen. It’s a whole space above you, space around you, it’s a whole thing that converges to. So you are sitting in that parabola as an audience. I am tossing you around in that geometrical space that I’ve created for you. Q: but in mono this geometrical space was not present. It was merged with – R: no it was still there. It was deep, it was in one plane. It was either left or right or far away. In mono the sound was only about – was it far away? Was it closer to you? Or was it far away from you? So we only explored that distance you know, what is away from us

387 on a horizontal plane. There were few people who never experimented. We experimented a little bit. And even then in the surround format the sound was in the horizontal plane all around you but, now we have the height and things that connects you to that. So you are putting the audience into a framework. And the triangle that forms with a three- dimensional picture from the two-dimensional plane you know, it just converges and it goes like that. So in picture there’s a triangle, there’s a prism, there’s a cube, like this top - like that you know. Even the two dimensional picture, it’s like that. Q: X, Y. R: I don’t know if it’s an X, Y, it’s one corner of a prism. Q: ok. R: so you are sitting here, that’s a two-dimensional screen. From there it is converging – top, bottom and the sides. So you are seeing a horizontal projection of a picture. If you are watching a three-dimensional picture, you see this angle is formed – convergence. Q: ok. R: it is a prism, one side of it. So you are placed against a picture prism, half of the prism. From there I have an envelope like that going behind me and I have an envelope like that. So I’m in a three dimensional parabola in terms of sound. Q: hm. R: so the possibilities are huge that I am still working with that one thing which is what is off that screen. Which is already immersive. Q: more surrounding speakers means that off screen or off the screen sound can be more malleable. Do you think that off the screen sound can be more flexible for designing? R: what is the immediate meaning of that? The immediate meaning is that, you look at that square. I can pull that square close to you with sound, just sound nothing else. I can pull that closer to you. Q: what does that do to the audience? R: they would sense it. Just giving you a small example, imagine that the characters are in the water, in the sea, in the middle of an ocean. Q: hm. R: even if there’s a wind you’ll see water sounds, there are water lapping’s and I imagine that the camera is in the water level. Q: hm. R: there’ll be waves that are coming at you, to the camera. Where will that wave end? If you are a person who is watching that it will end and go beyond you. So it will extend,

388 lend itself out to the outward plane on the screen. I can place it now, I can define that space. Where will the wind go? Do you ever hear a wind in a sea? Q: no. R: unless it just blows in your ear. But there is, there is a space for that. There is an atmospheric sound, which I can place it now. I can pull that out of the screen. Q: but in mono we couldn’t place. R: it was all collapsed into that mono source which would have made it into a mush. Now with these formats every sound has a meaning. You know I did a recording, I was doing a Hollywood film which is called Gandhi of the Mandir, it’s gonna soon come out with a famous actor from Hollywood. So I was recording that film in 96K. I was experimenting the possibilities of 96K you know. And for me the concept of noise just vanished with that, with the 96K capability. Everything is a palpable sound, there’s no noise, there’s no mush, there’s no muck, everything is a sound, which has direct or indirect meanings. So I started recording in surround sound, the whole film I recorded in surround sound. And I edited that sound and went over to Hollywood to mix that film because I couldn’t mix it here. Nobody had the 96K capability. When I went over there and eventually I had to work in an analog set up because ya know eventually it has a comeback and record at a 48K just for mastering purposes. Q: hm. R: so I found there was only one studio in Hollywood, which was like the last analogue setup. I had to walk in there and work with this track. And I realized that everything is a palpable sound. And I started understanding what is number of bits and what does a fourier analysis does. What a recording system is doing? They are just doing a fourier analysis. What they are doing is playing with my hearing. There’s no historisis any more. There is a historisis happening in your ear response. So what is it doing? The system is eliminating the number of bits that it doesn’t want or it can’t hold. In a 96-24 situation you have everything. You have more information you know, it can hold far more information than it can otherwise have. So when I convert it down from 96 to 48 it’s just leaving out some similar information, which you think is not required. But I am still getting more information than I would have originally got. So that’s why there is no noise in filmmaking anymore. Everything is sound. Q: LG. R: it was such a huge revelation for me. For me that is an immersive experience. I am going right inside that frame, every frame that I am watching.

389 Q: does it not give the sound designer or the sound practitioner a greater responsibility to handle sound? R: oh yes. I mean you have to constantly analyze what is happening, what it is doing. See, what is sound design all about? I am manifesting human emotion everyday with whatever sound that I am putting in. I want them to feel in a particular way. And what is that feeling? I have to first experience that. And I am actually transposing my experience to them. And I believe that they’ll experience the same way that I’ve experienced it. So for me my experience is the primordial thing, most prime thing. And if I experienced it then I am sure audience will experience it. And I have a strong belief and a connection. Q: take for example this film Gandhi that you were talking about. If you mix it on mono, how will you do the design? As you said, the surround recordings that you were working for in this film have almost a lack of any noise. How will it sound like if it’s mixed in mono? And how will your methodology work in that sense? I’m just trying to understand the very conceptual difference in perception between mono and the surround. R: it’s very simple. It’d become a pointed source information on a simple layman level, become a point of source. What does the ear do then? Q: hm, exactly. R: The ear will ignore what it doesn’t need. If it’s too much information coming from one source, ear will ignore. That’s what the system would do. When you’ve recorded something in 96-48 you’ll bring it down to 48-24 or 48-16. Q: hm. R: what the number of bits does, it does not keep the information that are similar. Or information that are least needed is being left out because of there’s no capability/space to keep it. This I feel is directly related to ear response. Ear is also doing the same thing. What happens in a surround situation, in a surround format? When all the channels are below, what happens? What would you hear? Q: I’ll hear the spatial representation, not only coming from one source but different sources. R: everything is zero. Will you be hearing everything zero? Where is your attention? So what did Dolby do as a system in its encoding process, when everything was 100%? It left out few things that the ear wouldn’t notice at all. So it was very intelligent coding, and encoding and decoding system. Q: hm. R: because information has to go in 24, you know every information was recorded between the frames, in between the 24 sprockets. So you have one block, four blocks in

390 one frame. So it had to eliminate a few things. And when you are doing linear PCM encoding, like in a CD for example, or in a DVD like the way DTS does, it doesn’t have to do that. It doesn’t have constraints of space. Now let me just take this question backward. Why do we feel still those old recordings are beautiful than these latest digital recordings? Why does analog sound so beautifully? Q: hm. R: it had a problem. The problem was the sweetness. Magnetic recording technology had its own issues. Optical recording technology had tremendous issues. The lowest level of optical recording was fighting against with the noise, for the photographic noise, ya know the running noise, the thermal noise of the photographic medium. The valve couldn’t move below a certain frequency. Below 80 you’ve never heard in films. It also couldn’t vibrate beyond a certain number of frequencies. So similarly the magnetic head couldn’t be thinner than a certain thinness. So ya know in magnetic video analyzing magnetic flex, you know something called historicis, the curve stats. It goes up, comes down, it’s like a dolphin’s face, like a penguin in more of that sense. So that’s a magnetic flex, historicis, it’s a curve. Because of the historicis curve whatever is recorded through magnetic medium had bend low end and high end, it did bend itself. If you look at the ear response, the log rhythmic curve quite like the exposure curve in film, it also has a log rhythmic expression. It’s quite post the historicis curve, at least in shape and if not anything else. So the analog sounded somehow very close to our ear, close to reality. Q: hm. R: but when the magnetic technology came there was no historicis, nothing. And we were very plain and simple, blunt people, 2o hertz to 20 kilohertz, people faithfully recorded and faithfully reproduced. Which we are not used to, hello, what are these new things that I am hearing? So all the digital recording sounded clinical, even though that is the faithful reproduction. But it’s not something that we are used to. Q: hm. R: you know it’s like you listen to a concert in person and you listen to the same concert played through a system, it’s too different. Q: hm. R: what is missing? Q: information is not missing. R: what is missing was in the second case it was a reflected sound. Q: ok.

391 R: so what happens in a digital recording? They are all in zeros and ones. But how does the sound come through all those zeros and ones? Because our ear makes some approximations. It is like persistence of vision. Have you ever heard of a CD forwarded? Do you hear blocks? Do you hear that sound? When you play at normal speed you don’t hear it. So there is a persistence. So all the corners are bent. So you hear what is called the persistence of hearing. So everything is an approximation. How good you are to make that approximation is how everything is, the perception of everything is about. So when all this information collapsed into one, so much information and some information are similar, which when it will add up it will be a mush. So what you listen from a pointed source, it need not necessarily be. That dog is a pointed source but it is spread across a spectrum you know. It’s pointed because it is giving me a sense of direction. It is only a sense of direction. So it’s hinting me about a geometrical space, that’s what the new formats are trying to do. And you asked me that, what an ambience sound does? What does it do? Let’s analyze in its functionality. What is sound in cinema? For me cinema by itself, it’s a continuum of time and space. Q: hm. R: the sound is a temporal element. An ambience is directly the time. Any piece of ambience that you put it gives me a temporal information, immediately. And not coming into the anthropological aspect of it, let’s keep that discussion aside at the moment. Temporal element, simple. It can be time of the day, day or night. It can be seasons. It can be spaces. It can give information about an acoustic space – a cave, a hall, a stadium. It can give you that. So it’s constantly reminding what is the space and what is the temporal element related to that. And if you are able to conceive this as an element of design, like the way a brush stroke is designed, I mean it’s the concept of painting. There can be color, there can be hue, there can be light and shadow, there can be strokes, we can pick up anything. So you can pick up any of these aspects of an ambient sound and conceive it as an element of design and work with it. But this is something that you don’t experience. I mean you don’t realize it in real life. But you are constantly experiencing it. What we do with ambience sound in cinema? We are trying to de-codify our experiences and putting it across to you as a new experience. So we do it constantly from a pointed source to a jointed space. That is what technology allows us to do and that is a transition. Q: do you think that temporal aspect of ambience is transformed into a more spatial aspect in surround? R: oh yes. Like I said I can have a sense of height in a room.

392 Q: but in mono it would be more temporal aspect of it. R: it would just be an immediate meaning. Q: yes. In surround it becomes not just an immediate meaning, but something more beyond that. R: I can emulate a perception just by the way of hearing. So in a cinema hall when you go, I am actually making you listen by virtue of hearing. But in real life you are just hearing, you are not listening. Q: hm, yeah. It is to make the audience attentive, or make them coming to their attention. R: everything is brought to them. “Ok, now feel this way.” This is what the space is, this is what the thing is. The pin has fallen, you know. I am making you feel every time, I need not necessarily be true to that image, what works for that image. Like glass fall may not be the most correct glass sound or most perfect glass sound. What suits that picture is the right sound. Or in a way constantly with sound what we are doing is we are making you believe. Rather making the audience feel that there couldn’t have been any other sound but this. And that is very subjective. As soon as I am able to make you feel that there couldn’t have been any other sound, I’m done. That need not necessarily be the correct, the perfect, the true, the genuine sound. Rain need not necessarily be the rain itself. It can be sugar falling on a paper. Q: LG. R: we cheat every time. We are business people in one level constantly manifesting your emotions. We are constantly cheating you. And to put you in a make belief world. Q: in that sense sync sound is more faithful than dubbed sound. R: see sync sound is something that is directly related to an actor’s performance. What do I sense from a sync sound? An actor’s performance. How he or she is reacting to an acoustic environment. There are three things that I’m dealing with – there’s an ambient noise, over which an actor’s performance, a behavior of an actor’s performance within that acoustic environment. If I don’t have an understanding of these three elements I can’t be faithful to an actor’s performance. And that is as it is happening. But I keep manipulating it even in a live sound. I do de-noising, we don’t want those unwanted sound. I might add more elements. I have done a less than 2% of de-noising in a film like Highway. Q: ok. R: what did I do? I added more elements. I bent things around, an already embedded temporal element, you know. So what is actually embedded there you didn’t perceive it.

393 So I masked it. And when I needed to take it out I de-noised it. What is the possibility of an ambient sound in cinema apart from the immediate meanings of ambient sound? I can control the drama. If I just take out ambience completely when two people are talking, I can isolate them. Or I can just throw them into the ocean, just by putting every sound possible. So I have the ability to close and open spaces, philosophically speaking. Q: hm. R: which an audience will immediately perceive. You will immediately feel it. We make the audience feel immediately. In real life it is over a period of time. So we basically, even though we’re working with temporal element, very direct immediate temporal element, we are shrinking the possibility of that temporal element. We are constantly expanding time and shrinking it. We are constantly plying with time. I think the only person who understood this is Einstein, when he talked about relativity. Q: how do you see the future of working with sound in cinema primarily giving attention to the sense of spatialization? R: it’s like I said that only formats are going to change. I am going back to what I said in the very beginning. Q: hm. R: sound is already immersive. You don’t have to do anything. See that’s what we Indians believe in, primordial sound. There was one thing called Aryamaadam, the first sound, which is “Om”. There was something preceded by silence and followed by more silence. We are the only civilization who believes in it. Teach/preach was about that. That comes from a country and civilization that has given the universe a sound. A sound preceded by silence followed by more silence and that sound is “Om”. That’s why it has to come back. And today we are sadly the only civilization in the world who has completely forgotten where we came from. Q: yeah probably the kind of loud monitoring in studios doesn’t allow you to think - they don’t allow you to realize or maybe respect silence, which is beyond that immediacy. But I am slowly a bit worrying that probably I am taking a lot of your time. R: no, it’s ok. I mean you’ve come from very far, it should be useful for you. My interview, it should come to some use. Q: yes, of course. R: I hope it was worth it. Q: very much. These questions often appear and they don’t find a satisfactory answer, just thinking. So meeting you and talking to you is like putting light on these questions and trying to figure out the contours of the questions. And then the answer is appearing

394 slowly. That’s what I’ll be working on in my dissertation to frame these answers and talking with you will be instrumental to find that direction. But I think not only the way sound is made in the industry, probably these thoughts - these concepts – not only technical thoughts but philosophical thoughts, I believe, are also necessary at a certain point. R: I mean whatever I am speaking to you is not related to the practice, everybody’s practice. But when I am doing something I know where all this makes sense. I am doing the things in a certain way because I am aware of it ya know. And my awareness came from the practice. I am consciously doing it and sometime purely go by instinct. I want that sound, when I watch some visuals some sounds come to me. And for me the whole film is in search of that one sound that has come into me. I mean I don’t theorize it then. Q: ok, you are instinctive. R: yeah. Like when I was doing Saawariya, I was recording in deep jungle, you know in the middle of the night. I was recording and I was just standing on a pond and I was just recording and I was listening to the sound. You know it was post-midnight. I started listening and I realized every creature in this universe has a frequency playing. There were layers and layers. There were the crickets, the layers of people all on the ground. There were other sounds, which were slightly off the ground. There were sounds, which were slightly above the ground. There were sounds that were surrounding me, which were the wind. And there were expressions of that wind like the leaves rustling and everything. So there’s this whole globe, which has its own sound. And every creature has been given its own frequency layer. And it’s in such a beautiful harmony, you know. And when I am aware of that harmony I have my place. And I suddenly heard one fish just plonked out of the pond. I was recording on a lake, it just came out. And suddenly all my assistants vanished. I saw a tiger standing across the lake looking at me. And I was not bothered by him. He probably looked at me, stood there, I was in this communion, and he retracted. I finished my recording and I came back all me assistants were shivering in the car. And when I was recording it started raining, and I was aware of this whole thing, this whole universe, this whole earth, and I realized this whole bloody huge piece of mass is spinning on its own axis. And it’s also moving in its elliptical path with a huge sound, which we are not hearing, ya know. So the whole energy is the sound. When I was aware of it, it started raining. So I had to retract and come back. When I came back to the car these boys were shivering. They said, “sir, there was a tiger there! You don’t listen to anything we say, we won’t come to work with you. We’ll die!” I said, “Nothing will happen.” Because Saawariya was based on Dostoevsky’s book Four nights of a

395 Dreamer/ White Nights and it was about four nights. So for me it was extremely important to find those four nights in the film. One prior to the rain, and one post rain and the night that is snowing. The biggest kick for me was that to find these four nights through sound. And when the film was released somebody called me from New York and he said, “I heard so many things. And I am hearing, I know what you are working with.” For me at that moment the conversation is complete. And I am trying to make these conversations in all of my films. And someone in some part of the universe hears that and calls me back and says that, “I’ve heard it”, for me that conversation is complete. You know I am aware of what is binding us in a very molecular level to a level of the universe. And that’s what makes the planet Earth so special, so darn special. Q: LG. R: and it is this understanding of me is what I’m trying to transpose. Q: another question coming to my mind now is the sense of place. Because Saawariya is rather a fictitious/fictional place. R: it doesn’t matter for me. Q: ok. R: like take a concept of a romantic poetry. There was a night, and two lovers met, and there was moonlight. Where the fuck comes the moonlight from I don’t care a damn. Q: LG R: there has to be a “Kalpanic” (imaginary) thing in our life, that’s what dreams are made of. If there is no imagination, what are we left with? Why do we have to put meaning, why do we have to specify? So where does the abstract come from? And if there is no abstract where is the sense of art? Where is a sense of the other? I was the most disappointed when in Saawariya I was trying to do that. I know in everybody it affected me the most. What Bresson has done, what Visconti has done, what Sanjay has done – within the realm of Indian cinema. What is Indian entertainment? It is, I am going back to Dhrupad. Every entertainment in our country, in our civilization centered around a temple. Every practice is musical or otherwise. Classical art was practiced around a temple. So it was rather called a temple art. Everything emanated from that. And the other end of it was the folk tradition. Everything emanated from the hut, everything emanated from the roots, from the earthiness. These two things can never meet. It can only go parallel. And you know that two parallel lines will never meet. But it will meet, it will meet in infinity. It is yours and my purpose to find that infinity. So the entertainment as we know today is evolved from a dance-drama tradition. Q: hm.

396 R: which is so profoundly for me - you know Udai Shankar has done a Bengali cinema. You know Kalpana. Q: yes. R: I have seen it with my own eyes, ya know. I have grown up in a small village in Kerala, where everything was the temple. Q: hm. R: every activity was around the temple, the festivities you know. And we all lived under a tree, every temple had a tree. We sat under the tree and we exchanged ideas, we exchanged life, we saw, we enjoyed. Everything under a tree. Ghatak said, “Go and find your tree.” That’s what the opening shot of Meghe Dhaka Taara does to me. Everyone has a tree, Valmiki we found one, Buddha found one, Prophet found his own tree, Guru Nanak found his own tree. Every sage, every wise man they found it. Because it’s a part of our living. Every sense of that comes from it. So when Saawariya, a very alien Russian novel, story, that I was making over a bridge and falling in love, something I am waiting for. He transposed that against the dance-drama tradition of Indian cinema, ya know. I thought it was fantastic. It is so damn difficult to take Dostoevsky, to control him ya know, to put him in these pockets. He is not palpable. I think it was too much of an art school film. You take Four nights of a dreamer, you take Visconti’s, and you take Saawariya. Tell me which one you liked. Tell me very culture specifically. Would you like the non- committal European subtleties and the grace, I want to achieve grace. Like what you see in Christianity. That was a more direct meaning of Visconti and the Hollywood version of it. Or something that is very based on dance-drama tradition. I think as an Indian I would go as in I like the subtlety of European but that’s in academics. Q: yeah, it’s a question of choice - it’s also a question of taste. But from that tradition, dance-drama tradition, I think, since I have seen the film, Saawariya has a mis-en-scene that might be a little disrupting in some sequences. R: see I am not bothered about what I am seeing, the discussion is not about what you see or how you see. Q: why did it fail? R: it failed against a kitsch. Q: hm. R: Om Shanti Om was a kitsch. Q: yeah. R: it was not a film that could have been pitched against a kitsch. For me that’s not a failure.

397 Q: commercially? Which are the more satisfactory films for you in that sense? R: it’s like this one question that Danny Boyle has asked me when I first met him. Q: ok. R: “so which of you films should I watch?” I told him watch any film. There will be me in it. Ya know I have put myself in every film that I’ve done you know, be it like a pathetic Sanjay Gupta film or it’s the most artistic film of Buddhadev Dasgupta. I am in it. I oscillate between them. And I like that. And it’s just far more difficult to do a mainstream commercial and to make it work. Because people are coming with fixed ideas. It’s damn easy to please artistic audience. Because they have no fixed ideas. Anything may work with them. A mainstream audience comes with a fixed idea. You have to break them. It is a far more difficult job, you need spine to do that. And there only one thing works, which is the course. Where do you find your artistry in that? That is why a film like Musafir, or a film like Zinda for me, you know, works. And I made it work. Q: the recent films are embracing sync sound more and more. R: I will say with the same seriousness with which they did in my time. You know I am still doing it, that’s what I’m saying, in those beginning times like 2010 I’m saying. It is not the same enthusiasm or seriousness with which they went about it. There was something new, there was a sanctity of doing it. Today it has become a convenience because you don’t have to call them for dubbing. And it becomes a glorified pilot recording for 90% of the films. There are a very few people who are doing live sound work and showing. A film like Highway, why people would go and watch it again and again? I am still getting Facebook updates for the film. Because they sensed something. When I did a Scandinavian film, a film called Liv & Ingmar, the film opened in Oshiro. After the film was done people gave a standing ovation to us. And many of them walked up to me and said: “We’ve never heard Liv Ullmann like this.” They were bang on, that is exactly what I worked on. I wanted to hear her the way I hear her. Ok, she was my fascination. The only woman that I was in love with, rather two women that I was in love with when I was in the film school apart from cinema. I never thought that there is space for anybody else in my life. I never gave anybody else in my life that space other than cinema, those three years that I was in the film school. Two women swept my imagination. Liv Ullmann and Monica Vitti. And I am sure she was close. I was meeting her, I was sitting with her, I sat in Bergman’s house, and I had lunch with her. I couldn’t imagine what was happening to my life. Q: LG.

398 R: and I wanted to hear her with my imagination. What is here - An intangible beauty. So I recorded her specially, a bit different. And I worked with it, every word of her. I tweaked and corrected. They said, “We have never heard Liv Ullmann like this.” And I think that was the biggest gratification of my artistry. She is so real, she is so endearing, that alone came from the sound. You must watch it, it is available. The film is called Liv & Ingmar. I have redesigned sound in Bergman’s film in that film. There are snippets in Bergman’s films, which were in mono, I played it in surround. I shaped every sound. I understood what a Scandinavian landscape is, went and stayed there for a week. I heard Baltic Sea, it was different from Arabian Sea. A huge unlearning. See, temporal elements, so different in terms of its texture. Sea is very frothy. The sea is sticky, it’s the same sea sound. It may not have any difference in meaning but it has a different sense of perception. Q: did you find the urban sounds - the city sounds different from India? R: there is too much order. It immediately reflects the society to me. Everything is in order. And in India everything is in chaos, complete chaos. Q: LG. R: if you come to Bombay, a symphony of sounds is waiting for you. It’s the way you find your way in a city like Bombay. But there is an order in that chaos. For me the whole Indian filmmaking is finding that order in that chaos. Q: but what can explain the use of so much music? Dance sequences? Ok I can understand the history of background music. R: it’s there even in Hollywood. There is wall-to-wall music, the thing is how you deal with it. Now what is the problem of music, why do you have so much problesm with music? What is wrong in it? I have a problem, I’ll tell you the problem. Because it gives me immediate emotion. It gives me the immediate drama. I know how to control the drama. The whole experience of film is somebody’s lifetime we are dealing with, where there is a narrative structure, ya know going up and down. I want the audience to travel with it. The music doesn’t allow me to travel with it. It just takes you in. Go inside, go, see this, you feel this now. The whole idea of filmmaking, every masters of filmmaking have tried only one thing – how to control drama. Ozu controlled it by just placing the camera. Ozu would find it in cutting. Yancho would find it in Wolfnet, Tarkovsky found in movement and sound, everyone is controlling drama or simplifying it. Here we don’t simplify it. Hello, this is it! Q: LG.

399 R: that’s what mainstream Hollywood also does in a very polished way, in a very sophisticated way. A sophistication is a society. We have no sophistication. We are just plain and simple people. But there is an order within that chaos, if you want to find it. And my whole artistic endeavor is to find it. Q: order, ok. But then you have ambience in your hand. R: oh, I work with anything. I work with sound design, I work with sound effects, and I work with ambience. I work with Foley. I did a film called Chittagong if you have seen it, it is a recent film. Everything is created in the studio. I did a period film called Pazhassi Raja, for which I won the national award. Watch it. Not a single strip of sound I recorded from location, or anywhere. Nothing, it came naked. I created everything in the studio. So anything is my tool. You read my book, you may probably get more insight about me. How and where I come from, you know. It’s called Sounding Off. Q: I read about it on the Internet. Is it available in any shop? R: you’ll get it if you walk into any bookshop. You have to go to the autobiographical section, because it is unfortunate that it is being termed as an autobiography. So you may not find it in the main display. Or you can order it in Flipkart, you’ll easily get it in various publications. Where I have discussed at length about you know Indian film industry, and it will help you out. Especially for all these questions you are seeking answers to. Q: well, I think I really wasted a lot of your time, valuable working time. But then probably you also enjoyed a bit talking to me in a way, I guess. R: LG. R: on sound art, what I’ve tried is trying to understand what is motion? When does a still film become a moving image? What is the sound doing? What is a temporal element? There was this visual artist friend of mine who was working with still images of Bombay riot. And he shot those images with a movie camera. But it was still, he just placed the camera and was shooting still images on a tripod. Q: ok. R: it’s from one image to the other, to the other. It’s a 15 minutes film. May be after 7/8 minute of the film the camera slightly moved. Q: did it become a moving image then? R: so suddenly the still image had become a moving image. So anyway, what the film is talking about is a different thing. So what came to me is – so there’s a very thin line between a still image and a moving image. Q: hm.

400 R: and that thin line is where you start perceiving it. When does this still image start moving? So that’s a very thin line also. So if that is the case then what is the temporal element of that? So I’m watching a still image, which is frozen in time. So it’s the 92 riot, you know those images. So what is the difference between a still image and a moving image? In a still image the time is frozen. And when I’m watching that time, that still image, is the temporal element frozen? Q: hm. R: or is there a temporal element? Q: I think it creates a premise for a perception of temporality. R: so what is a temporal element of those images when I’m looking at it? So that is what I worked through. Q: with sound? R: yes, with sound. And it’s not about sounds, it’s about impressions of it. So what I did is I took this picture, I watched it again and again and I realized that, “Look, I’m watching 92 riot.” When I’m watching that I’m reacting to the sound I’m hearing 100%. So the temporal element of that picture is the sound that I’m hearing now as well, the same tone. Q: hm. R: and it’s quite similar to what I spoke to you earlier in the day about breath being connected to the images that we’re watching. So I took this image to many different places and watched it. And while watching I’ve recorded it. Q: are they different spaces? R: spaces, yes. Inside a studio - in a room. Q: Wow, very interesting. R: different ways, different places which has its own time element. And I have asked people to just watch it, my Foley guys to watch it. First watch I recorded it. And while they were watching it this guy was moved. So end of the day I was left with 15 or 20 such watching sessions. Full 15 minutes audio. Then I extract impressions of one’s feelings about those images and created a soundtrack out of it. I drew some shapes. Suddenly some loud thumping sound which I heard, which accidentally got recorded during one of the projections, when I squeezed and processed it trying to extract things out of it, it reminded me of train sound. It had nothing to do with train. Q: is it the texture of the sound? R: hm. So our perception is extremely complex, if you analyze it, it’s so beautiful and so complex. You can draw meanings out of it. You know a pinhole camera, right?

401 Q: hm. R: if you’re seeing an image through a pinhole camera what is the sound of that? That corresponds to that image. Things like that. So three or four of such small works that I’ve done, the series is called The Song of an island, three such series is there. Which have been shown in galleries, like it was shown in MOMA and other places. Q: ok. R: it was shown in Rome. It was almost three months that it ran in Gallery Ske Bangalore. So I’ve been practicing sound art. Actually what I essentially do with it in cinema is actually that. I did a Marathi film this year. These guys walked at me and said, “Look I don’t want music in my film. Sound is music. Whatever you do is what I want. If you want to use music you please go ahead, I won’t question that.” Q: what was the name of the film? R: the film was called Rainy Day. I was scared, I mean it’s the biggest gratification for sound in this country but yeah, “no music, are you sure?” I realized that natural sound is so boring beyond a point. I mean when in the whole film it is raining, this whole film is somebody’s dream and in the whole dream it is raining. So two hours of raining, rain and rain. And rain is a constant sound, and beyond a point it is like white noise. How will you keep the audience interested? What are the impressions of rain? You know, I had gone into that. Basically for me that whole film was a sound art. I can just take one sequence from the film and show it to you. And in the beginning of the film there is completely thorough raining, the most natural sound. Other than that you know the film is completely recreated sound. Not electronic. Q: hm. R: you know sound that are being processed, modified, extracted from natural impressions of sound, even voices don’t make sense too much? Q: is it possible to watch this film, Rainy Day? R: yeah, possible. I don’t know if the DVD is out but it will be running somewhere. It just won the Zee cine award, the Marathi award for that film. I realized only regional cinema takes the guts to do something like that, not mainstream Hindi cinema. What is Indian cinema today is actually regional cinema, which is the spinal cord of Indian cinema.

402 Shyam Benegal (2014)

Duration: 00:59:28 Name Abbreviations: Shyam Benegal– S; Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q; Other Abbreviations: Laughter – LG

S: Now you want to know about sync sound work. Well you see sync sound work in India, Indian cinema started not very recently. It started in fact, all sound films used to be shot, as you know, in studio circumstances as soon as the silent era was over. So for instance if you think in terms of Alam Ara and so on you’ll find that they actually had sync sound. Now that was the old methodology. They used to have these studio cameras. The big very unwieldy things. And then it was properly sound insulated. So the machine sound couldn’t be heard. And they used to have mics and usually the sound recordist used to sit in the corner of the recording studio and you had to keep absolute silence. And the studios that were made for Silent cinema had to be again insulated. Inspite of that you’d have once in a while pigeons coming in and I have experience of that. Jyoti studios where I used to have my office was the first sound studio in Bombay. It started in 1931. And Prithviraj Kapoor and everybody, they started their careers there. Now in those days it was called Imperial studios. But later on it was called Jyoti studios. Now you see that was the methodology of recording. And they used to record on 35 mm magnetic tape. In fact there was another system also where you could record on the film itself optically at that time. But that wasn’t so popular because you know if you made a mistake, it’s pretty costly it get it re-done n stuff. So this was an easier option which Hollywood had adopted and which we started to do. But one of the innovative practices of the time, particularly with Prabhat, was that they actually recorded songs, outdoors. And if you see some of those films, if you go to FTII you should have a look at some of the films made in the 30’s, Prabhat studios. They used to have a sound recordist with a boom mic with, when it was being shot, along with the sound recordist on a “Thela” (hand drawn cart). And he would be recording and then the instruments also had to be playing. So you couldn’t have an elaborate kind of group so you had to have a harmonium and a table, two-three instruments, which were carried along. You know you had the camera on a trolley in front, and then you had this thela for the music to be played, which was being recorded, simultaneously as the girl or boy, whoever was singing. So this used to be done, that was the system. There was no playback during those days. So that’s how it started. So it was very interesting. But it certainly restricted

403 the acting style. Because the persons couldn’t take the heads away from where the microphones were. Q: hm. S: (hesitation) and so it was somewhat tied up in, you know they were kind of imprisoned because of the placement of the mic and they had to be facing the mic all the time. So the demand on the actor was quite enormous. First the person has to sing, had to be in tune, instruments were to be played in tune, when you’re doing this even the slightest shifting this way or that way meant the recording would go bad. I mean we had such kind of problems, but it was very fascinating and very interesting. You know this was something that I – when I made my film Bhumika some of these things particular things I brought into that film. But the beginning of sound in Indian cinema was a fascinating one. It was first done usually in the studios. It had to be closed up so that you won’t get exterior sounds. When you were shooting everybody had to keep absolutely silent. Even now you have to but it was much more particular at that time. Then when they had to go outdoors with sound, the first way of doing that was to songs. It would be later that you would do dramatic scenes, outdoors, when equipment became less problematic. But you did have for a long period of time, way into the 50’s and even into the early 60’s. One thing, they used to have a soundtrack. A soundtrack when you’re shooting exteriors. A soundtrack with the recording equipment’s. Then the person with the boom mic had to be really very expert. Because the cameras are powerful than the mics today. So they had … they were directional mics. So you had to be very careful about how you record the sound. And they used to do these kind of recordings and the camera of course was a studio camera, Mitchell. Even in the 70’s when I heard about how they used to do it – because you see afterwards when camera equipment became much lighter and smaller you had these Arri’s. When Arri’s started coming into the market then you had a … for an Arri but it used to be very – I mean it wasn’t pleasant while shooting, very low. Because it restricted your movement to a great deal which a Mitchell did not. And there used to be a Japanese equivalent of that camera, called Seiki. When I shot Ankur in 1973, I used a Seiki camera. And it was entirely sync sound. I was among the first people to shoot a sync sound film in its entirety with a Seki camera. Because I did have a studio Mitchell, which I’d taken from … which wasn’t working that well. So I took Seiki instead and I took the camera hand who was absolutely wonderful because he had experience going back to the 1920’s. And I took a sound recordist who also started his career in the 1930’s. So I had two people who had immense experience with this kind of work. So I shot the entire film with a Seiki camera, not on Arri.

404 Everybody used to take Arri’s in those days, which had already started from late 60’s people were shooting on Arriflexes. And then they used to dub their sounds in a studio. And just take a pilot track. I refused to take a pilot track. Because at that time I was kind of a radical about getting the exact sound. You know I was much impressed with the idea, which was very current in Europe at that time – use of direct sound. You know the whole idea was that you had a sense of reality that you get with that. The emotion, the performance - and the performance was not broken into two parts. The visual performance and the sound performance, it was an integrated performance. And so I was absolutely the biggest advantage for that. So when I made my film in 1973 I was among the very first people to do an entire sync sound film without taking any course to any person dubbing. So not a single dialogue that you hear in Ankur was post recorded. Everything was done on the location where we shot the film, with natural sounds and all. Then we emphasized the soundtracks, had other tracks to add to the environmental sound n everything else. But there was nothing, no dialogue was ever post recorded, it was recorded at that time. Now this is very important for me, it has always remained the most important thing when I make a film. Because I’ve always believed n continue to believe that performance is an integrity – it’s sound and visual, they’re together. You cannot separate them without losing out on the quality of the performance. You know because what they do on the set is what you have approved on film. You cannot something else, another element coming and replacing the sound pattern. You know you will never have the same quality. But what happened in Indian cinema, and exactly at the 30’s what used to happen, in the 40’s same thing was happening. But now they take things … with the equipment getting better. They had those big studio Mitchells, they used to carry them outside and they used to shoot. But by shooting like that one of the things you may have noticed if you look carefully at films of that period compared with that of early period and so on. Like in the 1920’s the movements of the camera particularly outdoor movements, you know and there’s so much dynamism in this style of shooting. not sequences like that but other. In the 30’s we suddenly find a certain static quality because it was affected by the equipment they were using. Then when you moved into the 40’s where the sound became the thing which most people were shooting inside studios anyway, and there were hardly any speech work that was being done outside of the studio. All the dramatic scenes were being done in the studio and everything else like travelling cars and this that. And when playback came then it became very easy. Because you separated the two elements and particularly for sound you could shoot sound all over the place and do the playback so you can sync the two and then you later use it. So this

405 was the pattern. Now when our directors in India all the way through the 40’s all the way through the 50’s and everything else were recording dialogue like it would happen in a studio. The studio system started to collapse, which was only late 1950’s and early 60’s or so on. And then you had portable cameras. Then they started everything, both sync and dubbing. So the tracks that were being recorded were pilots and they did the actual dialogues n so on so forth recorded in a studio at studio quality. Now some of the consequences of that, you know, in the cinema itself, this is a very interesting thing. Because it has made and broken careers of people. Now you take somebody like Amitabh Bachchan, he is known for his voice. The timbre of his voice is so absolutely frustrating. But that timbre of the voice, to maintain and get that quality he had to do fort sync dubbing. You see that per sync, dubbing was an important feature in all of this. And this kind of thing that people were paying attention to, the capability of an actor of much greater expression in his speech and the manner of speaking and all of this and the sound quality which Amitabh Bachchan has because of his rich baritone voice, I mean the moment you hear that voice you can see him. Now that quality could only come when it was recorded like that. And it had to be … so whatever he did – actually in his performance, unlike any of the stars of their time, in their performance they did not worry too much about getting the right timber of voice for visual performance. They were saving their voices for the person dubbing. They were not when they were performing. Unlike, take for instance, I made a film called Manthan. Now in Manthan Naseeruddin Shah has a very big and powerful scene where he is screaming and shouting towards the end, you know the climactic position. Q: hm. S: now that was location direct sound. I was not getting it right. So eventually he did something like 18 takes, before I got everything absolutely right, sound and picture together. Now the one part of it that hadn’t worked out really well because his voice gave way. Q: hm. S: he lost it. So we had to wait until his voice came back over the next 3 to 4 days before he could do it again. Now I would have had a much easier option of filming without him. But I didn’t want to do that. And I still don’t believe it’s a thing for myself. I mean a lot of people may disagree with me but that’s not important to me. Because I found that the best performance I see an actors performance that is just his body language, speech, expression everything as in one, not separated in two different elements. Now which is why I gave Nasir so much trouble. Got into “do it repeatedly” until he actually lost his

406 voice! And couldn’t do it anymore until the next three-four days when his voice came back. Now the systems that are in operation in our industry even to this day continues to be what it used to be in 1970’s. Even today lot of them do for sync dubbing. And they do for sync dubbing because often the stars insist on that. Why do stars insist on that? They feel they can concentrate on their voices, when they see themselves perform visually then they can get the right nuances and all that. As I said a performance is to be seen in its entirety and not as separate elements being put together. It’s not a puppet you know, it’s ridiculous that it is treated like a puppet. Q: LG. S: that kind of thing. That doesn’t make sense. That makes sense for me, I mean that makes sense for the whole world but doesn’t make any sense to me. So therefore the use of sound, the manner in which we use sound because basically there are three elements, one of which is the creation of the environment, placement of a figure in a particular environment so that environment is also alive, it’s not dead. And that aliveness of that link has to be controlled by you. Because the person who’s watching your film is totally being taken over by what he sees in a closed hall. Now the difference is everything else, which he’d otherwise keep his eardrums open to, you know, and then select what he wants to hear and what he doesn’t want to hear. Like say for instance we are in this room. There are three if you listen silently, very carefully, there are several elements of sound that you can hear. You can hear ambience or room tone. In this room itself there are sounds. There is the sound of this room, which you can hear. Q: hm. S: you see then very soft sound of the fan as well. Now these sounds, when we are speaking we don’t hear them. But they exist. When they exist you can make use of them for purposes of different kinds. For dramatic purposes you can use them. For other contemplative purposes, for meditational purposes and so many things. To explain the interiority of a person, so that is the second element. The first element of course is voice. Then there is a third element, which is music. Music or noise, whoever way you’ll like to use it. Now when you’re using music you’re giving a certain kind of emotional a character to that particular scene or a dramatic character to that particular scene. You are underlining, you know. Now lot of people use background music in order to keep the audiences form falling asleep. I’ve always considered that to be a weakness. If you’re unable to hold your audience you try to do that through music or through big loud sounds, you hear that all kinds of sounds going on. Then somebody’s got angry with you and you’ll have to kill him, when that is expressed through some musical device, ok?

407 Now these things either you feel they’re necessary or not necessary. I, for one, don’t feel it’s necessary. You can do the same thing in so many different ways. Because what you are creating is the world. You’ll have to create a universe with the whole environment of the universe and the people within it. And you have to give them dimensions. Q: LG. S: and the dimensionality. Say for instance a person is standing in the distance and somebody is close, and how you shift your attention from one to the other through sounds, through visual means, all of this. Now this kind of thinking according to me is absolutely essential. You need to give this kind of – you have to pay attention to them. Lot of people don’t pay attention, filmmakers I’m talking about. If they don’t pay any attention to it then the audience will not get it at all. When you’re offering a film experience, you are coming closest to a life’s real experience. However arbitrary it might be. It might be a very arbitrary thing, but that’s not of any consequence because you’re playing god. So you are offering a particular universe. Now but that universe has to, I mean vibrate with your real experience, ya know with human beings, real experience. Otherwise what’s the point of this. Somewhere you say this is true, this is right, not consciously or unconsciously. That is the quality you have to offer whatever you do. And you have these elements with you. One is the visual and the other is sound, to create that universe for yourself. And sound is not only speech, you want music. It is much more than that. S: so with these two elements you have to create the universe the way you want to. In the visual thing you have the manner in which you’ll take the audience with you. Where lenses become very important. How do you shoot something, you know to give the right perspective to what you shoot, what are the lenses that you’ll use and how you’ll change it. See where the camera is moving with the characters, that is one aspect. Then there is the other aspect, which is of the sound itself. What is the proportion? And then how you use sound in any narrative, ya know. I’ll give you a wonderful example. If you remember that picture of Satyajit Ray’s, where he is (the character) in a village. What is that film, I can’t remember. One of his films, it’s one of my favorite scenes. You see there is this chap, was it in Mahanagar? The sister, she becomes a prostitute, that film. Q: is it in Jana Aranya? S: no not Jana aranya, something else, anyway. There’s an aspect, there’s a particular manner in which he recovered that for you, a certain memory of his in which he leaves from this little village. Q: .

408 S: Pratidwandi. In this little village somewhere outside northern Bengal. And he is in this little boarding house. And he is there, and the suddenly he can hear a woodpecker, no a particular kind of bird. He hears that. And the recovery is of that same bird, -- he recovers his entire background through that single sound. Now this is something that all of us can make use of. The woodpecker I had used in my film. In Ankur I had used that. Rays was totally unconnected. He did it in a film after what I had made. But it’s a similar kind of thing. Because mine was to do with this, you know he asks his maid, “do you know what is that sound?” she says, “That’s a woodpecker.” And then when his wife comes to the village, and then she asks the same question. And the entire emotional character of the scene changes because he recovers the old feeling of that relationship which has now gone sour, you see. Now those kinds of things, they are not devices that make you of speech or other forms of climatisation. But to explain the interiority of people’s feelings n things like that sound has a very important part to play in that. You know because that dimension of sound has not been explored enough. And in our country we don’t think that it’s so important. We’ve seen more of Indian cinema, they don’t pay attention to it. This is something that I personally feel is one of the most important tools that you have. This is very important narrative tool you have. And by and large we don’t make use of it. Because they may not know about it. Or B they don’t have a certain situation in which they can do this. It’s a question of how you can just use sound, simple speech and background music. You have to think in terms of the environment in which we live. All of these qualities that you have, the sounds that you hear. And how they associate, different sounds have different associations that each one of us has. All of those that are a part of the sound and visual language that we use, the vocabulary that we use, now this is, to me, what cinema is today. Q: you said about the interior of a character, so I was curious to know about how is it represented in sound. I would also like to know about the exterior, the environment. S: that’s what I’m saying. The environment that you see, you see it. The environment that you do not see which extends beyond your frame, Q: yes, off-screen space, S: off-screen space. Now that needs to be expressed. How will you express that? Q: ambience. S: yes. Now that is a point. Say for instance, suppose you are sitting here. He leaves the room. I see him leave the room. You know that he has gone out of this room. And from there I hear a sound, his sound. So you see he leaves the room. I cant see him. Now he speaks from there, you can hear him, I can hear him. Now he’s setting out a certain

409 geography to the scene even though I, as an audience, have not seen it. He can say what he’s seen, what is out there which I have not seen. But you know what it is. Q: hm. S: and because you know what it is and what he has done, my curiosity is aroused. Or there is a certain character, a certain apprehension about what he has done. See now these are some of the devices that we use all the time. Often we don’t think about the devices, but we experience them in life. So when you’re doing it in the film you’ve to analyze all of that, different elements of that which you can. Q: does ambience play major role in your film? S: ambience plays a major role in my films because this is something that I can directly say I learnt from Mr. Satyajit Ray. Because he was among the very first Indian filmmakers to make use of ambient sounds. And I was impressed when I saw Pather Panchali for the first time, which was way back in 1956 or 1957, which was when I was in college. And when I met him later, I did mention it to him. I said that not many filmmakers I know except may be a few people in India who have used the ambient sounds the way you have used. You see Jean Renoir, when he came to Calcutta he had made use of some of these kind of sounds but in a very rudimentary way. Use of it became much more sophisticated in the hands of Satyajit Ray. So because for me for long time the Hoogly river, after I had seen Renoir’s The River, I could sense the river when I heard certain kinds of sounds. Boatmen’s sounds n all sorts of things, very much a Hoogly scene. Now when Ray would use sounds it was not just the – there was a geographical association, you could have a historical association, you could have an emotional association, you could have an intellectual association. So you could explore so many dimensions by using ambience sound alone. Now this is something that has always fascinated me. And I have been very interested in it. lot of people don’t pay any attention to it. According to me it’s a very important area. You see because when do cinema you must simply remember that there are two things, there’s the visual and there’s the sound. But through all of that you have to do everything including aural things that you might feel that you can smell. An atmosphere that you can smell as it were, small references. One of the interesting things is when you see Ritwick Ghatak’s film, the one with the car, Q: Ajantrik, S: yes. In Ajantrik you will find, the film itself is such that Ritwick, that you can actually smell that car. And the smoke and the vapors that are coming out of that, you know. I remember when I did an interview with Ritwick Ghatak, when he was vice principal at the

410 Film & Television Institute (Pune, India) that one year, and he was in Bombay and I was just helping with a film magazine that used to come out in Bombay in those days. And I had interviewed him for that. So when I told him about this he said, “see I’m very interested in this.” That’s what he told me, that, “I am very interested in these areas of film.” Even if there is breeze I may be able to use that because of the kind of mics. Now he made that film, Komol Gandhar. In that there is a scene like this where you know there’s great Bengal landscape, there’s the river. Sense of these, now you don’t hear it. But you can sense it, you can sense the breeze. You know things like this, these are the elements that you have to create through visual and sound means. But they must be palpable, it’s not your experience that’s going to do it. Q: LG. S: it has to be experienced. See one of the problems of the late 60’s to the early 70’s, particularly FTII, that is post Ritwick Ghatak, when he was there for a year after that, there was a generation of filmmakers of that time, they always used to intellectualize their films. But often they used to give long explanations about what you’re supposed to be seeing and listening. It was never self-evident. With cinema, it has to be self-evident. It has to be evident. May be you do not have the vocabulary to do it, or your experience of vocabulary may not be there, that experience but it is there, it has to be there. It does not need you to explain it. This is the point that they never got from Mr. Ghatak. Mr. Ghatak never created a situation in which he needed to explain to me what he was doing, you know. But the so-called chelas of his did exactly that and reversed the whole thing. I mean had no meaning at all. But Ritwick did and what they did was complete nonsense, Q: LG. S: you know, which was a travesty of what he did. You know these are the things that you really have to be careful about and you have to understand this. But these two elements are the most important because these are the only two things that you have to create the whole universe. Apart from drama, narrative and all of which it shares with the novel, with the short story with everything else. This is that additional thing. Why is it called the tenth muse, only for that reason. Because it adds a certain element to it, which makes the experience – it takes from all the other muses, but it creates a muse that is a combination of all of these things. You have two things here, that’s the visual and sound. Others have other ways of codification. Writing is a kind of codification that must – you will give life to it by reading. Similarly poetry. And music too, the notes that are being played and create a new entity. You won’t like that. So I don’t think I have anything more to say, LG.

411 Q: when you do sync sound, do you prefer to add more ambiences to the ambient sounds that are recorded in the sync process? Or do you want to keep it that way? S: yes, if it’s needed. You see locational sound automatically has an ambience. But that ambience may not be useful to you. The location itself, you hear it in a particular way. What has been recorded may not be exactly that. So you have to add to it, you have to record it in order to add the track, which you have to do. Because it’s very essential, at least to me it is. Some people don’t think it’s important but I think it’s very important. I always tell my sound recordist, just record the ambience where I am shooting and then let me get on with it. Q: do you experience some sort of shift when recording media changes from analogue to digital? S: analogue to digital, you see, that’s one of those problems. Digital you know is absolutely, since it’s digital it’s a series of digits that come together and create a whole. Analogue is where one thing leads into another. Photography through the use of chemicals is an analogous image. But you can have an electronically created image also. So video is a digital image. Cinema is on an analog image. Our eyes, you know we always prefer-- because our eye responds much more comfortably to an analogue image to a digital image, because our eyes are like that. Human eye will record images that are harmonized quality, that harmonized quality doesn’t exist for the digital image. Now digital means... Now there is a method to get a sense of analogue, which is more of dirtying the image, which you can. People do. Lot of people, they dirty the image. They don’t allow the digital image to remain the way it is. The sharp edges will start disappearing. Q: sound-wise digital allows for multiple channels from recording to the design. If you want to add more ambience, you can… S: you see what I was talking to you was the fundamentals. But digital and analogue are details of the manner if you record something. Now solutions for those problems depend on your own predilection and preference. How will you prefer it is up to you. There are two methodologies. One methodology is chemically done, the other one is electronically done. Now between the two of them it’s up to you what you prefer. But if I go by natural process, natural processes are usually analogous. They are not digital. You see the fact is between analogue and digital there’s no preference simply because my preference for analog image is because that is how it’s in nature, not for any other reason. Not that it’s superior or anything, it’s not superior. Because it’s more in nature. But when you do this digital images which is new kind of creating images, new system of creating an image,

412 and seen as an advanced technology as in fact it is. Because it allows you much greater range and all of that, but you lose a little bit of the earlier one. So in order that you don’t you have to. Q: I’ll not take much of your time, but I will just ask two remaining questions. One is: how do you see surround sound? S: surround sound is one of the great innovations. Well everything, all the innovations by itself have been interesting and enormous. The only thing that has a certain limitation to it is 3-D. It has a limitation more than anything else but it is an interesting thing to do at certain times for certain kinds of subject. But surround sound is to create the entire aural environment. Like say for instance it opens up your image area beyond what you see. I’ll give you a simple example. I see a train going from left to right. You know normally what would happen in the older days I would take in the sound when I’m seeing it. It would disappear when I stop seeing it. In reality it doesn’t disappear like that. In reality it makes the difference. So in nature what happens it goes beyond what you see. Now that is what it adds. You can hear the train’s coming, you can see it’s going, you can hear it tailing off. In surround, I can do it in a much more effective way because you have to see it from that point of view. You see that again is my way of looking at it. There are people who do surround sound very differently. But if I have to use surround sound I’ll do it with this kind of conceptualization. I can see it as extending my visual through the sound. That is available to me. So I create the environment as fully as I can possibly do, in comparison with the real world. Q: could not it be created like that in mono? S: no there was an arbitrariness that was determined entirely by the frame. Or even then there were people who went well beyond that. We should look at Orson Welles for instance. Take for instance the mithaiwala has been used for Pather Panchali. You know you can hear him even when you stop seeing him going. The perception of the director, Ray’s ability to use sounds apart from the visual aspect was a very great one. It would have never been so much in that aspect, but everybody who records it for themselves, they know. Because you know one of the few people whose work you can recall almost immediately because he could create the whole world in this very incredible way. And he was one of the earliest people who were doing it internationally I mean not just nationally. Q: how do you place Ray in the history of Indian cinema? S: I locate Indian cinema as before Ray and after Ray. Q: ok.

413 S: very simple for me. Before Ray cinema was of a particular kind, after Ray it was something else. In terms of looking at cinema itself, I’m not talking about how popular cinema and stuff that is different. But see when sound came that was the first dramatic change that took place in Indian cinema. The second dramatic change that took place in Indian cinema was you know Satyajit Ray. Q: LG. S: you know, and then it changed again. Because his was the time of watershed mark, you know it’s not going to be the same. Because before that you heard sound differently, you saw images differently. But post Ray it’s changed quite dramatically and entirely. Because if you look at Regional cinema more than Hindi mainstream cinema, you will find the impact of Ray has been in those areas. There’s Malayalam cinema, there’s Kannada cinema, Oriya cinema, to some extent Tamil and Hindi dint have much go. And then you have a look at the other thing, Punjabi cinema, Marathi cinema. Marathi of course had its strong tradition also. Because they had got into the realistic mode of filmmaking, way back in the 30’s. If you look at early Marathi films you’ll understand that they had many innovative practices even in filmmaking at that time. For instance the example I gave to you, the rest of India was way behind at that time. S: you see when I make films I do both, I use both, I use a boom and I use a body mic. So we use combination sounds, we use both tracks. You move from one track to another depending on your requirement. If I restricted it to this I’ll not have perspective. By having a boom I have the advantage of perspective. You understand? A: are you using other kind of perspectives? S: yeah. So because I use both, I use both body mics as well as boom. If only in circumstances that are such that no boom can be used, in a place where no boom can be used. Like say for instance we are here and we are talking. No boom can be used in this little space. And the camera may be over here there, and is probably moving all over the place. And then I have to get the speech properly, so I have no opportunity to use a boom mic. I have to make do with this and later on when I am mixing the problem is the visual. Visuals can’t be corrected once they are done, the way sounds can be done.

414 Subhas Sahoo (2014)

Duration: 1:16:52 Name abbreviations: Subhas Sahoo – S, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

Q: I would like to ask you primarily about your work with sound recording - I think have started working with magnetic media. S: yeah. Q: first in location recording and then in mixing, right? S: yeah. Q: and now you are doing digital recording and digital mixing, working in the digital platform. What are the particular or specific differences that you experience yourself? And how do you see that difference reflected in your work? S: Then and now, if you look at the working profession, then definitely at that particular point of time you have limited tracks, limited resources, and in mono sound what was happening was to create a particular geography. You have to choose the correct effects and ambience to the dialogue. You can actually multi-layer the thing. Q: hm. S: but whatever we used to select for the ambience, if you choose one or two ambience that should be correctly placed, it should sound correct. Right now if you look at it we have like 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, you have like so many. And now you can distribute each ambience each effects into different speakers, different channels. All the dialogue will be on a different speaker, effects will come in a different. There’s no jarring, there’s no overlap. But in mono you should actually keep everything, even dialogue is there, because dialogue is the centre. Through that only you are writing the story. So without distracting that you should choose your effects and ambience, this and that. And at the particular point of time also, though sound designing if you look at it, it doesn’t have much of a scope to be honest. Because then sound designing work in India, I doubt it was there or not because what I’m saying everybody has a loop. Magnetic loop or an optical loop, say birds. What they use to do with birds was, suppose one person has like 30 variety of birds. He knows that like loop no. 1, loop no.2, loop no.3. “Ok so this is a forest, and there is a peacock there. So for this section use your 25th loop.” So basically with limited resources it wasn’t actually expanded at that particular time. So what you had to do was according to the locale you would ask them to use a specific loop. Then you could transfer and then it goes to the editing table. Literally we didn’t have to do

415 anything. We transferred, and the sound-editing job was done by the editor. They used to match and they used to add a silent leader to it and make a whole reel. Then they used to send. And finally for the mixing engineer it was lots of power and the conclusion of the final product was much more for the mixing engineer than the sound engineer. At that time after dubbing the sound engineer would choose the effects and all, then at the mixing the mixing engineer used to finally control it. Because of which if you look at it national award four years back actually sound is the only category, which had three national awards. Rest is only one. That is sync sound, sound design and sound mixing. Before that there was one national award. And that national award was meant for the mixing engineer, not for the sound designer. Because the power or whatever was given, it was decided then that the mixing engineer should get the national award. Now if sound designer was also added to that, then it’s ok. If not then the mixing engineer used to get the thing. What happened at that time was a lot of work used to operate within relationships. It was more into a kind of family oriented thing. Suppose you are the producer, and I worked as a sound designer. At that time not only sound, different production houses they had their own sound recordist, their own cameramen. If you are working with Raj Kapoor then the cameraman will be fixed, and sound recordist will be fixed. This is basically family tradition type. So at that time the people were kind of fixed. Slowly at that time also there was analogue sync sound, it’s not that it wasn’t completely there. They had Nagra and all. I started off with a Nagra. It happened back then as well. All the art films that were made then people used to try and do sync sound. Like Shyam Benegal, sometimes Govind Nihalani. Then also they tried to keep the sync sound motif in their film. Because of the realistic approach of cinema, post dubbing it use to seem that the visuals are going in one direction and the dubbed track is on another. They are not getting that performance, for which they have to keep the location track in the final mix. Even I remember I was taking Shyam babu’s interview some time back for a Mangesh Desai film. He was saying in the 70’s he had done sync sound for most of his films. While Mangesh Desai was mixing the film, they had shot somewhere in Punjab in a rice field, suddenly he found some hissing sound. So he wondered what that sound was. It was the wind that was blowing over the rice fields. So he sent somebody to get this sound recorded and he said, “It’s very interesting and we could incorporate this sound very nicely.” Q: hm. S: so somebody went, got it recorded, came back and it was incorporated. So what I am saying is, it also depends on the vision of the director. So at that time this used to

416 happen. But earlier, in the magnetic era, what happened was there were less art filmmakers. And those who were there, they couldn’t enter the commercial market. Because very limited people would watch those films, especially in the festival circuit. But the common mass or audience wouldn’t generally go. So whether it was sync sound or not wasn’t so crucial also, and no one realized what is sync sound. And what happened in those times, all the commercial films were more into dialogue and music oriented. Only the loud sounds were effects oriented. There was nothing specific like ambience. If you notice closely then you’ll find that if there is wind by some chance, or birds then they are there. Generally there is a room tone, that way if you sit anywhere there is a room tone. But they were not present in films. So they used to mainly play between loud sound, dialogue and music. And when loud effects came they were placed accordingly. But some of the good sound design films that have happened in India, which are more effects and dialogue oriented, not ambience oriented. If you look at Sholay, it is one of the best sound design films of India, sound oriented film. But these kinds of films were less in number. Mostly they would accentuate music and dialogue. But what I think in digital also, as a sound person what I feel was happening in the optical medium, our dynamic range was very less. It has the dynamic range of 78 KHz. It was theoretically 80-82 but practically 60 to something, whatever would go up to 6 or 7. So basically because the range was missing the brightness was also not there, but it was correct for those times. But when the digital medium arrived, in that people used to record as per the frequency of the source, then we replaced/replayed. Slowly before Dolby the Ultra Stereo came. But still Sholay was 70mm and 7.1. Magnetic medium was there during that time. So because of the magnetic and the optical medium the dynamic range also was very less, though we are getting the perspective. I thought that particular format 7.1 wasn’t used much because the 70mm print was rarely used. Because of that actually 7.1 wasn’t successful at that time. Q: hm. S: but since the digital medium came after that, initially when it started through the tape medium the dynamic range increased, like DAT and all. After that when everything turned literally digital, in the Indian context when I started working in digital medium the total number of Porter DAT machines in India were 2, HHB Porter DAT DDR 1000. Q: hm. S: at that time everyone in the Indian industry used analogue, people from the commercial circuit. From 1995 I started using Porter DAT DDR 1000 and specifically Sarfarosh happened from ’94 to ’98 or ’99, 5 years. And because of Porter DDR 1000 I

417 was there in the location to record the pilot. And also because of two-track I started to take all the ambience and effects from the location. Because of the noisy camera I wouldn’t be able to use the one with the dialogue, but maximum number of effects, whatever it can be, I recorded on location. Even if you watch Sarfarosh now, I recorded most of the ambience in the location and effects also at the location. For instance when Aamir Khan is going on the car, about 20 to 25 jeeps arriving together etc. all the effects from Rajasthan like the call of the camel, everything I recorded on location. That’s because I decided earlier that it would help me in post-production. So I got all the effects and that is incorporated in the design part also. Q: in Sarfarosh? S: yes. Have you seen that? Q: yes, I have. S: so maximum times we used the location tracks in that. Though we underline that through dramatization, but we used a lot of sound from the location. So that’s the year ’95, ‘96 I am talking about. So I started from that time and slowly as I said in ’97 I worked with Shyam Benegal. I did sync sound also. But because of the art cinema nobody knows, I came to digital again. Nobody knew about what sync sound is, nobody knew. People knew that the pilot track, which is getting recorded, is type of a sync sound. But hopefully Lagaan happened in 2001-2, it got released. The total credit for this will go to Aamir Khan, thanks to him. Suddenly because of his commercialization he said let’s do this differently and I remember how much he used to take care of things for Lagaan. They shot for about 8 to 10 months and they took extra precautions to shoot sync sound, and they started promoting it. The way they promote a film these days, while it is in post the promotion starts. It was promoted as a sync sound film. And when Aamir Khan was promoting that it is a sync sound film the people thought, “oh what a sync sound this is!” So this came to people’s attention through all these dramatizations, and not only people - all the commercial producers and directors rushed to see the film at that time. For example when you journeying with a fleet of ships tied together on the sea none of them will jump. But when one jumps, then each one will follow the same. So this is basically the tradition that has been followed in Indian scenario. In India very few people take the initiative of doing something new for the first time. Everyone waits for someone else to do it. So whoever does it, you first look at the film. So if one person has used it for one subject, then other people will follow the same trend to make it work, everyone will do the same. Basically the sync sound scenario was also very similar. Thanks to Aamir Khan. When Lagaan became commercially successful, then came Dil

418 Chaahta Hai. Nakul Kamte is famous because of this. But this doesn’t mean that Lagaan was the first film to do sync sound. We have done many sync sound films before that. He himself did sync sound for Bhopal Express. I also did sync sound for some of the films before. But it didn’t get noticed or it didn’t get commercialized. So the climax started at this point in the Indian scenario, its pre-Lagaan and post-Lagaan, where sync sound era in Indian cinema came after Lagaan. So when it started at that point initially we used to record on DAT. DAT also had limited number of tracks, only two tracks, one is boom and another is cordless. We used to mix them and give. Finally then slowly again what we did we used to get two recorders and join them to get four tracks. Then PD6 came from Fostex, and it gave us like six tracks or eight tracks. So slowly all these new things came and as I said that Ultra sound came in ’89, from Hum Apke Hain Kaun, Dolby Stereo, though that’s analog medium again but it came in optical. And it was four tracks. But at least frequency response and dynamic range increased a little bit. And finally you got distribution of effects and dialogues and everything. So slowly you could accommodate your own effects due to that, you leave the dialogue and do this. Then post that Ultra Sound went and Dolby came, Dolby stereo, then Dolby digital. When digital platform arrived whatever you recorded, Pro Tools came and before that we used to work on Soundscape around ’93 to ’95. So I think it has been a long journey but everything has its own beauty. What I mean is what was there at that time it captured the beauty of that surrounding and situation the best. Like I am saying when you think about the heroines of the old times they used to look fabulous in saris or they looked so sexy in kurta pyajamas. But now that beauty is transported to jeans and t-shirt. Nowadays it is fast life. If you look at those times then if you cut a shot immediately they’ll say that you have removed the emotion of the actress. So in old times if you see it’s not fast cutting in films. Now if you see there’s no breathing space. Like if you do everything very fast in your live life you’ll go through a break up soon. It’s very similar with films. So now it’s more like a fast life. If you see earlier people were actually cool. All the decisions were taken with peace of mind, there was no mental pressure from the outer source, because he was not connected to the world. There was a beauty then if you had to know what was happening at Andheri it would take you two days earlier. But now it’s totally different and suddenly you are so distracted. In old times there was one TV channel, now there’s a thousand. When you are watching television you are surfing, you are not focusing into one. So if you look at it your mind if affected a lot by this crowd. So when I am talking to you I am simultaneously thinking about a hundred other personal things. After speaking to you I have immediately start doing another work, so there’s no breathing space for

419 me. When it was the magnetic medium being used, you would do dubbing or mixing, when you would do rewind after mixing it used to take one to two minutes to go back and come. You would get a break for those two minutes. Q: LG. S: so you would also get time to think about what you have done and if there’s any other possibility of doing it. Or maybe you needed some silence to yourself and then restart. Now it’s so fast that there’s no breathing space also. So everything in the world I think is changing to keep up with the time. Say for example if you look at the music, previously it used to be so soothing. Now one music will come and run for four days and then it’s gone out of market. It’s become very momentary. So actually I am diverting from various spaces and not concentrating on any. So basically these are the things. Q: I will ask you about the use of ambience in your work. In Kaminey, for example in the sequence where and Shaheed Kapoor are talking in the staircase and we hear a huge amount of ambiences coming from the park, even from further distances. Was Kaminey made in 2007? S: no 2009. Omkara is 2007. Q: yes. Okay, but I don’t think that many films from 2009 could provide such huge width and depth of ambience. S: very true. That credit should go to Vishal Bhardwaj again. Q: ok. S: because if you look at it I actually before Omkara and after Omkara. Before Omkara I must have done 20 films or 25 films. But I got recognized after Omkara. Q: hm. S: not Kaminey, if you look at Omkara also, ambience and sound, there’s much more depth. The ambient sounds and effects in Omkara is much more powerful than Kaminey because it is the story of very interior U.P, Meerut. Q: yes. S: so because of that you’ll get much more depth, much more ambience, much more effects than Kaminey. Also Vishal’s subject is as such, it needed so many layers, and I think Vishal being a director he is complete if you look at the technicality of it. He is big for Maqbool and all, forget about that. If you look at Omkara’s Vishal, not only as a director but you see for a complete film. You need each department to also fulfill their part to make a beautiful film. Someone says, “Oh! What a subject the film has. Or what a direction!” but they don’t say what a film. So when “what a film” comes, then everybody’s contribution will be adding to the subject of the film. Suppose I design my

420 film, I design all the things. But at the end of the day director is the captain of the ship. There are 22 mediums or crafts to make a film. I am associated with the medium, so I know this. Like camera, direction, sound editing, casting and so on, there are around 22 heads. So what I am saying is to sketch the film if you somehow put the color yellow or orange more it will overshadow? Or overpower. So you must balance everything. So in the Indian scenario if you look at it, for the first time someone went into that deepness and darkness of cinematography, both Omkara and Kaminey. Not only sound, no one dared to touch that zone visually before that. Q: was the decision to keep the depth, amount or the level of ambience by Vishal Bhardwaj or yours? S: basically we definitely try to give our views. Suppose I being a director, I say we should keep at this level. Now the director might say, “No I don’t want this. I need this.” So end of the day you lose, because the director wants to play in a musical way. So what I am saying is definitely at the end of the day you do your duty. Compared to other films you try so that according to the international standards if you can increase the level of ambience and keep it natural. But Vishal Bhardwaj also won’t be able do anything if he doesn’t have anything in it then he is playing musically. When he saw that the ambience and effects are equally powerful and also it enhances the particular situation without the music and effects, so then being a creative director he decided, “No, my ambience and effects is working in this. Let take out the music. Or maybe background music should be kept in a background level, not in the foreground level.” In India most of the people keep background music in the foreground level. But in the films Omkara and Kaminey, where he wanted to explore the state of mind that level we went into the foreground level, otherwise most of the time we balance equally. Even also if you look at the visual nobody will agree for this dark a look, like Kaminey. He said, “I am least bothered about – the arc (street) lamp of Bihar is so dark that you can hardly see anything. What is your conviction?” he said this to the cameraman. “If you feel that the subject demands that, do it.” then Tassaduq Hussain, who studied in L.A, he under-lit the film accordingly. The film looks that great. So I’m saying that in Omkara also, if you look at it, there are 8 to 10 pieces of music that I recorded at the location, which is used. In Indian scenario no one uses it this way. The rustic-ness, the local band, the local music, even in Kaminey, is only two or three pieces. He said that since it is a playback type still you record it. “I don’t want to record it at the studio. You record.” So we all went to Goa and there I hired all my extra equipment, we went to a field and I positioned all the bands differently at his place and they performed there live for about 5 to 7 minutes. So I recorded there. I took

421 2 recorders, so that was almost like 16 tracks. So each individual I placed correctly in those 16 tracks, so that there’s no feedback and there’s no cross-pick up, then I recorded that. Though at the end of the day only a portion of it was used, about thirty seconds or a minute was ultimately used. Q: this trend has become quite popular now. For example in Highway we have seen a street singer singing in a particular sequence for quite a long duration. In Gangs of Wasseypur most of the music is recorded on location. S: what I think is this is because of the new generation directors, and also thanks to the corporate house, who sign with the new generation director and agrees that he doesn’t want the typical romantic love story as shown commonly in most commercial films. So if you take a new generation director like Anurag Kashyap, or you take anyone else like , the way they think is also because of the globalization that happened all over the world and the easy access to world cinema that came along with it. And also they are going to Hollywood and people from there, they came. So we understand our language and their language as well. So these new generation directors, they try to have a very international way of doing it. Q: hm. S: not only in sound, I am talking about all the different traits. So because of that only in sound and everything else and even mixes if you look at it, just consider Sneha Khanwalkar who does music for Anurag Kashyap. Just see, like in a village we say, ah! What a singer he is or she. The same music it gels so well with the film, it has given more layers, more rustic-ness to the film. Q: I forgot the name of who did the sound for Gangs of Wasseypur. S: Kunal Sharma. Q: yes. Now my question is: how do you define ambience in your practice? And what do you think it does to cinema? Why did you use that amount of depth of ambience in Kaminey or Omkara? S: for me along with the depth basically the geography of a place also matters. Suppose we are sitting inside a room. But we do not know whether it’s near sea, or a market place, or an office or somewhere else. So whatever I treat that will give you the geography of this particular place. And also that’ll place how far the ambiences are. Suppose I’ll give you a very very distant, maybe you’ll see if I give 120 speed whichever way the highway is going. Maybe I’ll give the sound of an auto moving slowly or something is happening in the outside, maybe the area has a lot of traffic jam. So basically these are the things that I define in ambience and which will identify the

422 geography of a particular place. If you lose that then you are gone, you can’t establish the geography. Q: we don’t have any information of the geography in most of the films from 70’s showing mountains or urban spaces, but still those films were popular. S: what I think is that there is a difference between then and now, the people used to go to the cinema for their leisure time, for the entertainment. Also that nobody is aware that it is an artistic medium as well. Like, it is not necessary that the food that you’re eating, that food will become bad because I am doing something, you might enjoy that. But the same theme if I treat it a little better, like in Eastern India I will use mustard, it might add to the layer without losing the taste. But the thing is though at that particular time everybody enjoys, only if you can add an additional layer that will beautify the film, and also which can define your geography without losing the commercial element. This doesn’t mean that Kai Po Che is not a hit. Have you seen it? I have also. That’s done by Baylon Fonseca. If you see his film design in Zindagi naa milegi dobara, Kai Po Che, thanks to his directors, you see that ambience has taken a front role. Q: yeah. S: see Kai Po Che. I really would love to work with that kind of a director who’d give that opportunity to do justice to the cinema. Not just like that. I don’t mean to say that Kai Po Che is a failure for film, not even that Kaminey is a failed film. I mean if those films were done musically it wouldn’t have been much different. People and the director, they both should understand. I am giving you an example, I won’t tell you the name. It’s a very beautiful film set in the underworld, maybe in 1960 or 70, and a very successful film, superb film, and I worked on that for almost two to two n a half months, on the design of the sound. When I went for the mix, the director didn’t allow me to sit in the mix. He was such an old tradition guy, he didn’t say anything. And I went and I sat with them for the first reel, and I told him, “let’s mix this way, let’s increase the ambience now.”’ And he said, “Sahoo these ambiences and effects will give you awards. What will it give to the viewers?” Q: LG. S: “viewers need dialogue and music for the entertainment.” Then I didn’t go to the mix. Then they mixed finally. I saw later that whatever I did I almost two n a half months it was almost like kind of out. And the same thing I could have done in just ten days. I realized that I had lost my two months, which I could have saved. Q: hm, I totally understand.

423 S: so basically also the temperament of the directors that matters. Very rare directors understand and recognize the completeness of cinema. For them, if you suddenly increase the music you will get the dynamism. If your story does not have any dynamism, what can the music do to make it that way? They keep requesting to increase the volume more. Now with the digital medium, it is very hard to hear, I mean it’s very painful to the ear, they don’t understand this. The soothing-ness is already gone. Q: but this is also true that the presence of certain established sound designers in the crew probably forces the director to think otherwise. For instance take Rockstar as an example and then Highway as another. Rockstar has very little ambience. And in Highway we have an amazing set of ambience. A: they are two totally different films. Q: still there are many outdoor sequences in Rockstar, which needs to have some sort of ambient sound layers. S: now again this also depends on the director. Q: yeah. S: because in Rockstar they have Rahman’s music, and maybe the director was overwhelmed by Rahman’s music style. And the film’s name is Rockstar! Q: LG S: and he decided to keep it a musical film, to be honest. But Highway was no doubt, because of the name also Resul came, and also I think that Highway is a different film altogether. He is a very sensible filmmaker, if you consider each of his films, each of the films adds a different layer to his career if you look at it. So he found that the visual enhancement, what the characters are enacting, it’s not necessary to underline that by enhancing the music, it is not necessary to dramatize that. Whatever drama is required the actors are already giving that, they have done their job. You need not overdo the music to over-dramatize that more. So they try differently to enhance it, make it more ambience-oriented. They thought maybe that there is so much visual dramatization by actors, maybe it’s not necessary to over-underline it. Q: but also consider other films, for example before Rockstar we had Jab We Met, or before that we had Socha Na tha. In Socha Na tha there is little ambience. But here they have used a lot of ambience. S: what I think is that the understanding of cinema and also which is acceptable by the audience. For instance, think about the time he made Socha Na tha. At that time not everything was already in use, so he was a layman to that particular format. When I show you something and demonstrate, then you’ll understand the working principle

424 clearly. But initially it’s difficult for you because you are new also. And the people surrounding you are also not very confident. So I think he was using that way which was already established surrounding filmmaking. Now after Jab We Met and Socha Na Tha, when the film scenario has also changed, people tried different way so he also tried in the different way. Like some time back I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is an Oriya director, and who is very old, and he is a celluloid guy. He said, “Sir I made a digital film, it’s so good.” he was so backward till now. I used to keep on telling him 6 or 7 years back that you do digital, but he wasn’t doing. He used to say, “No, film is film.” I said, “Sir you have to move on with the new generation.” Q: ok. You mean that ambience gives this sense of geography or provides information about the geography. Do you think that this is due to the coming of digital technology? Why is this sense of geography more visible or audible in recent times? Why is it in demand that you have to give a sense of geography in films? S: no. No doubt about the fact that it’s not only due to digital. Q: then? S: I mean so many different aspects are there. You can say that digital is one of the aspect because mono and the magnetic medium doesn’t have that dynamic range. Mainly if you see the low tones, I’m talking about the room tone, which can’t be heard in magnetic, now you can hear that and you can make it high. So with 5.1, 7.1, previously when I’m sitting here all the sounds would come from the front, now it’s coming from the left, from the right, left surround, right surround. So now it’s the new technology. Not only digital, new technology. I mean to say that 5.1 was there earlier as well. Even Sholay had 7.1. But magnetic doesn’t have that kind of dynamic range. So because of this new digital medium and the new technology of 5.1, 7.1, now Atmos- so definitely credit will go to these things, and parallely also in India the vision of the director and also the sound designer also, which is influenced by the new generation technology, world cinema as a whole. And also acceptance from the viewers. I mean to say that these days you can’t make a fool out of anyone. After the multiplexes came, people have started viewing different kind of cinema. It’s not that they only watch musicals. If it’s meaningful cinema, there are a lot of viewers. When you put ambience in a film and people from the village are watching the film, they won’t feel any difference. If your content is correct then I think nothing else matters. End of the day my only opinion is if your skeleton is strong, then the more you beautifully adorn it, it will become more appealing, and ornaments will beautify it. So I think if you beautify what is present normally, and take the appeal from 70% to 100% then why not. One should try.

425 Q: ok. Now I would like to know about your perception of the channels. How do you place sounds in different channels? If we take monaural as a particular reference, then we come to stereo and you have possibility to expand maybe a little bit of off-screen space. Then that off-screen space is further expanded into 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, Auro 3-D and so on. How do you place your sound in this context? And what sort of layering and sound design elements that you bring in within this particular framework? S: see that depends totally on what the scene is. When you design any ambience or effects or whatever, sometimes you design according to the scene, how to create your atmosphere. Maybe at times though the atmosphere is there, you have to dramatize that atmosphere maybe according to the scene, or maybe state of mind. So it totally depends on that particular scene’s requirement. Theoretically I think how anyone can justify 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos totally depends on what the sequence is. Q: ok. What do you mean by dramatization? S: when I say dramatization I am talking about the effects. For instance, let it be Sarfarosh. If you recall the interval, it’s again a symbolization. When Naseeruddin Shah is very disturbed by the surrounding and one small goat runs around and in the process his glass breaks. So he picks up the goat and tears off his ear, and immediately it’s the interval. So basically this implies that whoever does anything wrong in his surrounding, no one will be spared of my wrath. So basically what I thought of in that particular sequence, it also kills the innocence. What you are doing you don’t think of the other side, you are so self-centered. So that way there you only thought of focusing on that. Q: ok. S: so there’s a dialogue in the film where it is said that when you kill someone you will find out his religion before doing so, even innocents get killed this way. What I did was whether it was a kid, whether it was an innocent, I thought I’d want to bring out the inner pain of a particular instance. So what I did was I slowed down that painful cry of that goat. So I extended that cry to make it sound more painful time space. Q: ok. S: I don’t know how much that will reach people. Say for instance the naxalite movement happened initially. So I showed that real front and then slowly I diffused that. So I used reverb in that and I went into a different zone altogether and everything is empty. Sometimes suddenly I’m doing a film, initially there’s naxalite wars, someone is dying and all that, so finally you see the signs, you see the deadness when all the bodies are there. And finally you can see the dryness through maybe when a piece of paper is flying around with a dry sound. So basically the transition from there to here, it can be a hard

426 transition. So you make it slightly surreal and diffused, then you enter into that other zone, which will affect mentally. So that way you have to get into that. And also that design how you go about it. Like I am saying another film I am talking about, I am not talking about the ambience or the effects. Let it be. One guy who’s like a goon and the city is under his terror, if anyone speaks against him then that person will be dead. Now there is a guy who actually raises his voice against all this. He is giving a lecture to all the crowds about not to do any wrong doings. So the he comes and picks him up from there, then strips his wife naked and kills him in front of his wife. After that he wipes his hand in the clothes of the wife while thousands of people are standing and watching this cruelty, then he leaves with his men. So initially for the agony I decided that let it be he is crying and slowly the murmur and everything vanishes. And we enhance his cry with a reverb and there should be a slow background music and he is not there though he is going. The pain actually of the particular not… and you can say the whole ambience of that particular area, so that’s enhanced by that particular cry geographically. I actually mixed it into complete 5.1 everywhere like in the surround, not only in one place. Q: ok. Did you pan it in surround? S: yes, not only one surround but totally, so basically it can move to everywhere. Actually whatever it is doing, again the innocent one is saved in Sarfarosh, so all these factors have to be considered while you are designing the thing. Q: do you think that many channels give you the creativity to put sounds in a particular position as the numbers of channels are expanding all the while? Or you prefer to keep it fixed in the center when it comes down to the use of ambience? S: no, definitely number of channels gives you a much more scopes to do, if you look at the ambience. Let’s take the example of Slumdog Millionaire. You see there when choppers comes down you see it beautifies the wind which comes from the belt, you see the travel of wind from here. Q: yeah. S: rather, if I am restricted by the channels, I can’t create that. If you can see how it is going, so when you can see the rounds of the winds, that particular thing you won’t get. Q: would you not get distracted when you’d have to turn your head away from the screen? If you put ambience in the rear channels sometimes it can create a sort of disorientation. S: no, what you are saying is totally a hundred percent correct. But intelligently you have to understand that by saying this you have to do this with equal intelligence. Or else it would work and sometimes it might disorient, no doubt about it. Where did the mobile

427 phones come from? But still sometimes in the dramatized way or sometimes in the intelligent way you have to use the ambience correctly otherwise it will distract, I totally agree. But most of the places now a days - if it’s a multi-layered thing, suppose once it will come and go, you don’t notice. What I am saying is when that particular thing comes if you notice where it comes from then you realize it. Then you’ve to enhance your thing, “oh! Superb!” Q: okay. Do you spend time at the location youself when you go there, or you prefer to wait for the director, depending on your relationship with the director? S: no, I actually understand what you are trying to say, basically now a days what I said, by doing the sync sound of the film, all the sound has a newness. Initially when dubbing used to happen, you have like say BBC, BBC has 5 or 10 CDS, say if you are making a film, use the sound on CD number 10 number 15 track. So everyone would use that same sound. By going to the location, by recording the location dialogue and also parallelly we used to record the ambience and effects, suppose the choosing of the vehicles, when vehicle comes also you’ll think is this correct for you? Though even if it isn’t correct, if visually you are seeing another car then you allow. Or else you take up music. So basically how much did it skid, where did it fall, you’ve get the exact naturality of the car, that particular thing. By this you are actually differentiating between this film and your other films. Suppose I have done 75 films all together. If I keep on using the same thing in all the films finally it will be monotonous. Then you won’t keep the ambience, again it will be music like it happened for older films. It will be a dialogue and musical films. Because of the newness, new geography, new location, you are there recording the ambience and effects on the location. So that adds a new layer to the film and which will be different from the other film. So in that whatever dramatization you have to do, you have to add different layers keeping this existing track. Q: but you also do dubbing, right? S: yeah. Q: why do you do dubbing if everything can be collected from the location? S: no. Sometimes what happens even in Hollywood also they use dubbing for 5%, 10% or whatever. There are two, three reasons for this. The first thing is time consistence. Suppose you have an evening shot. The light is going and there is no alternate. Suppose it’s good for visual but for you it’s not good. But there’s no time. So they can actually go for another take, there’s no alternative. If you can go for a wider space the performance is good, otherwise if there’s no time because we do more in limited time. So apart from the visual we get very less time for sound. There are very rare filmmakers like Bhansali

428 who shoot literally for eight months. So what happens in this case, the effects and ambience is totally up to you how you are taking it. I am talking about the example of Omkara. So I go to the location before anybody goes. So I go there and record for half hour or an hour. Suppose from 7o’clock to 1o’ clock, whatever they’ve shot I make my notes. And when it was lunch break I would keep telling the first AD that these are the effects that I’ve not yet taken, I have to take it in lunchtime. So what I’d do is when everyone would go for lunch at 1 or 1:30, so I used to go to the side and I used to make a note of what effects I need. Let’s take the example of Omkara, the scene where Konkona Sen performs, Oberoi and everybody is coming by driving the car, so at the interval I would take the thing to the other side and record. Suppose if there’s a one hour lunch break I would take 15 minutes break for the lunch, the rest of the 45 minutes I’d go and capture my ambience and whatever effects is there that I have to take. So if anything left again I tell the first AD that tomorrow morning I need this first before the shooting starts. I should complete this before the shoot starts. Even if dialogue remains, ambience and effects shouldn’t remain left out. If you look at Omkara 80% of the ambience and effects are on location, even the dying sequence of , the sewing, everything is on location. Even that sequence of making “Khir” that both Kareena Kapoor and Konkona Sen make, the “Halwa”, the cow dung scene, all the cars that you see moving in the film, I took the same portion same place same vehicle to get the correct jobs, correct these things, and inside outside I recorded everything. And after everyone left I tell everyone, including Vishal or anybody, that you have to wait for two minutes since I have to record all these things. Q: also in the marriage sequence, right? S: yeah, everything. If you look at Omkara, when Kareena Kapoor’s “Haldi” is happening and the villagers are singing, that song I recorded at the location, when Vivek Oberoi is getting that musically how much was kept finally it’s a different thing, like when everyone is coming to the village, it’s continuous. Everything including when everyone is going for the marriage. I must have recorded like almost twelve pieces of music in that, out of which 6 or 7 pieces of location music we used. Like Ajay Devgan’s gun, the sound of the swing, everything. Q: that particular sequence in the train tracks, where he is going for the kill and it’s raining outside, is remarkable. S: yes that is there. Because of the rain on their body also, I could retain 60% of the location track. I’ve dubbed 30% or 40% of that particular sequence but the rest 70% is location track.

429 Q: did you dub the voice? S: yes. But I used the 70% of the location track of that whole sequence also. Q: do you prefer to use mostly the location track? S: yeah. Even if I am doing a dubbing film now but I clean the whole track. Though it is not sync sound so I told the director that though I have dubbed 100%, but still I am going to use 50% location sound. I got somebody, I cleaned the tracks and just replaced the dubbing track by the original track. Q: how much do you clean? Does it depend on the director, the story or do you have your own preference? S: my preference. For that particular thin director never interferes. As long as it sounds good for them. So basically we never try to make sound very plastic. It should be as natural as possible. In the initial days of my career I tried to clean it a little more than the normal. Suddenly after a film or so I realized that again you are cleaning and again putting the ambience sound, why should you do that? Q: absolutely. S: so basically as long as keeping the originality, I mean without losing the original voice, the quality, there’s sometimes low wind you can cut down to like 50 hertz so that on 100 hertz which is not affecting your voice. That’s all. We tried to minimize as much as possible. But we used to EQ a bit to raise the brightness of the thing. And mostly I try to record as much as possible at the location. Basically we know that in Indian film we have four to five songs. So when I am going I keep my notes. Suppose there is two days of song where I am not required. Those two days I go and record the locality ambience, geography n all, so that I can create it. Not only Vishal Bhardwaj, you see Sudhir Mishra. Have you seen this film called Khoya Khoya Chand? Q: no. S: just see that film when possible. Not only Vishal’s. Then there is a film called six feet under. Q: did you do the sound for that film? S: yeah. Then again I recorded, just see the perspective, how a silent place can be enhanced. The beauty of sync sound what we did there’s a beautiful example. Initially in a small 5.1 place we did everything. Whatever you see in Manorama six feet under, everything, 80% is recorded on location. You see the first Hero Honda he bought, all the things I recorded on the location to get the naturality of it. Everything I recorded, I didn’t use any other sound. The vehicle, the other car. So in that after doing everything I show it to the director, he suggests some corrections according to what he doesn’t want, after

430 doing all that we went to the mixer. When we heard it in the mix suddenly he found and said, “My goodness I am hearing something different!” now it is different. Then he called me and said, “Sahoo sahib, I will not tell you. You hear the first line and tell me the meaning of it”. He played it. The first line says, “Margad registaan mein koi nahin hai”. Margad registaan means a dead desert. So then he said, “That since the line says that it’s a dead forest why these human voices are there?” then we re-designed the whole sequence for ten days, and finally we mixed the film. Just see Khoya Khoya Chand, he is one of the good director and he has a good sound design perspective also. I am doing the next film of Navdeep Sing, NH 10. It’s a very nicely designed film. It’s a thriller, Haryana based. A: Navdeep Sing is a very good new director - he does sync sound for all of his films and he uses the sounds even if it is a bit noisy. He did Manorama six feet under. Q: oh yes. S: I am doing his second film, NH 10. Q: so the final question would be – S: if you look at Mumbai Summer it is very ambience based film, and there’s a film now which is coming Kya Delhi Kya Lahore, you should see this film, it’s ambience-oriented and only one location. The film is about the partition time, one check post remains. The war between India and Pakistan happens and one soldier from India remains alive and one from Pakistan. So on the one check post the two surviving rivals will live. It is a two hours film and it happens within one geographical location. Just see how you can sustain at one location for two hours. That is the film you should see for ambience. Q: LG. who is the director? S: director is Vijay Raj, the actor. Q: ok. S: that is the film that you should see for the ambience when it will get released. I think it will help you in Indian perspective. And that kind of very rare film you see. What he said, Mumbai Summer - that’s also a good film for ambience use. Q: what does this locational information, in your opinion, give to the audience? Does it transmit something to the audience apart from the geographical awareness? Do you call it authencity or a sense of reality? What do you think? S: I think definitely authencity and reality we should go for whether it is a commercial cinema or parallel cinema, now it’s the multiplex cinema, good cinema or bad cinema whatever it is but cinema at times can be 100% false. The things that are getting portrayed at one or the other places, though you are putting some other character who

431 doesn’t mean that, you are leaving that the play of particular character, effects and ambience which will be specific to the location you are shooting at. So I think whether commercial cinema, good or bad cinema, all should have ambience. Because to establish the ambience or effects it doesn’t actually have to hit or flop. Any technical support never makes your film hit or flop. But these are the extra ornaments, which beautify the film where it makes the film as a complete film. Q: yeah. S: without this additional technicality it is not a complete film. Q: of course. How do you think this transition from a very holistic point of view? If you look at it historically from mono to stereo to multi-channel 7.1 or whatever, how do you look at this transition from a very long historical point of view? How do you see it from a long distance shot? Which way is it going? S: I think it is going in the very correct way. But I think at some of the places we misuse. I’ll give you an example of Ramayana, Mahabharata. At that time if someone had to get anything he would pray to the god for years, probably Shiva, “oh lord! Give me a boon.” And then Shiva would agree. And then the Rakshas will come to kill him first. So what I think is digital medium, people try to misuse this. By misuse I mean that people think that digital medium is nothing but the loudness. Suddenly it is like the louder your film sounds the more hit it is. So I think our sound people, may be director, they should understand the medium correctly and they should utilize it in the correct way. I am saying that anything is very good but anything excess is bad. For instance when you eat little it’s very tasty, when you eat more your stomach will be upset and you’ll feel sick, this is also like that. Some days back, I wouldn’t tell you the name, it happened to me. Two months back one of my film released. It is a very soothing film and it’s kind of a very soft humorous, a very light hearted kind of film. It is not a loud kind of a film. But then the trailer came, which is a very trailer oriented trailer. Thriller is so much dramatized visually, that the music is also over dramatized. And now it is almost like Dolby is no more, dying. Because the optical medium is dying. So we are more into digital – UFO, Scrabble, these kinds. So Dolby had a control. When they used to come for mastering, they used to see that the thing shouldn’t be more than 85. Or maybe you can go up to maximum 90db. Now what is happening is there is no limitation. You can play it anywhere. Even the speaker’s blast at times, it doesn’t make any difference. What some sound engineers do for these thriller kinds of films, in the playback chain in the theater they try to take precaution. What they think is if they keep it together the speakers, which are playing the sounds they will be blasting. For this reason they used to keep in

432 5.5. So when you are using 5.5 and then I am mixing my film in 7, totally the level, the balance and everything is going for a toss, even the dynamic range goes for a toss. What some people do is in that 5.5, to make it loud they mix at 9 instead of 7. Q: LG. S: so what happened with me in this film was suddenly I recorded and then the trailer came out before that, the trailer is bloody so loud! And a thriller with all squeaky sounds. And after that it was a huge show, the screening. All big people of the industry had come to see it. So when I saw I found out how my sound was hearing different, my director was looking at me and wondering what happened to the print? What happened was the loud screaming sounds that were there, the mixer made it 4.5 instead of 7, and he didn’t increase it from 4.5. So now the total of what I got was almost like half of what I had. Q: how was it sounding like? Did people like it? S: no, I ran to the projector and told him that bloody you have to make it 6. It was a mess, the director was looking at me, what could I do? What I am saying is before me the sound engineer who was there I had a major fight with him. Then post that I had a major fight, then had a talk with the production house, it went over to big people talk, then nothing doing, I told the production house that you have to give me in writing that if any problem happens to this film because of sound I am not responsible for this. If you are keeping this trailer before us you have to make it minimum 6db down. Or else I am not going to allow. If you are allowing this kind of trailer you have to give me in writing in one paper. So finally they called this guy, they called me, I called this guy and he said, “You know Mr. Sahoo, this film doesn’t work if my sound wouldn’t be at this particular level.” Do you think sound makes or breaks a film? Which era you are looking for? “No, you don’t understand. Loudness means thriller, thriller means loudness.” I said thriller means loudness doesn’t mean that you’ll blow the entire roof of the house. We have some sealing point. “No.” So I said do one thing, you come, I’ll come and we won’t talk. We will call another ten people who are normal, then watch the film. Then if they say this is loud or soft, we’ll make it loud, if it’s correct we’ll pass it. “No, if I tell the producer, if they go ahead with their cutting down of sound, otherwise it can’t happen.” He was speaking with such an attitude. “I will tell the producer not to put this trailer there, he wouldn’t put it there.” I said okay, do whatever you want. But I won’t allow this. Finally literally I reduced it up to 7db. And I increased my sound to 3db more overall because of that trailer. So post that 7db less and 3db more, so with that balance of 10db then I got into equal level.

433 Q: but this is also true that digital technology allows you to have tremendous amount of lower levels of sound, for example more rumbles and room tones. Why don’t people use that? S: no also here there is a problem. The playback thing here, every theater is not aligned at all. They don’t want to spend money on theaters. They want to only increase the money of the ticket price, and my goodness sometimes the left is very high, right is not working. In that condition what do you do? The reason is they keep 7 to 5.5 not to save the speaker, it’s because in multiplex system there is only one projectionist, there are seven or five theaters, the layers between the other theater and this is so less that if you increase the volume it will cross between the other things. So you can hear the sound of this particular film there, because of that you will keep the volume low. Q: ok. A: I went to see this Pritam’s film at PVR, when there is music everything is ok. When it is only ambience and dialogues sparking is coming from center speakers. Because of the music you are not able to hear the spark. And I called Pritam, he is also not interested. Then I said I can’t hear the film so I am going out. So I took the money back and I left the theater. This was Shuddha Desi Romance. So most of the theaters are like that. Sometimes left surround is not working, sometimes right surround is not working, and main problem is this. Somebody mixes it in such a big level and if you mix it in a correct level also it won’t be playback kind of correctly. Like Ram Leela was very loud, I felt it was very loud. S: it is. A: Hitendra Ghosh did the mixing. After that someone else mixed. S: no, they increased. When they take the output they increase it by 5db. A: Ram Leela itself is a very loud film, everybody talks very loudly, on top of it if you increase it! Q: are there examples of people using lesser volume or silences? S: no, now the films have silence. We used to create silence also in the film. A: actually in Omkara there are so many silences. I mean in Omkara silence is enhanced actually, so there are many many places like that. Still that film is appreciated by people, it’s not like you need to be very loud. Q: one film could be a very good example, but he didn’t do that. In Barfi there are very less amount of dialogue. But it’s so full of music.

434 A: because it’s a musical film and they use English music also for that. Because it was that kind of Chaplin kind of comedy. You need to do that for enhancing that slapstick kind of comedy. Even Kahani, there is a lot of ambience. S: you should go for Kahani. It’s an ambience-oriented film. Q: yes I have seen that film in theater. A: they have used it very beautifully. Q: who did the sound for Kahani? A: Allwyn and Sanjay.

435 Sukanta Majumdar (2014)

Duration: 1:15:50 Name abbreviations: Sukanta Majumdar – S, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

S: The pleasure that I have to listen to stereo, the kind of depth or clarity that you can achieve on stereo, when we work on a film for instance we don’t get the chance or luxury of using 5.1 recording for ambience. For ambience so far we have not been able to do 5.1 recording for a film here. We always record on stereo. So since I record on stereo I believe I should listen more to stereo. And when I am working on track-laying in this house inside this room, all my films so far I have done in this room, on this computer. For instance say when I am track laying for a film like Kangal Malsat where I exhaustively have sounds of Kolkata, not much was used later because the design worked out in a different way. Ambience sound only was used but they were mostly tweaked and much worked upon before getting used. Not much of ambience was used directly. Anyway the thing is that I always prefer listening to ambience in stereo because of the depth in stereo and the memory of the recording. Because what I have seen is generally ambience, when even I am using it, the memory of the recording works beautifully for me in the film. Because it’s not that I haven’t recorded ambience for a specific film, I have surely done that. But a lot of situations come when I have seen that I remember of something I recorded earlier. ‘Let me use that here and see what is happening.’ I do this quite often. It’s a kind of an instinct. So this happens because of the stereophonic memory. I would never think of putting in onto the surround to see what happens all of a sudden. After that, when four or five layers have been added, I got through the layers carefully here and I know which layer has what. I generally have four to five layers of ambience in a film. So after those four or five layers of ambience is ready then I make a note next to them stating which I will put in which track/channel. Say one I keep for LR or LCR, the other ambience I might feed a little more in the center. Another I keep for LRS and RRS. So I note certain things like this next to the tracks of ambience. And the use depends on the quality of the ambience actually. Say in case of the ambiences with a lot of incidental noises, noises of objects being placed or something else, those I cannot feed much into the surround. That’s because, you can understand, that people might get distracted. So an ambience which is not much independent, which does not have much complication, an ambience which is calm, an ambience which gives a general picture of the place, that kind of ambience I generally keep and prefer to keep in

436 the surround. Only in case I am doing something intentionally, then that is a different case. And I think LCR is a zone where you can play around the most. And I still feel that watching a film – I can’t comment about a 3D film since I haven’t designed one as yet – viewing is still two dimensional. The dimension has not changed visually. So even the hearing part for me, my design is denser in the LCR. I generally don’t play around in the other zones. Because I personally think it doesn’t help much. It mostly generates distractions. Because people go to watch a film, and not hear it only. So nothing should be done to hamper that experience. As far as the characteristic of ambience is concerned, for my personal work I don’t believe in film music honestly. People might come to beat me up if I say this but honestly I find the concept of film music to be funny. I personally don’t like adding music suddenly in the background, and what happens because of that is there is a plus point in working in Kolkata. I haven’t yet worked with a music director of very high stature, like if A.R Rahman is composing a background score no one is going to listen to my voice there. But people who I know who are working in the industry, like friends, with them you can at least express yourself and warn them. Another advantage with them is that, like a person who is thinking a lot about sound of a specific area, basically the way we think, like kind of building an imagery in our minds with the sound, what I have observed is that the music directors spoil this thing. Of course this works more for sound. I mean what is being shown visually, that can have any sound, it cannot be specified that it has to have this sound only. Any sound that will go along with the visual can be used, and that can be of course musical. But at the same time I don’t think that what the image is speaking of, or the location it is speaking about, or the moment it is speaking about, as a whole what the film is saying, a parallel story can be narrated by the sound also. Especially this scope is there for feature films in the true sense. You can narrate a parallel story through the sound constantly. If you want to hold it through the overall structure, then what happens is the elements of sound with the help of which you are weaving your story, it becomes crucial to maintain a character for those elements. I mean it is very similar to weaving a sari. Say if you are weaving a Dhanekhali sari you can’t suddenly change the weave to the Kaantha style. You can’t use different kind of threads as well. Surely that’ll come out as some mixed style but it wouldn’t look as good. When you are weaving something the elements you will use are very crucial. In every film I try to find those elements in the ambience, the overall surrounding that I am creating through the ambience the important elements I will mark out which I will play around with later in the film. These will be the elements with which I will relate the characters. When a film comes to me it’s completely silent and there is a

437 plus point of this. I don’t know what would happen in case of sync sound since I have never worked with sync sound. When the film comes it comes as a virgin, almost like the external framework of a sculpture. Then slowly we start filling it with sound. Now this process has almost like become a habit for us since we mostly work this way. I really enjoy building up a relationship between a character and a specific sound. I was working on a film, it just completed sometime back and will probably release in the coming March, it is called Pendulum. It is a commercial film. By that I mean, now a days a commercial Bengali film means many things, there’s something known as half commercial. One kind is films like Kangal Malsat, art house films. And the other is half commercial. This is not entirely commercial, probably there might be one song and you’ll feel like it is required. Then with the story and everything else there will be a certain ambiguity about the film, where the film will not probe an issue and not even ignore it. These kinds of films are quite frequently made in the Bengali industry these days. This half commercial is the trend now. And the other kind is the age-old fully commercial film. So this film Pendulum, which I did some days back is such a half commercial film. So what I observed was when the film came to me I found out it has songs. The hero and the heroine are romancing and there’s a song around them, just like showing a love story through the song. The film is woven with three to four different stories, and in one of them the hero is a young man. This man is someone who belongs to the middle class society, he is coming from a middle class home. He stays with his mother, their house looks a bit shabby, they don’t have much wealth and have a small ground floor house like that. This is located in some interior area of Kolkata, like Behala, they have water logging near their house – such is the locality. So he falls in love with a woman from upper middle class society, it’s basically the story of a ploy. So now where should I place this fellow? What sounds should I use to describe this person, what sounds should I use to describe his house? So these things are primary. So while working I have seen that if I add a few elements to the characters from the beginning it’s quite helpful. Say for instance the sound of a motorbike. Since he is a young chap he would like to have a motorbike. He is studying in college, so he observes how young students in Kolkata roam about on bikes with a backpack. And the color of the bike is either red or yellow, one will have a different sound, one will have his own horn etc. probably this isn’t present visually in the film, or maybe there is a slight reference somewhere. Maybe that reference isn’t intentional, probably it has just happened in due course. So I can weave this sound in different ways with respect to the guy’s different dreams. Even when the song is playing I can weave it, maybe in between two interludes I can add the sound of a bike. I can

438 make a bike pass in this scope. Then say maybe different app sounds from an android phone, these apps have quite interesting sounds, so maybe those sounds. Then maybe the sound of TV serials that are coming from the neighboring places of his house, then the blowing horn of a rickshaw etc. So you can actually describe or build up a character with these kinds of sounds. Even if anyone is watching the film with the eyes closed still the atmosphere of the story will be felt and it can be understood where the story has gone. So for me ambience is this, this association is important for me. How you can associate the character, we all are actually associated somehow. We almost identify a place, a space, a character with the ambient sounds. Since we are sound guys so we are more into this identification with sounds, and it helps quite a lot actually while making a film. Q: if you have limitations from technology then it will be troublesome to build up this association. For instance if you are asked to achieve this with monaural technology, what will happen? S: yes, it is very difficult then. If I am asked to do this in mono it will in fact be quite challenging. So I will tell you from my mono experience only. Would you know this person called Bikramjit Gupta, he made this film called My name is Laden. Q: yes, I know. He was in . S: yes in the film studies department. He is senior to all of us. So one of his films, called Achal, it is quite an interesting film. Two or three characters are primary in that film. Out of them one character is who becomes human statues. Like he will dress up as Lord Shiva and exhibit himself, you can see such in Europe where they pint themselves silver or golden. So they will dress up as different gods or goddesses like Kali, Krishna, Lokenath etc. and onlookers will give money, that’s their daily bread earning process. And the person who played the character has this profession in actuality, the director chose him only to play the role. So the film almost belongs to the genre where drama and documentary is intermingled. So the drama part is that he has kept the film under his control, the rest is documented, that is the way this guy does his work. So this film went for mono mix, the only reason being lack of money. And they were extremely keen on getting a print on 35mm whatever maybe the cost - that romanticism was working for them. So if it is 35mm and you have to choose Dolby, then 5.1 is only possible with Dolby and they charges around 1.5 lakhs for regional films. That’s the license fee. Now that wasn’t possible to give. So these were the reasons why we fixed on mono. So then I realized that it is not possible to bring in this separation in mono. These days we can use amazing minute sounds and we can make them audible in the theater. Like complex

439 ambience sounds. Say for instance something as simple as leaves of a tree rustling in the wind can be done so beautifully these days, say the amazing rustling sound that you may hear inside a bamboo forest, or the sound of the bamboo bending, a squeak, these things can be done amazingly in surround, like unbelievable. If you have good recording and if you happen to know how it actually sounds then what you can make can be unbelievable. But for sound the separation of one element from another element is extremely crucial, and it is one of the problems of sound that whether you can separate because one sound at times masks another sound and a loud sound will cover up a low sound. If two sounds are of the same frequency then you wouldn’t hear the low sound, these are the issues. Now that way a surround mix is much easier actually than a mono mix. Because in mono at the same time you are playing dialogues, ambience, music, effects, Foley etc. so it is very complicated to place all these from a single speaker. So if you don’t keep it decided in your mind since your track-laying time that what sounds you are going to use in which places then you will be in a soup. For instance I’ll give a basic example, nowadays I use single tones in ambiences, I quite prefer that. Say just a hum, ok. So it is not even a real ambience sound, and at the same time this new age also has an ambience of its own, like an urban ambience, it’s like a hum. Like you’ll hear an AC and other things. Q: yes, like room tone. S: yes. But outside the room also, it’s not always room tone. I’ll say from my experience, like in Dharmatola area if you visit the office areas in the summer time in the afternoon you’ll get to hear this hum. I am saying when the traffic is low in the afternoon, people are dozing off, then you will hear that hum even higher than the traffic. So I consider this within ambience now since it is an urban sound. Q: of course. S: it is an ambience right? Of course it is not created by nature but actually it is also created by nature. Q: urban nature. S: yes, exactly. So I use this kind of single mono tone in sound quite a few times for layering. Now say there are certain things, say you are doing 5.1, it is simple, say you have a sub-woofer then you can just do it like magic. So you put that sound in the sub- woofer and that will fill the whole hall nicely, now you can play at ease with your traffic sounds in other zones. Now if you have to create the same thing in mono you won’t be able to because you will not get the sub-woofer. If you do not have the sub you can’t use the very low tones. Now if you layer this and you layer traffic along with this, like a fool, what will happen? You will get a noise, and nothing else. So this low tone will muffle your

440 traffic sound and not let it out fully, and if you have dialogues on top of this then it is a catastrophe. So that’s what I mean, if you keep these minute technical nuances in your mind since track laying then I am sure disaster can be avoided quite a bit. You should be careful from the start. And then while mixing you have to be really careful about the dynamics. The dynamic range that you are playing with you really have to be careful about that. One of the primary reason being that it will go through an optical transfer after that since you can’t use mono in any other ways. If you are going for a digital release then it is different, I am talking about film. Optical transfer has its own limitations. You cannot keep the levels beyond 10k - it will sound weird. You wouldn’t get anything below 60 Hz whereas now we can hear up to 40 hertz inside a hall without any trouble. But definitely it is more challenging. You need to have proper control over this whole spectrum, the spectrum, which you are creating, you need to have a proper grip over it. And you have to be aware of what exactly you are doing. Otherwise I have seen it is difficult to achieve this. Here till now if you ask me to put the elements in a mix in order of priority, the dialogues will come first till now. You cannot suppress the dialogues. Second is all the important sound effects. Say a bus passes from nearby or a footstep, these are the ones, which you cannot suppress. You cannot hide it with the ambience. And the third is still music I would say. Even after so much of mumbo jumbo about the ambience, music is still more crucial. I mean if music is there at any place then you have to put down the ambience, okay, you won’t be given another choice. Mix is still done with this priority. It’s not that we don’t do otherwise. Like if you see Kangal Malsat intently you will notice there at a lot of places I have put ambience over music and suppressed the music. I have also put loud effects on the music at places - these kinds of things have been done. But still our mix till now is a dialogue dependent one. I mean if the dialogues are there, every other thing will get less priority there. If you notice, a Hollywood mix is not like that. In Hollywood they give priority to the modulation of dialogue. Like when someone is speaking low, or high, or speaking from a distance or nearby, whispering or angry or whatever, they bring all these moods in the dialogue itself. But it’s not the same for us here. Our mix will be generally very loud, it will not matter whether it’s a love story or it is someone scolding in anger. Say when a father is scolding a son the level of the dialogue will be the same as when two people are proposing in love. We still have not been able to come out of this dilemma of the mix. It’s not that we don’t try to come out, we do try. But you know what, this is not possible in dubbing. Q: hm.

441 S: you cannot do this if you are dubbing. If you place a mic in a 10 feet by 10 feet room right in front of the mouth, mic as in you are using TLM, you are giving the mic right in front of the mouth, U 87, then you are using a pop filter and asking the actor to deliver the dialogue. You will have to do this, you don’t have any other choice, what can you do? Everything will appear to be playing from very close, there is no distance at all, there’s no depth at all in the dialogue. On the contrary there’s more than enough depth in the shot. Now this problem exists in our mixing style, we can’t do anything about it. What can you do? It is not possible for us to cover this with technology, if you are talking about that. Q: we can see this happening in Rituparno Ghosh’s films a lot. S: Rituparno Ghosh’s films didn’t have sound. Very frankly speaking there’s no point speaking about that. Sound is generally is missing in quite a few Bengali films. Very few bother about sound. And that is kind of the overall vibe, not only Bengali films. But since Bengali film industry is at a worse condition than any other, the sound scene is even worse. But what I was saying about technology, if you are doing mono mix you have to be careful. If you get a technological help then you can say it’s an advantage, the dynamics or separation that you can create in 5.1, the way you can make softest to loudest sound audible, that is not possible in mono. You can just imagine the impact of a blast that you can create in 5.1, just a single blast. That won’t be possible in mono. Even bullet sounds, or any other sudden noise, we had to suppress them with compressors. The sound used to be very light. Now you hear bullet sounds like in actuality. Q: but another factor is there. Would your strategy have changed if they were a stereo mix or a surround mix? For example, you mentioned that you like to play more densely in LR. S: if I know that a film is going to be mixed in surround, naturally I’ll keep that in mind from the time of track-laying. Ill strategize according to that, then I’ll know which sound will go where, I’ll put this in the center, I’ll use a certain kind of tone, like I mentioned earlier, I would be able to use that in the sub-woofer. If I know that I have to do stereo mix for this then stereo mix doesn’t play in the theater, there’s no such format as such as stereo. That will be either for DVD or for CD. So naturally I’ll change my strategy even more then. I might probably use sub still then, because these days everyone has home theater with sub. But it is not that sub which will play 40 hertz at full clarity, this is not that sub. So I’ll surely play with it but say I’ll play with 80 or something, I’ll not get it towards 40. But if it’s mono I wouldn’t even do this, not even 80, I’ll start everything from 100-120. This kind of strategy you’ll have to do from the time of tracklaying. You

442 should definitely know what the final format is going to be, that’s what I think, and according to that I will be designing my track. It is definitely very important to realize how it will be to hear. Q: in terms of putting sounds in different channels I was wondering if you are sending all information through one channel or if you are sending through two channels or if it is send via five channels. What is the difference that you think happens in these different approaches as a sound designer and recordist? S: what happens is primarily a difference in experience. It’s the difference in experience for the one who is listening. If the sound is coming from a single source then, it’s not that it’s a single kind of sound that is coming, since we are discussing about film, when in a film sound is coming from a single source then everything is playing from there. So then it is not possible to give the audience that experience which they will have listening from five channels. When sound is coming from five channels then audience can be immersed in that soundscape. You can almost drown the audience in that soundscape, you can almost make them feel that they are almost there. What you are seeing in the theater you are almost inside that space. It is possible to create this kind of an illusion. It’s not that it is not possible in mono, but then you have to depend on the mind of the audience basically. It also depends on how they are receiving this. Like while munching on popcorn maybe they are not thinking much, not involving the head much in the film and watching the film lightly, but still they will feel certain sounds passing by next to their ear or something. So this experience, this illusion that they will have, it is possible to create that illusion. I don’t think something more is possible to do. In mono I will say that it goes to a much more intellectual level. It is possible in mono as well. But then the audience has to play with it intellectually. How the audience will receive the sound, how they will interact or listen to the sound, it is going to depend on that. Q: ok. S: here what is happening, there’s a lot of separation. You are able fill it up with so much of sounds that the audience will have an overall experience. Definitely here also their intellect, their thought process, their background everything will be affecting, even the memory. So if they carefully listen they will appreciate your work in a better way. Even if they don’t pay attention, then also I’ll say that you can encapsulate an inattentive audience within an illusion. I think that is possible. Q: and in stereo? S: it is surely possible in stereo to some extent. But the problem with stereo is that if you are using stereo in a theater the effect will totally depend on the seating of the audience.

443 Q: yeah, when we are speaking of a theater then stereo is not possible at all. It is either mono or surround. S: yes. Now if someone is listening to stereo at home then definitely it is possible to some extent. Moreover stereo has that factor. Q: but Dolby SR was there, what about that? S: yes, that is four-channels. It did not have a sub, only LCR and surround. Three separate channels for LCR and one for surround. You are feeding only a single thing in all the surround speakers. Q: ok. S: it had a very nice effect. I have mixed only one film in LCR and surround. Q: how was that? S: oh that was amazing. It is very nice to hear. There’s not much separation in surround, now say you have used only one ambience in all of them, so that encapsulates from behind, it is very nice to hear. Q: ok, one channel for ambience is coming from behind. S: yes. Q: but now Dolby Atmos is happening. It has 120 channels. S: yes. With that there’s aerial speakers above the head, an extra sub has been added at the back, a rear sub, and the gap has been fulfilled. Like before the speakers were set from one-third of the hall, now that gap is not there, speakers have come in between that space. Q: if you are asked to mix in Dolby Atmos, how will you do it? S: I don’t know, LG. no idea. I mean frankly speaking I don’t know what ambience I’ll put over the head, what ambience can be used for overhead. Now if it is thundering, that you can put overhead. If an airplane passes you can put that overhead. What more can do you for overhead? Honestly you know what, this logic of increasing channels has not started in recent days, it had started quite before. It has started since the time of Dolby stereo and Dolby SR, which you mentioned about, slowly the channels are increasing. But the point is that surely there is scope if you increase the channels, but that doesn’t imply that the job is going to be easier. Just because there is scope doesn’t imply that you can create havoc there. Now if the film is 3-D it is still possible. I mean a 3-D film with Dolby Atmos sound, I am sure that will be a great combination. It will be a funny thing as well. What else can I say, now if you are willing you create and show a spectacle you can always do that. But if you are asking me aesthetically I always prefer and like stereo. I love stereo sounds and absolutely I am in love with stereo. The comfort that I get

444 listening to it sitting in the middle here, I don’t get that anywhere, not even in the hall. I am talking about the cinema hall scenario here since we are working here, you cannot hear surround properly here. There’s no maintenance, it doesn’t play at the level it is supposed to, these kinds of problems are there. People here think that the speakers will last long if you play them at low volume, such inhibitions still exist here. So to go beyond all of this and hear your work is not pleasant, so these days I don’t even to go watch my work in the cinema hall, there’s no point. I feel very sad. Whatever little fun will be there watching the film in the theater that will be all, I am talking about the in general film viewing at home, that’s why I never got home theater for my home. Because I personally think that the fun that you get listening to stereo it is not there in anything else. Q: but stereo could be unbalanced, right? Perhaps the right channel is denser than the left. Whenever I listen to stereo I feel uncomfortable because I feel that I am hearing more on the right than the left. It is never entirely stable. S: yes you are right, this kind of thing happens once in a while. It has happened with me also and I have wondered if anything is wrong with the speakers, or if a cable is loose somewhere, I have faced such things. But still I’d say if you listen to a proper stereo it is really absolutely amazing, especially if you hear with headphones. The depth created in stereo is beautiful and the texture is very nicely brought out in stereo. But this doesn’t happen in mono. Since you are more interested in mono, there’s no fun recording ambience in mono, this is what I have observed. I have done mono recording for many films. Since many films don’t have the budget so I have to end up using one mic, what else can I do? For ambience I feel mono is always a little muddy. The clarity seems to be missing, whereas when I am listening with the headphones with stereo mics that is a different pleasure to listen to ambience, especially if you are recording binaural it sounds interesting. Q: have you recorded ambience in binaural? S: yes I have recorded in binaural but those were personally made by us - those binaural sounds. The mics weren’t so good. Q: do you go to the location/field and record on stereo? S: yes, I do that. I do stereo mostly, say if I am doing 100 films, out of that 80 films will be done in stereo. The films that I cannot do stereo mostly don’t have that budget. Q: you record the LR separately in a track, right? S: no, why would I do separately? Q: oh, so you put LR in one track only? S: yes. LR stays in one track only.

445 Q: ok. S: do you mean doing dual mono? Q: yes. S: no I don’t go for dual mono unless it is necessary or required. Say it happens in such a way that the left is uncomfortably low in LR, that happens at times, then I have to increase it so that the left comes to the same level, that’s all. But otherwise I keep it the way it is. In fact a lot of times I play unbalanced stereo, I am talking about films. I have used certain sounds for films, which say are a little right heavy or left heavy, the recording is that way only. The mic was placed in such a way that the right was heavy, the power of the signal is more on the right and lower on the left. I use such stuff. Q: have you ever tried using MS? I always record on MS. S: the best stereo recording is definitely MS, because you are using three mic capsules and the clarity of panning is much more definitely. Q: well, in that case you have to do LR separately. S: yes, that is totally different. That you are separating LR to hear them separately. So that the left and the right plays properly. Now a days a lot of plug-ins are available, so if you put an MS decoder in the insert then you can hear LR in stereo track as well, MS to LR. This is available everywhere now. But you know what the thing is the mics are not available here. I am always bound to record XY or something similar. There’s no other choice, what will you do? And what is that French recording method? The one in which mics are put on the mouth, it is called X or” or something, whatever I don’t remember. The main thing is the stereo recording but with two mics. MS will surely have more clarity because you are getting Figure 8 and you are getting a Cardioid on the other side, it’s brilliant. Do you have a 418 personally? Q: no, what I have personally is an MKH60-MKH30 combination. S: but the first one is mono mic. Oh ok so you use both and record accordingly. So you have a place to fix it that way. Q: yes, first the MKH 60 is kept above and the 30 below. Then the L and R are getting recorded separately, I get them onto separate tracks - the R is from MKH60, and then I get the 30 below and I change the phase, I use the LR separately. I would keep that in the center and the LR separate. But my primary question is about ambience. What do you think would have happened if ambient sounds aren’t there or present less in a film? I mean the tracks that you are making during the final mix of a film. What do you think might happen if you are using less amount of ambience sound there? I still haven’t got a solution for this question.

446 S: see what can happen depends completely on the situation. It’s not that we don’t use less ambience, we do, there are times when we don’t keep ambience at all. Okay let me take the example of Kangal Malsat again. Say Bhodi’s house in Kangal Malsat, it was one of the crucial places I was tensed about. I mean while doing the tracks this was one of the primary concerns for me. Q: ok. Who was plying Bhodi? S: . Since you’ve read the text well you know what Bhodi is all about. You know what class he is coming from. So one can have an idea of where his house space might be, the director has an idea and he has crafted it accordingly. It is like a half slum locale, where people rent out spaces to carry out occult practices, and some more dicey activities. He is the captain of the Chokhtar team. So now you need to judge this character Bhodi. He is the captain of the Chokhtar team, belongs to the extremely lower rung of the society who are kind of oppressed in the society. That’s how the politics of Nabarun Mukherjee works. He talks about the most oppressed group of people in the society, and they represent a certain portion of the society. And at the same time he is Chokhtar, I don’t know what it is. Neither Nabarun da knows nor does Suman, alright. I have thought about this a lot of times, that what should be the ambience of Bhodi’s house? What does he hear? Does he hear whistles like us in the night while sleeping? Does he hear dogs barking? Does he hear the faint sound of trains passing? Say Jadavpur is more or less a middle class society in Kolkata. So what I hear in this area or whatever I can imagine of hearing in a lower middle class area, I can imagine that these things will be heard. Some other things might also be heard other than this. Like someone might be blaring a mic in the middle of the night, which is not possible in our locality. Say someone is blaring sounds in a puja, which again is not possible in our locality. What else other than this? So will Bhodi hear these things only? Or does he have a different experience of hearing? How will I establish this in the film and how am I going to play with this? This was one of my concerns. When finally I started with the track laying I almost created an ambience which sounds like a slum. Like sounds of pigs grazing around, sound of trains passing by, a Hindi song is playing nearby, the radio can be heard – all these things – the sound of temple bells at a distance, these are the things that I got in. the film post production went on for quite some time, since the edit of the film was changed a few times the process had become a little complex. The final edit was not getting locked, it was continuously changing, so I was changing the tracks, re- syncing as per the edit changes and so on. Now while making these changes constantly at one point I felt that this half mysterious side of Bhodi, and none of us are really aware

447 of that, that is the Chokhtar side of Bhodi, how will I express that with sound? If I am using these real ambiences all the time then Bhodi is justly represented as a symbol of that society but his Chokhtar side is not illuminated. Now how will I achieve this with sound? So at that point I decided that okay whenever Bhodi – if you watch the film carefully you might also notice this – whenever he becomes Chokhtar and talks as that, basically when he is in that mode, even the fyataroo’s have that. Fyataroo’s also exist in two different modes. One is the normal mode and the other time is when they’re fyataroo’s. Same with Bhodi, one is his Chokhtar mode and other times he is a normal human being. So when Bhodi is a normal being I have used those ambiences throughout the film, the kind of ambience he experiences or encounters in his real life. The kind of sounds he deals with. And during other times when he is a Chokhtar then I am putting off the entire ambience. I have put off all the real ambiences and I have just used a few tones in those places. So those tones are absolutely non-musical, eerie at times, at times they are just irritatingly monotone. Say just like a vibrating tone, nothing else. These kinds of tones I have used while going to the Chokhtar mode and when there have been drastic changes in the narrative of the film, we have also drastically changed and arranged the ambience of the film. Say that vibrating tone is going on and then a sudden cut to the grazing noise of the pigs and so on. How far did this work in the film that is a separate question altogether. But what I am saying is that we do create such situations where the ambience is very less or it is absent totally. And without ambience in the sense we create certain situations, which are totally silent. I have used total silence too in the films. For instance there was a film called Ami Aadu. I don’t know if you know about that, it was the best regional film here in 2010 in the Indian panorama. Q: did you design sound for that film? S: yes, I did. The film was good. There was one sequence in the film, I am citing this as an example because certain people told me that this idea worked for the film, that’s why I am saying. I wasn’t sure then if it is going to work. I am not going deep into the story but it happens at a point that, a terrible death news arrives at someone’s house. The person who came to deliver the news came on a cycle. This was happening in a village and when this person gives the news the mother lets out a shrill cry and due to that all the neighbors in the village have gathered and this guy who has come on the cycle, we see that the guy slowly leaves the place in the next long shot. So at this situation, the moment when the news reaches I had put everything off including the ambience, all the incidental sounds, I had totally put off everything. I had only kept the sound of the cycle. The only sound of a broken down cycle slowly passing by, the shot was also similar, the

448 cycle passes by the side of the camera. So the sound also pans slowly from the center to the right surround. This worked very well for the film. So this is what I am trying to say, during such times we don’t use ambiences, which in fact is unnatural. It is only possible since this is cinema. You can make a place sound and appear extremely real because now you have 5.1 and other things, thus you can create a tremendously real space and at the same time you can make it completely unnatural if you wish. This is possible in cinema and it is possible with sound as well, it is not possible to create this with visuals only. Q: absolutely. S: you can never achieve this however you try. What will you do, you will turn the image into sepia or black n white? It will become funny. But if you remove the ambience then you see the effect. It will become magical, people will cry. They will surely cry, it’s a hundred percent guarantee, I have seen it happening. So this happens and it is possible in sound. Q: okay, so the unreal space that you are trying to project is achieved by reducing the level of ambience, right? S: yes, by reducing at times and by using tones at other times. And at times we use exaggerated ambiences to project certain things also. I have done this thing for the film Pendulum, used exaggerated ambience. I will tell you the sequence in short. There is a teacher who teaches a student. So this student goes out with his girlfriend and meets an accident. This is a different story and from another story we come to know that the teacher’s wife has also met with an accident. So the teacher comes that day to class and he is a little distracted and mentions that he has to leave soon, he doesn’t mention the reason, just says he has to leave for some work. Then the student’s mother comes to the teacher and requests him to scold his student, since the student respects the teacher a lot. Then she says, “Do you know that day before he went out with his friend and met with an accident. His car went and hit another car, we are lucky that nothing happened to him.” Then the teacher asks where did this accident happen? His mother replied at Behala. Then he is able to relate that this is the same accident in which his wife gets hurt. So this is the situation that is created where the teacher realizes that his wife’s accident happened with his student’s car. So then he is in a puzzled state, unable to figure out what he should do. So he leaves the room stunned/distracted and he had got his salary on the same day. So out of enormous rage he tears down that envelope with his salary. So the shot is like – if you go to the extended metro beyond Tollygunje you’ll notice that it goes over a canal from Bansdroni to Garia. And there are small cement

449 bridges over the canal at places. And the metro line passes over those bridges. So he stands on one of those bridges and starts tearing the envelope. So at that place I have used a lot of exaggerated ambiences. Like I have increased the level of a passing metro sound to quite an extent, then behind at off-focus you can see that a house is getting constructed, so there are long bamboo sticks planted there, sound of cutting rods is coming, all this is visible in off-focus, then rickshaws are passing by – so the rickshaw sounds, the hard sounds of hitting on rods, the passing metro sound – I have increased the volume of these sounds to a huge extent throughout the film. So this is just the opposite, as in the exaggerated use of ambience is also possible if you are intending to create an imaginary space. Q: but say we are going for a mono mix for a theater hall release that has a limited dynamic range. When the dynamic range is limited, it is same for the ambience’s volume, depth and perspective. For instance, in the old Bengali films ambience is almost not there, S: hm. Q: how do we relate to that absence of ambience? What do you think about that? For example, there was a film in ’79 called Chowringhee, where the opening sequence of the film happens in a park, the famous park in Dharamtolla called Curzon Park. No ambience was used in this sequence from the film where the part of the wildly busy Curzon Park was shown. How will you relate to these kinds of situations where there is no ambience? S: you mean when I see a film? Q: yes, if you see a film. Or else if you are making a film where you don’t have a scope for doing the ambience, say you are doing in a mono mix. S: no, it is not correct to say that you won’t get opportunity to use ambience in mono mix. There are high possibilities of doing ambience in mono mix. Now if there is a desperate situation where I don’t have the option of using ambience then, I don’t know what I will do there, it is very difficult to say. Firstly if I am watching the film, say when we are going to watch an older film we take a mental preparation before starting to watch the film. We have a mental preparation. The whole thing about viewing is nothing but a preparation. This experience of watching or hearing has a preparatory phase of its own. Now when you are watching a film and you see that ambience is not there, then you don’t think much about the absence, you take it for granted that this should have been like this. Rather in the opposite case, if there was ambience present at that place you would have been surprised to see how they have used ambience in that place. I am telling you about a film, which I suddenly remembered about, a few days back we were

450 having lunch and we just put the TV on. I have the habit of listening to news while having food, like on BBC or similar channels. So while swapping through the channels I just stopped at a channel playing a Bengali film. So I couldn’t see the name of the Bengali film, and I saw it very briefly only while I was eating, I didn’t have the choice of watching it further because I had work, and the credit list also didn’t appear by then and I didn’t even know whose film it was. So this film was very similar to this old Bengali film called Chaddabeshi, where this man had dressed like a driver and gone to meet his wife’s brother. So this film was like that, the genre rather was like that. The hero only was making a lot of incidents happen, drawing attention. And his role in the house is of a servant, something like this. Q: do you remember in which year was it made? S: some black and white film. A slender hero wearing dhoti, I don’t know him. I anyway recognize very less of the old actors and actresses. So I saw very interesting use of sounds, I wouldn’t say ambience. A lot of sounds were present, and very strange sounds. They have created interesting sounds with utensils and all. He has a strange relationship with the maid of the house, who washes the utensils. So this sound of washing the utensils has been used very interestingly, they have matched it with various sequences and various incidents in the film. And there were other things, I can’t remember it all. Overall very interesting stuff was used in that film and I felt very good noticing that. They had given a lot of thought behind such a hardcore commercial film. So I should have actually watched the film carefully and found out the name of the film and all so that I could again locate it later. So if ambience was not there I don’t know what I would have felt. It is kind of a mental preparation, I’d have been rather surprised if it was present there. Q: ok, you’d have been surprised if it was present. S: hm. Q: yes, that is kind of a bias or a preparatory thought. Actually this question of mine is to myself too: what exactly does ambience do in the films? S: according to me it triggers memory basically. Q: ok. S: mainly association, yes. Then it also triggers emotion definitely. Memory and emotion are very intricately associated I think. Then also if I consider emotion separately, definitely it triggers emotion as well. It is true that memory is more associated with known things but even if it is unknown ambience then also that works. For instance an easy example will be say walking on snow. So for someone who has been brought up in

451 Kolkata, or Birbhum like me, this sound will not be known for us. You probably know that sound because you have been present there, but it is not known for us. So what I am saying is that sound, as a completely non-musical ambience sound, it can create a huge emotion. For instance you consider Kieslowski’s Decalogue’s first film, where the kid drowns in the frozen lake because of the wrong calculation, so you think about the exaggerated sound of footsteps on the snow. Q: was it exaggerated? S: no, not really maybe. I don’t even remember properly how it sounded in the film. This thought suddenly floated into my head. Okay if we take an example from a recent film. Let’s take this film, Once upon a time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, there is absolutely brilliant use of ambience in that film. I have it in my mind almost shot by shot. I like the film very much - I have seen it twice or thrice. It is probably made in 2011. Q: I haven’t seen that film yet. S: you should see, it is a very beautiful film, since you are working on ambience. You’ll find just the sound of wind blowing. In short the story of the film is about a criminal who has committed a murder and has hidden the dead body somewhere very interior in Anatolia. It is almost an empty stretch of land, a tree once in a while and hills. So the criminal has hidden the body in an area like this. So now the police has arrested the criminal and they have gone out with him in order to find out the dead body. The police have told him to come with them and tell them where he has hidden the body. Okay, so this is the main subject matter of the film. So by the time they find out the dead body, its morning. They left in the morning, they spent the whole night and finish only by morning. There was a public prosecutor and a doctor and a police in this group, like it is generally in such government institutions. They all are individually interesting characters. There’s nothing much in the film, these characters speak among themselves, the criminal is there with handcuffs, and the driver. And as the night approaches the police becomes angrier with him as to why he can’t remember the place. At first the criminal was taking the police to wrong places for the dead body. Later they ultimately find the body towards the morning and they return to the city. And in the presence of a doctor and the public prosecutor the post mortem of the body starts. The clothes of the dead person are given to the wife and children of the deceased and this is where the film ends. This is the whole story. And if you see this - the whole doesn’t have any music. Just at one place music is used almost like ambience sound. When they are returning towards morning with the dead body in the car then almost like a prayer call, like Ajaan or Milaap which is read after death, that kind of a reading starts playing on the car radio or car stereo. The

452 source of that is not clearly shown, we can only see through the car glasses that they are returning to the city, convoy of cars from a top shot, and that ambience sound is playing. Other than this there is no other use of musical sounds anywhere. I wouldn’t say musical, but an ambient sound, which has a musical element in it. So in the whole film, you wouldn’t imagine, the wind blowing, the trees moving, there is normal ambience happening everywhere, there’s no exaggeration anywhere. But that is creating an enormous claustrophobic space emotionally. And this wind is not very known for us. It is a large empty landscape where wind is blowing loudly, like here it blows towards the end of the spring, the trees are moving loudly, and these people are wearing winter clothes so it is clear that it is cold. And the grasses are swaying. You should see the film, I am not saying anymore. What I am trying to say is how the ambience is working here and making a claustrophobic atmosphere, this is possible by ambience only. Q: hm. S: it is not that this is related too much to memory. I don’t have any such experiences, where a dead body is laying. Or any such horrible experience where a memory of such loud wind or breeze is associated - nothing like that. But in spite of that, the wind is able to trigger a certain kind of emotion in me. The breeze is helping me to relate with this situation. This is what I will say if the fun of ambience. Q: what would have happened if it wasn’t there? Would I not be able to associate with the situation anymore if it was absent? S: I don’t know about that. Q: in the beginning of the film Chowringhee, I am there at Chowringhee but there is no sound of that place. This is the case with many early Bengali and Indian films, where I can recognize the place, but don’t hear it so can’t associate with it. S: yes you can recognize the place for sure but that experience is different. You are missing at the same time. You are able to recognize alright and a certain imagination is also working for you since it is cinema. Like when we are reading a book, an imagination also works for us parallely. It is similar with cinema as well. When you are having this experience your imagination is also adding something to this experience and making something else work. But what I mentioned about, that some experience that you don’t have. If you consider this film being made in the silent era, when there is nothing, no dialogue, no sound etc., if we consider film of Eisenstein, say when the perambulator is falling from the staircase silently, if sound of the falling perambulator would have been present there, what effect it would have created there’s actually no point in thinking that. It is not there and it is still not difficult for me to experience that. But that is because I

453 have a certain kind of imagination. But this is also true that if the sound was present there, if that film was made another fifty years later I don’t know what impact that film would have created on us. What sound would have created what impact, it is difficult to say that. When it is not there that is a kind of experience. When it is there it is a different experience. This is how I will perceive it. Q: yes, true. S: now a lot of people claim that without sound your imagination is able to get provoked more. For instance take still photographs. We see still photographs and we try to say every time that you can almost hear the incident that is created. So what I would call this is creating a movement, people try to do this with sound if you have noticed. I have seen this happening. This is mentioned also in quite a few places that there is a stance of creating movement through sounds. Like the movement of the horse is such that I can almost hear that the horse is galloping. But if the opposite happens, that the actual movement doesn’t have the movement of the sound, which is the opposite of the still picture, I am not sure, I can only imagination can fill this up. But what happens in that case is that any reality doesn’t work anymore. Say a film like Chowringhee, it is a film about a very real situation, it is not that the story is a fantasy. Q: yeah. S: it is not fantasy or an imagined story. It is the story of a true experience, it is the story of a particular period of Kolkata. This is also true that the Kolkata of that time, the sounds of Kolkata like buses, trams and all that was there, if they were present the experience would have been something else. When they are not there, they are just absent. I don’t know how it is possible to explain that. I think it would have been good only if it was present, it would have been interesting. But this is also probably a fact that in case of a silent film also we somehow want to hear something. Or else why would the plan of playing music behind a silent film come? Q; yes. S: it could have been without that. The moment things started moving on screen, then only the need for sound came. As long as there were still photographs no one bothered about arranging sound or music for that. Say someone called you to show some photographs and would play a violin track behind, no one did that. Q: yes probably to complement that temporality. But what I want to ask is if I come to sync sound now - in sync sound there is a lot of ambience recorded. S: hm. Q: don’t you miss that while doing sync sound?

454 S: yes I do at times definitely, surely. That’s why you know with sync sound at times there are incidents where some interesting sounds at that particular time which are very difficult to re-create. It is not only difficult at times, it is also difficult imagine at places that a particular sound is possible at a certain situation. Say when I am approaching a film, or when I am in a way encountering a film, I am doing it primarily with my experience. What is my tool? When I am approaching it through sound, my tool is my experience, my imagination, my memory right? It is a combination of all this. So at times it is not possible to find a solution with all these tools. Sound at times creates such an interesting thing. It is true that I miss sync sound. It is because I am telling you that when we first receive the guide track, when the film comes after first edit with guide track before the dubbing has been done, it has happened quite a number of times that I have taken a clue from the guide track. Or I have kept sounds from the guide track. Mainly if you will leave these it will be because of the texture of the sounds. Say a shoot happened in an old house and someone had drawn a chair to sit. I am telling you this incident from a film I did recently. A broken wooden chair was drawn to sit; I know that I will never be able to re-create that sound. I’ll be able to create that sound but it wouldn’t be the same. And that sound is so beautiful, so powerful that it is basically important, especially that drawing of the chair and sitting. Something important, like an important conversation, is going to happen, so the moving chair marks that. I mean the way the person sits and the way he draws the chair is important. So I have used that interesting bad noisy sound. Because I know that will not be possible to create in the Foley, it is just not possible. There have been situations before say there have been certain sounds like something playing at a faraway distance and they are audible with the dialogues, strange sounds are playing. It is not a song. Actually the sound has been recorded in such a way that it can’t be understood clearly what it is actually. It is just a feeling that something is playing. This ambiguity in sound, we cannot so easily create it. It is because we generally enter a situation with defines sounds – like I have birds calling, winds sound, Hindi song etc. – these are all defined sounds. This is how we create the space. Now to create that ambiguity it is crucial to hear that place beforehand, to figure out what interesting is happening there. And it is a fact that all kinds of spaces have different sounds of their own. It is very difficult to create that. I have seen this. For instance a dense mango forest in Murshidabad, if you are speaking inside that the sound is different. If you record the same thing in an empty field it will be different. I have done this and seen. I have recorded the sound of a cycle for a film only, at times I record incidental sounds on location and not in the studio. I’ve done this many times. Then I cut and use them for

455 the film. Like there was a film made by Shyamal da, a person is walking in the muck, I knew that I could record this at the studio but I would have never achieved the same texture. So I went all the way to Katwa, there is a small stream from the Ganges there, we found out where there was muck there and we went there and recorded the sound. So that texture that we got it wouldn’t have come in any other way. So I remembered this while shooting in the mango forest because I realized that the dense mango forest, it was filled with mango buds and the bees were humming round, no other sound was there, and you are talking amidst that, the cycles and the vans are also passing from within, it is creating a very different kind of sound. When I am recording the same thing outside, where it is empty, like on our Birbhum roads where there are empty fields on both sides of the roads, when I am recording in a place like that, that same texture is not coming but something different is coming. A space also has some specific sounds, it adds to the sound. It adds a different character to the sound of the film. Now if you ask me if it is really possible to make this sound audible, then I would say you won’t be able to create this difference.

456 Vinod Subramanian (2014)

Duration: 2:04:52 and 00:08:06 Name abbreviations: Vinod Subramanian – V, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – Q

Q: I would like to ask you about your ideas of location sound. How do you see location sound? I think you have really a different idea from what you said. What about other people working with location sound? V: see it’s different only because a difference exists. So your primary question is about location sound in terms of my approach to it. See primarily there is a difference of approach only because the other side exists. And to me it is not really conducive for cinema as an integral element of cinema, the way it’s done. It’s got to do more with the fact that the sound of the spoken word, the dialog in a performance, should be treated as an integral part of the performance and the mis-en-scene. Now the best way to do that is what you should be utilizing as a location sound recordist or a production sound. The tools that are available to us today are quiet diverse, but if you break it down, basically it is the microphone and where it is placed vis-a-vis the actor or the performer. When you put a microphone on a boom and record dialog with it compared to using a lapelier microphone that is fixed in one place on the actors body, the difference is quiet obvious. The air around the microphone and the movement makes the track recorded with a microphone on a boom more real than a microphone that is fixed in one place. It doesn’t matter if the actor is fifteen feet away from the camera or thirty feet away from the camera or even a hundred feet away from the camera, it still sounds like a person sitting on your shoulder and speaking to you in your ear. Of course at time I am made to record it that way and try to make it sound like its got air around it. Perspective, the term that people want to use and don’t quiet achieve it. And it is not so easily achievable with a wireless microphone. The general excuse is that we are living in a noisy country, there is no control over locations, we do need to have that much body and otherwise it gets lost in the middle of everything else. Background music in Bollywood cinema is so overwhelmingly loud that dialog gets buried in it and you can’t hear the lines. But then my question is why do you let that happen? As a sound designer or as a sound person in postproduction why do you make that happen? Or why do you allow that to happen? There is always this back seat that one needs to take in postproduction when you have some big guy directing it and the producers, well they all want the music to go higher and higher in level and the dialogs should yet be heard, so they are pushing the dialog

457 up as well so the whole scenario lends itself to an unreal, over the top kind of feeling. And that is something I don’t like. I just find that problematic, irritating personally. If I go and sit in a film theater or cinema and watch a film, which has been done this way, it will give me a headache by the end of the day. But rather if there was some kind of a balance that could be achieved in terms of its aesthetics, in terms of the content, a kind of a layering approach, where you use different layers prudently. Not every layer all the time. But some layers at some times should take precedence over other layers. So at times when it’s the dialogs that take precedence over the music. There are times when the music takes precedence over the dialog if need be. Or the sound effects or special effects in audio. If you see a film like Jurassic Park, it is very well done because everybody including Steven Spielberg has those fines in the approach. They are interested in not making a big mutton out of the whole thing. They are interested in layering the sounds. So the first time when these people hear the sound of a brontosaurs and you see that little puddle with ripples in it. That very low frequency thump and you hear the music. If you isolate only the music you will find that the background music in that particular scan or those set of shots has very low LF content. Because that space has been left by the music composer for the sound effects. There is only that much space in the frequency spectrum, if you want to put it that way, in the sound scape of a film there is only that much space. If everybody is going to vie for all the space at all the time, then all you are going to get is mayhem, and I don’t want mayhem. I mean I don’t think people want mayhem. If they are applying their minds to it when they see a film they will see mayhem in Bollywood cinema most of the time. Even today I am sure a lot of people will say that we have gone a long far way and things have improved things and that. I would say things have improved but then the level of improvement is so minimal compared to what we should be looking at in terms of achievement that’s it’s not really a big thing. We have not achieved a big milestone yet. We have not improved our understanding of sound. We have not really graduated. So essentially even when it comes to location sound which as people say is a resent phenomenon, location sound has started gaining precedence over dubbed films in India only over the last couple of decades or fifteen years or whatever. And various people who did one project at a time and at particular points of time. And usually there are references to them. These projects actually started the whole process of thinking about recording sound on location. But quite honestly, they might have done that but, the rest of the Bollywood community did not necessarily take a cue from it and genuinely look at taking things in that direction. If that would have been the case then we would have been at a very different level today,

458 in fifteen or twenty years. Which is not the case? I am looking at it as a colossal level, rationally. I am not making any judgments here. But the thing is that, if somebody said that Lagan was a film in which location sound was done properly and probably for the first time in India, there have been location sound films. Banded queen was a location sound done pretty well for its time, and the way the film is, it lends itself very well. But has the rest of Bollywood learned from that and taken a cue and said ok we should also look at sound this way we should think about it. We should understand sound at a deeper level and then utilize it in a better way than we have been doing. And then open itself to new ways of functioning. Ways of filmmaking. I don’t know. I honestly didn’t ever see a situation like that happen. And from my analysis of things the way the situation is today, that’s not the way it has happened. Then what’s the point of just giving it some lip service, and talking about it just from the outside. I say this because even now I am very sure my pears and my friends in the industry, when they talk about it; they are also going to say the same thing. When you are hired to do the location sound for a project, everybody says yes it is important, but when you actually go down and get to the locations and start shooting, the image takes so much precedence over sound, and eventually its back to square one. The sound department is struggling to survive the onslaught of the image during the shoot. I am sure not a single sound mixer worth his salt in India is going to deny or say something against this statement. He is also going to say the same thing. He is going to support this statement. Then what are we doing about it? I don’t know. What can I do about it? I keep fighting. People keep fighting in their own way. I keep fighting in my own way. Everyone has levels, and ways, and styles of fighting. I have my way and my style of fighting. But what am I fighting for? For heaven’s sake, you have hired me to do location sound for the film or for the project and you are not giving me space to breath. Why? Because of whatever you know. Your planning has gone for a toss. Or bit off more than you can chew, so you are trying to do a seventy days shoot in forty-five days. And therefore there is a big hurry to finish scans. Then some actor gives you trouble in terms of dates or some shit like that. Put it all together, and it basically is a big excuse. And all we have to do is we are asked to comply and coexist. We are asked to comply first. So I go on the location, and I say, “What the hell is this? Why is the genny right here?” “We can’t park it outside because we don’t have permission for this road”. I said “Why didn’t you get permission for this road?” “We cannot get permission for this road”. “Then why did you select this location?” “We did not have any choice. We wanted this kind of a thing.” I don’t even have an opportunity to talk to the director at that point because his priority is to set up the shot

459 and take it. It’s absurd for me to go and say that this is not the location that we should be shooting this scene in. But if I try to say that even at the location scout or the recce as they call it in the UK, they are the funniest. Because in location sound you are supposed to go and checkout a location for its conduciveness. Is it good for sound and it is good for everything and whatever? But most of the time location scouts happen like they are a given. “So we are going to shoot this scene between Budhaditya and Vinod Subramanian in this cafe out here”. So the whole team of people, ten to twelve people in four different cars come to this café. See this and then most of the discussion happens in terms of lighting and whatever, and then they might turn to me and say “So Vinod, what do you think? Is it OK?” I said, “I’ll need to get these two roads blocked.” Production manager immediately says, “That’s not going to be possible. It is impossible to block these roads.” I tell you nothing is impossible. But they ensure that they don’t want to do there bit. Or they are lazy. Or at times they are just simply stupid. Or at times they are over smart. Because they don’t care two bits for sound anyways. So there is somebody in that team who doesn’t. Quiet often it happens this way. Director will be interested. DP might also be conducive. You will find and art director not. So you will find a hollow floor on a set. Or you will find production managers not. So you will find a genny right next to the location. You know, stuff like that. So what I am saying is that, ever since I have started doing location sound in India it has only been a struggle. There has never been a simple easy day in my life as a sound mixer. It is not that I miss it, but I am just making a statement that I not had any. Why wouldn’t anybody like to have a simple easy day at work? One this I am really glad, and I am happy about is that my equipment, the way I set it up, the quality of my equipment and the fact that I take care of it very carefully and very well. Touch wood, I have never had any major issues or niggling issues. Most people have niggling issues with their equipment. I am very happy to say, I can sleep well because the next day when I get up and go to work with my gear, my gear is going to work. I know that. And an extreme amount of effort is gone into making sure that happens. I personally cut and solder each cable. I have built my own card. In fact it so happens that preparation for a shoot in my case, sometimes is longer than a month for my last feature film; I prepped for it for a month and a half. Because I had some new equipment that I had purchased, and I had to integrate that. But almost the rest, or more than fifty present of the time was involved in rearranging the setup to make it more efficient. Less physical effort, more to be achieved. That way. And I am really glad to say that it worked well for all the fifty days of the film that I just did. So that part I am very happy with, but when I go out to location it is the same old thing. Sound is

460 fighting for a space. And after all for what? It is not like I am going to record the sound and sell it on EBay or put it up on a wall in my house. It is for the project that I did it. After the film is done people come and say that the sound was brilliant. I have had a situation with a film that I did in 2007, I had some major fights with the director on the location. And it was a ridiculously wired way of shooting. There was no clarity on what was being shot. It was just unnecessarily long takes and totally extempore kind of thing. I did my thing. This guy took three years to edit the film. And later when I meet him, he says, “I don’t know how you did it. But the sound was just brilliant.” So how do I do it? I did not do anything extraordinary for this project. I just did what I do. But if you don’t realize what I am doing when I am doing it, and it only comes as a … you know. So what they say like with the grate painters. Van Gogh got his due only after he died. So in my case I get my due after I finish the film, and the film is done and over with, and then they finish post and then somebody calls me and says the sound is really grate. But while the project is happening, can you please allow that to permeate. And give me a little more space to work. And say that sound is an integral part of filmmaking and cinema so please give it that space, not because Vinod wants it. Q: don’t you think that there is an emerging emphasis on sound resently? For example, the new formats that are coming out, namely Atmos, they have multiple channels, and digital technology offers multiple channels of recording too. Don’t you think that this kind of emphasis gives sound designers, sound mixers and location sound recordists a bit of upliftment or more importance? V: see Budhaditya, I look at it this way. Now for years we have had Dolby 5.1. That itself is two surround channels and three channels in the front, behind the screen and a subwoofer as well, that take care of rely low frequency rumbles and stuff. An in Indian cinema what have we achieved with this? Have we achieved something really brilliant with this? I have failed to see it. Maybe I am too cynical. But I would like to think that I am being realistic and not cynical. I am being very real, very rational and not cynical. I don’t think we have been able to use 5.1 sensibly, aesthetically let alone technically in our cinema. Now what are we going to do with sixty channels. Which is what Atmos is, sixty or eighty … ten times more flexibility in sound. What are we going to achieve with it? See the point is it’s not a thing in itself. To me it’s not. Sound is not a thing in itself. If that was the case please find Mr. Yoyoma or somebody and take him to a studio and record a good album. Use the best microphones, the best techniques and create one of the best sounding albums of the grate chelloist. That makes me happy. But in cinema sound is not a thing in itself. It can’t serve its own purpose. If the entire film itself, the

461 story, the way it’s made, the way its shot and the way it’s designed, if the imagery doesn’t lend itself to a certain sound scape, I can’t come up with a sound scape in the dark. Which is something else and the film is going somewhere else. People think sound is going to transform the film. That is a phrase I have heard quiet often in Bombay. “Man, now that sound is going to transform the film.” “But what the hell? Why didn’t you start transforming the film when you were shooting it? What were you doing then? You were hatching eggs? When you write the screenplay were you hatching eggs? Suddenly how can sound transform the film?” It’s like you are trying to build a concrete road over a marshland. It’s very nice, but it’s going to sink in two years. So in two months of your shoot whatever you have done, it’s going to make the whole thing sink. It’s not just the sound that’s going to go down, it’s your image, your camera, your steady cam and whatever cam and your lighting and all that shit and the art direction, your costume, your locations – Switzerland or whatever. Everything is going to go down the ditch. That’s the problem. So I feel its grate you know, advancement in technology is grate. Dolby, Atmos, Auro, multi-channel surround, wave form synthesis based systems where you can actually let a sound travel across three hundred and sixty degrees in one axis as of now, smoothly without any jumps, without letting anything to imagination, physically you can hear the sound travel, like you would when you are sitting in an open space and you here a car pass by. There is a continuum in that. Dolby, Atmos and technology of this kind are trying to achieve that. And it dose achieve it a lot better than just five speakers. But what are we going to do with it? It should not become a spanner in the hands of a monkey. What is it going to do? The monkey is going to come and conk you on the head with it. The monkey does not know what a spanner does. That’s the problem, and the solution to this problem doesn’t lie in the hands of the sound recordist or the sound guy. It lies in the hands of the filmmakers. Now it doesn’t take rocket science to come to this conclusion. It doesn’t take much to understand what this technology can do. I mean that a filmmaker doesn’t need to be technically proficient to know the nitty-gritties of Dolby, Atoms or whatever, but does a filmmaker know how to utilize it? That’s the question. Q: but more and more films are shot on location, mostly on typical Indian locations, for example, let’s say Highway, or let’s say The Lunch Box. Indian locations are more and more exposed and people are not going to distant Switzerland to shoot. V: it’s easier probably to shoot in India than in New York or somewhere. Just to say, I don’t say its easer or tougher actually, it’s as difficult to shoot a film in New York or London as it is in Bombay or Delhi or whatever. Yes there is an additional layer that is

462 difficult to control that is of the noise of the people honking and the traffic etc. In London or NY people don’t honk as much as they do here. So sometimes my peers and friends in the business in the sound community ask me this question “How the hell do you manage it?” Exactly the way it needs to be managed. The reason why I did not want this interview in the air-conditioned space inside this café and outside here is, this is the world I am living in. I don’t live in that rarified atmosphere in there. Unfortunately I have to deal with all these morons honking when they don’t need to, but if I were to shoot a scene here, which is got three pages of dialog, my first question is do we have to shoot this here. Dose this three-page dialog scene has to happen here. I want to look at it rationally. So I want to ask the writer, the filmmaker, and the director “Do we need to shoot this scene here? Can you justify why we need to shoot this scene here?” If he can justify and if its justifiable and we do need to shoot this scene here, then can we have some control over the traffic? It’s a production call. Most of the time the answer is a “NO”. Sometimes the answer is yes it is possible and if it’s then we have some control. But the next thing they want to do is they want to introduce their own vehicles to show traffic. Then comes the coordination exercise between what’s happening in the back and foreground. If dialogue is happening and we have a shot, which shows the background with traffic how we are going to deal with that. It takes an effort to be able to do it and get good results. If I am told that nothing can happen and this is the way it is, just shoot. Well I have my ways and means to do it. There are compromises and limits, but my focus would be how intelligible is my dialog, and if on a particular word in a particular shot, there is a honk that makes that word unintelligible, I will want another take. Usually I don’t end up asking for takes because as it is with the camera department and with actors and other issues with coordination of the direction department, they end up with five or six takes anyways. So I am mentally editing the stuff and seeing. This is what I do at that moment, I am editing the sound in my head and checking out if I am able to get the dialog over a couple of takes or three takes and there is consistency that is possible. If I feel that then I am ok. The other thing about the way films are shot, the design, the visual language, more and more films are shot with coverage. They call it coverage. Coverage means basically you are shooting it in such a way that you are getting as much material as you can to take and treat them as building blocks in your edit room. Cut it together to physically create the scan. I would say this the most pathetic way of shooting anything except probably multi camera television. Now if you take the old television serial called the Bold and Beautiful, you can pull out three episodes from any season and from that pull out three senses and watch them and they

463 will all look pretty much the same. It’s not that they are achieving something but that is the nature of the beast. The way they shoot it, it looks fucking consistent, not that it is a great thing to achieve. It is just fucking consistent. Because they shoot with big cameras and they shoot that typical intro to the scan with a master and they start cutting across shoulders and they are shooting this stuff over and over again. Now if you going to apply this to a film shoot, you start with a master and start cutting to other shots and then you are going to run the whole scan in every shot, even in a close up. Then what it says to me is that you have absolutely no confidence in your visual sense - your ability to previsualize the scene. You are covering your ass as well as covering the scene. Then the question comes up about multiple cameras. Fortunately so far I have not really need to deal with a multiple camera shoot except for one shoot. Which was being shot by one of the famous Indian cameramen. So I went and spoke to him and said “Sir, if you are going to shoot a wide shot and a close together, then it’s totally detrimental to me.” So he says “We have to save time you know.” I said, “By shooting a wide and close together you are not saving time. You shoot the wide and then you shoot two close ups together you are saving time.” And there is fucking logic in that. I can stamp my feet on the ground and say yes there is logic in what I am saying. And there is absolutely no logic in what you are saying. The point is who cares? Because you are not even thinking about sound there, when you are deciding to shoot multi-camera? I just recently had a meeting with a guy who wanted to make a film, which is his first film. And the executive producer says “well, yes of course we are going to be shooting with more than one camera because it’s a children’s film and we don’t want to miss anything that the child dose.” So I said “I am sorry but your director probably is just barely capable of handling what one camera is doing an then you are going to bring in a Canon 5D, 7D or something in the hands of another guy who is operating that. The results of that camera are not going to be necessarily conducive to your film and even if they were or not, how are you going to decide? Who is going to check on that? You are unnecessarily going to constrict yourself by dividing your attention across two sources. And you are going to waste time. Is your DP going to light up for both cameras? NO. So you are going to take fraction of the larger shot with this camera. How do you think that is going to match? You are going to spend hours in post trying to match the two. You are going to use one Alexa or RED camera and a 5D. You are going to match it. All the people who say they can do it. Yes it can be done. Who is saying it can’t be done? But what is the effort involved in getting it done? And if you are talking low budget, what amount of money and time are you spending on post? So then comes the whole thing. When you are low budget, you can exploit.” So you

464 will get a guy who is going to do coloring for you, for a block some of money. And ideally if the color correction on that film should take ten days, then you are going to make him work on it for twentytwo days. Obviously, because that’s the time it takes. But you are not going to pay him for twenty-two days. So you can get away with it. People do get away with it, and they fell very happy. They fell very proud of themselves. But they are not doing anything right. And what is the end result? With all the twenty-two days of color correction and stuff, it still shows up like a sour thumb. It’s not like you can shoot anything any way and just match it. Then if that’s the case then, you please go and work for MTV. Don’t try to make a film. So I would tell you that with all this technology era that we are well into. Even this NAB there were 3 or 4 new cameras have been introduced. There is a cion camera from these guys, there is new black magic camera and RED is obviously come up with something or the other. There are cameras, which are available for a few lakhs of rupees, the way the 5D was first made available. There are other cameras that look bigger and look more like cameras and less like the still camera that are available now. We are going to buy them and get them. Somebody is going to rent them out. Things are going to become more approachable. But what you fail to realize is that as we get into the digital domain, we get into more uncertainty in terms of compatibility, in terms of formats there is so much confusion. People don’t know. Everybody is groping in the dark and a little ray of light here and there they catch and get out of the tunnel. It is almost like survival. When the holocaust happens and if you have just barely enough to survive, and If you have dug yourself deep into the ground and you have survived, when you come out somehow or the other you will want to find ways to survive. To put some water into your mouth and some food. It’s like that. That’s not film making. What is this? So come Atmos, come new technology, come 4K whatever, eventually the content has to be worthy of it. That is the problem. I don’t know if my friends here would say that I am wrong. That’s ok. I don’t think the content is worthy of it. I can go to the extent of saying that Hollywood content is not worthy of it the way things are going these days. Even the Hollywood content is worthy of using these tools. They are not able to use these tools as well as they should. Q: to give examples of Indian films using location sound or sync sound, let’s take LSD, or Shanghai, or Highway and so many other films that came out around that time. Let’s also take Lunch Box. By using sync sound they are coming out with a very fantastic layers of ambient sound. It’s audible. So it’s evident that sync sound has opened up scope for playing around with layers and…

465 V: well if it’s being done, good. I am absolutely exhilarated to here that it’s being done. If it’s being done well then why not. But then, I still think the main intention is if the content doesn’t drive the process, then no matter what you apply during the process, it’s not going to lift the content up and take it further up or take it higher. So the nature of filmmaking lays in the content first. Show me a good story, a wellwritten story and a story that is going to be shot the right way. Please don’t try to tell me you want to do this film in thirty days when after reading the script it’s fucking evident that this film need 45 days to shoot. Then you are going to cram it all in the name of low budget, but they end up spending a lot of money on things, which do not matter eventually. Wasting time etc. etc. so many things happen. It is not just in the final result, it’s the way and the rout that is taken to achieve it. That is also contextual. And I find most of the time this is an issue with our filmmaking. And it’s an issue with their filmmaking as well. I am in touch with some of the tope sound-guys around the world and it’s not a cakewalk for them. It’s not like we are the ones screwed and they are having a good time. Absolutely not. With everything like with loudness in cinema halls and loudness of the mix. We are dealing with overtly loud mixes in India. When I spoke to he said, “Don’t think that the grass is greener out here. We have been dealing with the same darn thing.” So the mixes in Hollywood are also getting louder and louder. The producers are making it go louder. The directors want to make it louder. So the sound department is complying with that. There are no norms. In Europe there is a very interesting movement that is taking place. It’s called P Loud. You should check it out. Basically what they have done is, The EBU said “We can’t have this gross negligence in terms of sound levels across television channels. The moment a program is finished or there is a break, the commercials come up and they sound three times louder than the program.” So they can’t have this. So they put in place the technology and rules, the regulations across Europe. To ensure that sound levels in any television channel remain consistent and under control. It’s like if I set the volume of my television at say 72 on a 100 to listen to something and suddenly in the middle of the program there is commercial brake and I have to go down to 30 and then come back to 72. What the hell? They dint want it. And they have managed to do that. To make that happen in cinema is a tall order. We have had so many discussions with the Dolby people here in India. They say we have prescribed certain loudness levels, but we can’t go up to the throat of the director and producer who wants it to be louder than that. We sometimes refuse to master certain mixes when it is really too loud. Which is why we have a separate loudness level for trailers, where loudness is given a little space on the higher side. But on the final mixes

466 we don’t. But then how can we control at what level it’s going to be played in the theater? With digital cinema, remotely they can control in which cinema hall, for which show, which film is to be played. Now it’s possible through the Internet. That technology is in place already. And they have done all this to avoid piracy. But now since the content is also digital, it makes it easier for them. When they can control the content delivery, they can also control certain technical aspects of the content when it is delivered. So these things could be put in place. Who knows what is in store. To answer your first question, I am genuinely happy if there is movement. I will still say that if the form and content of the project, the film is not inspiring then it’s not giving space to innovations in sound or better aesthetic content. Nothing is going to happen. You can give me a bad script and expect me to transform it with sound. That is a tall order and it is absurd that people think that way. People do think that way because they start thinking that they have got a great script first. The problem is there. They lose their objectivity very quickly. And once the script comes out and they start shooting it the methodology, the style of work and the workplace defines the content in a big way. So eventually with these big constraints if you have compromised your content then what are you going to do at the end of it? Of course when it comes to the sound department in post since we are the last leg of it, we are always constrained in terms of time. Now that's one thing in Hollywood, at least for some films, like for example the Coen brothers, they kept sound due time. And in big projects sound is given is given a lot of time. In gravity the guys spent so much time in getting the sound for that film, they went through all kinds of innovations. They used contact microphones. They went and recorded stuff from here and there and they created a soundscape, which is worthy of mentioning. Simon Hayes for example, many worked on Les Miserables, he was given so much space to do is stuff that got him that Oscars. It was well earned. He went to great trouble to get that sound. Even though there are criticisms in terms of the quality of the sound and all that, obviously LAP microphone worth 300 or 400 dollars is not going to sound as good as condenser microphone worth a few thousand dollars. It's not just the cost but the size of the diaphragm and other technical differences, which make a big difference in the quality of the sound as well. That's all okay, but then what he was able to achieve, was because he had the full support of the director and the producer first. If these two gentlemen support you then the rest of the team has to support you even if they did not want to. Or even if they were feeling inconvenienced or whatever. So many times it just so happens that you have a really good situation for sound, it's a nice quiet space, maybe in the middle of the night and that's why it's quite. Everything is fine, but since camera

467 department puts gels on lights and there is a breeze all the gels flutter. Now they could have got silent gels, the ones that don't make noise when they move. But when they asked the production comes in and says that they did not have the budget for it. I said for heaven's sake you're spending a decent amount of money in trying to do location sound for the film, if it's just about money. Now I've got an absolutely conducive situation here and my sound is getting screwed because of the light gel? So what do we do? We live with it. We struggled with it. I spent a huge amount of time there on the location trying to tape down that gel. Have two people hold a cutter at the back and in the front trying to block the air that is moving that gel. Then the chief AD starts getting irritated because time is going there and they have got to make the day as well. Now why do they have to make the day? Because they have 60 days shoot that they have compressed into a 45 days shoot. Eventually all goes round and round and comes down to one thing. If you have good content to shoot, a good script, a good story that itself is going to be inspiring to people first. A genuinely good story, not something that you think is good but is a piece of shit. It happens like that as well. A lot of people say this is great but it isn't. If you have a decent good story to tell and how are you going to shoot it? Your definition of the workspace is so important. Even a good script can get demolished by a bad shoot. A shoot that is constrained for time and whatever. Everybody says you can't have 100 days shoot because this is just two crore film. But who's asking for 100 days shoot? At least put in effort into scheduling and creating a sensible schedule. Don't just do it because it has to be done. The efforts have to be put into that. Due effort. And if you have less money then you'll have to put triple the effort. To make sure that in less money, even though less money is going to translate into less time, you still have the opportunity to make a decent shoot happen. Now is that in my control? Nope. Is that in the control of the director? Yes. Is that in the control of the producer? Yes. And is that in the control of the DP? Yes. Now this triumvirate, the three heads, the Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwari of filmmaking, they are the ones who define the workspace. Q: not the sound guy? V: no. Q: why? V: it's not because I wanted to be like that. But that is the way of the world. That is the waitress. Cinema has always been treated as a visual medium first. Q: but think that there are new formats coming in. Multichannel sound is much more powerful than the visual. Why would the sound guys not get the due respect?

468 V: if I had the answer to that question in the form of some kind of a little pill, I'll quietly go to all the directors and producers and DPs and drop it into their cups of tea or coffee. But I don't. The reason is the fact that sound is the most misunderstood and the least understood entity in filmmaking, even today. With all that which we think is happening, which wasn't happening earlier, like we are doing location sound, which is great, everything is great. But, where is the due respect for that? Where is the due value for that? That opens up a completely different chapter. Which is not technical, which is not a static but which is political. It's absolutely and purely political. Now this is a completely different chapter. Because, why is it political? The politics of the workspace defines hierarchies. The hierarchy is obviously, if there wasn't a visual what would sound do? So the visual comes in first. But the fact that you're treating the visual and sound separately is your shortcoming. You're unable to understand that you as a director or you as a DP, are not able to understand that, or even if you want to understand you're not giving it the space to look at it that way. Probably because you have been looking at it this way for so long that change is not possible. Forget about people who have been at it. People coming out of film schools don't realize it. If you're asking a 55-year-old DP to change, it’s okay, because he has been around for too long so that's fine. But if you're asking a 22-year-old or a 24-year-old coming out of film school, they don't know it and they don't accept it. From day one they are thinking that cinema is a visual medium. Then would you do? There is something seriously wrong with what is being taught at film schools. Who's teaching them? Q: if you think in terms of the history of Indian Cinema, one sound guy got the Oscars awards but no cameraperson was even been considered for the award. So now the emphasis should be here. V: No. No. Hang on. In the history of Indian Cinema one person got the Oscar, Bhanu Athaiya had already got an Oscar for costume. She's a great costume designer. My first feature film that is talking about, Bhanu Athaiya was the costume designer on that film. I was too young to realize what I could have done. I was struggling just doing my thing alone at the time, because of which I couldn't interact with her at that level at which I would have wanted to. But yet I remember a few instances where she really helped me with her costume to be able to hide the mic properly and sensibly. And I believe none of her costume materials gave me an issue. Let's have another coffee or something. Q: maybe another cold coffee. V: so then you know what happens is, my problem is in the hierarchy of the so-called senses, but forget about the senses. The hierarchy of the way the business is world over,

469 it's not only here, sound is not given the first thought, it is the… Okay. So you are saying that the guy from India went and won an Oscar, so? So what? Q: so… V: so what should that do? What should that have done? Q: it's the awareness - awareness in sound.

V: then please ask that guy who won the Oscar to come and create the awareness. Somebody needs to do the job, right? Q: by default it's coming… V: my dear friend. When the Shakyamuni was born, a few people got aware, the entire world did not get aware. There were still people killing each other. And coveting. So what you think just because one Resul Pookutty won an Oscar in India, doesn't make the entire filmmaking community in India sit up and think "Oh fuck! We were not thinking about sound, and now we're going to think about sound. And we are going to think about it deep. And really, really, really… No!" That's an event that took place and it took place that's it. Right now it is a political struggle as well. Because the sound union came up with an ultimatum saying "Enough of this bull shit from the producers." We're going on strike on 18th of December. If our demands are not met… And what were the demands? Proper sensible wages for some people working in the industry - television and film. Money has to be paid on time. Contracts not to be made one-sided. I've been seeing a new clause that comes up in contracts nowadays including one of mine. That producer refused to remove that clause from my contract. Then the union wrote a letter to the producers saying "it does not matter if you keep this in a contract and Vinod has signed it or not. But if a point of time comes when this is a contention please be aware of the fact that this clause is not legal. It's illegal." You cannot have a clause in a contract, which says that "this contract cannot be contested by any union or guild." We will not listen to any union or guild is basically what you're saying. And they're getting me to sign this. I'm an honorary and a life member of the sound union in India. I did not have to pay a fee to get the card. The union came and gave me this card in honor of my services to that union when I was not even a member. And I'm sitting here with a contract, which I want to sign because I've already invested time and effort into the project. I've also invested a huge chunk of money in getting some equipment for this project. And of course, you know, for other things as well. And so I was appalled. I said no this can't happen. And then one of my juniors who worked with me, a friend of mine, he sends his contract because he says, "Sir, Mr. Vinod, please read this and let me know if I need to

470 be worried about anything. Because I'd quite can't understand what all this bull shit means." And I see the exact same clause in his contract. Word to word the same! I said what the hell is happening here. All these people have gone around exchanging notes. The producers or the producer’s assistance or their legal counsel or whatever. And they're coming out with a clause like this! It's incredible. It's happening in a country like this where there are so many films being made. There is a union, which is under a federation, and the producers are also a part of that federation. Every year there is a rate card, which has never been followed. So this December last year we said that either we follow the rate card otherwise we're going on strike. They said please give us time and they've taken three months. 31st of March is gone, the deadline. Then would meet on the 21st of this month. A final meeting. Now if this meeting doesn't go through properly and sensibly for the sound community, then the entire federation is to go on strike. This is on paper. The federation has said it will go on strike. And you can imagine what that means. The entire Film Federation is going on strike. It will come to a standstill in Bombay. That's the level at which we are having to fight for my right. I'm having to fight for my rights. I work on your project and yet I don't get paid. What kind of a business is this? I would rather go and join a bank or something you know? At least I know if I go into my job for 25 days a month even at an elementary level, I will get my pay check at the end of the month. This industry of ours is worse than the unorganized labor industry in our country, which involves people working in the Dhabas, the assistant to a laundry guy, to dhobi, some less than 17-year-old kids working in kitchens, those poor kids who come and shine my shoes for 10 bucks. I'm no different from them. Where is my education and my experience and everything? Nothing! Nothing stands in front of a producer who is belittling you by not paying you your dues. Now you tell me I going to be thinking about this? Or am I going to be thinking about sound and its aesthetics? As a sound guy I'm leaving a less than human life. And let's be put across to any sound guy in this country and let them say "no, we are living a wonderful life!" Just one person, let one person say it. And I go on record here, I will stop working as a sound person in this world, not just this industry, I will leave this profession! I go on record. The problem is that there is a generally bad attitude that you can get away with anything. And there is also a big chunk of the sound community, which allowed them to get away with anything. For years. Decades. And now there are still people who are getting away with it, because if I quote union rates for a job, there are people who quote for less than union rates and the producer’s assistant who's looking at it is looking at only the numbers. He's not looking at hiring Vinod Subramanium, with this kind of experience and this kind of quality

471 of work. All he wants is a guy who can fit the bill. Cost to Company. I've got X amount of money and have a guy who's willing to do it. That's it. Case closed. The guy goes and he doesn't even do an average job. He is way below average. By the time they realize that they are already in post, and they're already dubbing the stuff. Because their job is to finish the film. What's the point in thinking about it at that point of time? "Oh! The guy hired to do location sound for my film didn't do a good job." I did the sound design for a film that won the National award this year. One of them. One film won a national award, but that's not so important. I guess it was the only film in that language so obviously it won the award. But when the film came to me, the quality of sound work from the location was so bad I was just… The guy who did it is not necessarily a guy who just came out of the woodwork's. He's been around a bit. I called them and asked "what the hell? Why is it so bad?" And all we had is some stupid excuses. Amazingly it was a callous job. Somebody was totally callous in his attitude. And coupled with that there was nobody on location including the Director who was checking on whether he was able to get good sound or not. Now the director says, "well, I trusted him." Yes but then you know what? One can write in Aesop's fable about you than! Like that, you know what I mean? Don't mess around with things like the monkey who pulls the wedge out of the piece of wood and gets killed because it gets stuck in between. So don't mess around with things that don't concern you. So it's that kind of thing. I can write an Aesop's fable based on this director's statement that I thought he was doing a great job or I thought he was getting his sound. It was so bad that if there were two people like you and me standing and talking 5 feet apart, say I was on one side of the car and you were on the other, there is one boom which doesn't even move between you and me. And when it so far normally what we do is we put it in the middle and pan from one place to the left and right because it is faster. If you physically try to move the boom 4 feet or 5 feet apart you will miss some words, or you will trail onto some words. So please the boom in one place and turn the microphone towards the person who's talking. It's quicker, and at least you'll have a microphone on axis and you'll get something. Even though the microphone mighty 3 feet away. Nothing! The mike was just on one side. The other side was just left. And whatever lapel microphones he was using were all overloaded. So I had a terrible experience, but I took it up. When people go and see the film, except for somebody who has got a keen ear, nobody is going to say "Oh! No, no, no. This is great. No, I did not feel any problem with sound" or they would say "Ya, there was some problem but it is okay." And it was difficult because a lot of actors were not really actors, they were just people. Like if I just catch this guy on the street and say that I want to

472 take a shot with you and say this to this guy, and then you walk away. Am I going to find that guy? Otherwise you have to dump the whole film. There is no money for that. There is no time for that as well. Because everybody wants to send their films to Cannes. Everybody wants to send their films to Sundance. Nowadays that's the focus. From the outset of a meeting, the very first phone call itself, I'm sure you'll hear all my friends also say the same thing, "the thing is that by next month itself we have two send it to Cannes, so we need to ensure that we manage this." 'What were you doing all this while?' I don't know. Eventually what are we talking about? We're talking about filmmaking with so many constraints and then we are talking about sound people who were hired at menial levels of wages. Take the case of boom operators. In India boom operators are paid at the level of spot boys. I have nothing against spot boys. But if of spot boy gets 1000 or 1200 Rupees a day, boom operators are paid that kind of money. In the West boom operator is paid the equivalent of the first AC. In India the first AC could be getting Rs. 8000 a day, whereas the boom operator would be getting Rs. 2500 a day! So the most important person on the set as far as sound is concerned is the boom operator. If we cannot get that mic in the right place at the right time then no matter what I do, forget about me, even Simon Haze or Jeff Hetchler or whoever else, the great sound guys. Nobody can record anything if the boom is not in the right place. That's how important it is. If the chief AC, the focus puller doesn't pull focus right even big DPs like Vittorio Storaro cannot do shit. But in India what we do is we spend money on focus puller's and camera crew, but we won't give a boom operator is due. So we're dealing with a lot of this kind of shit. It's not that we've got a cushioned life’s so we can think about the aesthetics of sound. Q: so I would like to come from politics to a particular area I'm very much interested in: ambience. V: what about ambience? Q: ambience as a layer. What do you think ambience does to cinema? V: that depends on what kind of film. What one is looking at? If you look at the history of cinema and the way sound is being used by various masters. If you look at how Tarkovsky uses sound and his atmospheres. In different films he does different things. In a film like Stalker he and Artemyev created atmospheres. They were electronically created, generated atmospheres with music playing the role of music at times. So there was a juxtaposition of these kinds of elements to create a meaningful and sensitive soundscape. But if you look at Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev. Andrei Rublev required the quietness of the atmosphere. When the Tartars come to invade it required that flurry of

473 activity associated with people on horses, burnishing swards and cutting people down. Arrows being sent out of bows and spears being thrown and mayhem, he does that wherein that needs to be done. And all this is happening at that time in mono. There was no 5.1 surround also, no Dolby. It was optical track, mono. Now with all the technology that we have today, when we see these big Hollywood films I sometimes sit back and think, less is more actually. And we have kind of forgotten that adage 'less is more'. Create meaning with less rather than inundate the audience with more. And if we can do that with a few elements that are significant and poignant elements, then why through 50 sound items at the audience? People have been doing it for ages. People have done great work. Look at Ben Burton and the Walter Murch with Apocalypse. Walter Murch is an amazing example of a guy who transcends what he calls himself as an editor. In India now we have this concept of sound designers. I've been a sound designer on a few projects. When it comes to sound design what do I do? I do what I can do first. Because the visual imagery does not lend itself to abstract thought, if it's all real, then I have to go real. I can't go unreal, I can go surreal, I can let my imagination run riot. But there are things that I have tried to do. Like in this film Baga Beach, the one film that I was talking about in terms of bad sound from location, in post I tried to do certain things. Baga Beach is a space that I haven't been to, which I thought was an advantage of a certain sort because I could imagine what it would be like. I wanted to go there and record sound, but then by the time we got down to starting the post Goa was hit by the rains, the monsoons. So there is no way they could have recorded anything that connected to the imagery of the time of year that it was shot. It was shot in the non- monsoon part of the year and it had some music from the local Goan musicians, which is also not very well recorded. Quite badly recorded in fact. And I had to fight with the director to keep only that music in the film, and no other composed music unless it could be composed by the same person. And unfortunately that person fell gravely ill and was the hospital, an old man. So that couldn't happen. So all I had was a few tracks recorded badly which are used in the film. But the other thing that I tried to create was the atmosphere at Baga Beach at night for example. Goa is replete with these rave parties and stuff happening here and there, so I imagine if there is a rave or trance party happening a kilometer away what's going to reach my years is the low frequency LF thump. And it is assisted by the wind. So the wind sometimes blows to sound my way and sometimes away. So the sound wafts in and out. So I utilized that element quite extensively in the film. I haven't seen the final print, so I don't know how well it translates into the cinema. But I said this is an element, which I want to use in certain

474 scenes. The film is about child molestation and the abuse of children in Goa by certain foreigners and the locals don't get to know about it. Foreigners go and live there in their houses, and the children molested, sexually exploited. So there is a scene in which the father and the mother and the uncle sitting with his boy in the kitchen of their house, and they're trying to interrogate him in a nice way, trying to get to say yes, there are guest who is living with them has molested him. So there again I fought with the director. I said I'm going to use the sound of a trance or a rave party happening half a kilometer away, and it should be heard. It should be heard, it should be felt. The audience should feel that, they shouldn't grope for it. It should be there but not prominently, it should come and go.

Q: the ambience? V: yes exactly. It's a part of that atmosphere. I want to make it that even if it isn't. But I'm quite sure this rave parties can be heard kilometer away, and the wind carries it towards you or sometimes away. And so the sound comes in and goes out at times, but you will hear it. So I tried to use that as a kind of a contrapuntal element, where there is something of really grave importance happening here, something really serious and you can hear these fuckers somewhere partying. Almost like a juxtaposition of two completely… One blatantly Dionysian activity happening there, not that I have anything against Dionysian activity but representational, in the sense that to me it represents the sum total of the culture there which allows even children to be exploited sexually. They are sexually free and they are doing what they want, but if they start including children in it then it is a big problem. And here I have seen the boy being molested in the film as an audience. I've seen it. And the boy sitting there and he's being questioned, and he does not say anything. Which is most of the time the way it is. That's the way it is. Children who are sexually molested do not come up to their parents and tell them that this guy did this to me. So I used it like that. As an element, just as an example I was trying to give you. It is very simple, but I believe that it would have been effective. Only the audience can tell of course. But whether the audience felt it or not it is my sensibility that I’m looking at. Whether I'm able to express my sensibility in an honest way. Q: what if that particular atmosphere would not have been there? What would have happened to the interpretation of the film if that particular ambience layer would not be there? V: You mean in general? Q: hm.

475 V: Then it becomes television. Furniture, not art. Because whether it is realistic or whether it is representational and iconic or whether it is juxtapositional or contrapuntal or whatever. But if the element is not used at all then… We don't live in a vacuum do we? There is sound around you all the time. Even in the world's quietest place you still hear sound. You are in a city and you will hear that. Even if you find yourself on top of Mount Everest, you sit there and you will hear sound. You will hear the wind blowing. If you take that out then something is missing. Yes, at the same time there is silent cinema, but silent cinema had its own ways of dealing with the fact that sound did not exist. In physical ways yes. In some way or the other to figure a method to deal with the absence till sound came up. It is old technology eventually, it catches up. Then you get an opportunity to add sound to the image and a drastic change happens. It happens to the good and it happens to the bad. You know what happened when sound came in? A lot of silent era people lost their space. Because they couldn't deal with sound. They were actually considered important and big, but when sound came in they couldn't deal with it. So a lot of people lost their jobs, livelihood or calling in life. But then if sound didn't come in, then it wouldn't have caused all the revolution that it did. Starting from the beginning it did. It changed the face of cinema. Cinema actually became cinema after sound came in. Not to say… I love some of the silent cinemas… I haven't seen all of it obviously but of what I've seen Fritz Lang and you know great films. But it's all about how they dealt with emotions and how they dealt with the lack of sound. In Murnau’s Sunrise there is a scene in which the husband takes the wife out on a boat. His intention is to kill her because he went to the city and he found a woman who fell in love with him. A woman from the city. And now he's torn between that woman and his very pretty, but very demure and very soft and rustic wife. And in a fit of craziness he decides this is what he has to do. He takes her out and somewhere she looks at him and she realizes this. She pleads with. She cries and pleads. And all this is happening without sound. What a great scene that is. Now in contrast you take Nights of Cabiria. Fellini's film, in which Giulietta Masina is a prostitute and she expects that she's getting a new lease of life because this one guy wants to get married to her. She sells all her belongings and leaves that house with great happiness. They go around here and there and finally he takes her to a cliff. He is only one intention, to push off the cliff but before that gets her purse with all the money. She realizes this. It's in his eyes and she reads it. And she cries and says if this is what you want take it. She throws the purse and she has completely lost all hope. There is dialogue there and that this music she throws the purse at him, he just picks up the purse and runs away. And she's standing there alone at a cliff. It's almost like you are

476 expect that she's going to fall off or jump off the cliff after such a betrayal. Nothing can save me. What am I going to live for? But she turns and walks and finds her way out of that patch of forest and what does she find? She finds Fellini's band passing by, a marching band with a bunch of clowns and this and that- activity. There is some pomp happening there. There is joy in the air. And there is this one woman - tears streaming down her face walking along. What a brilliant way to deal with it with sound. This kind of a scene you probably can find in ten more films. Eventually what is it? This thing called atmosphere or ambience is if it needs to be used it better have a valid reason to be there. And more and more what we find is that if a film is not short to lend itself to a design with sound - then you're heavily constrained. The only thing you can do is you can sit down and say, "okay this scene is, they are going down in a car in Bombay in this old city, so you have to have that." With Delhi Belly, a film that I did, Dwarak Warrier and I did the sound design. Now Harri Dwarak is a very experienced sound designer, and a very good friend of mine and we have been colleagues. He left the business and now he's a Dolby representative because he couldn't take this bullshit. He got an opportunity to leave and he took it. But when he worked on this film, Harri asked me "Vinod, you have some kind of a plan in terms of the sound design for this film?" So I said I'm thinking about it and I'd think about it for a whole week and I came back to him and said “I have drawn a blank. I don't know.” Because the film wasn't sure what to lend itself that way. So all I could think of doing is, so long as we are inside that hotel room where all that activity takes place with the Russian guy and Vijay Raj going and torturing him, we will keep it absolutely silent almost like it's in a rarefied space. Like there is no connect to the outside world. So we will not hear any sounds from outside, even though it is not realistic. Even in a five-star hotel with a double glazed window you will still hear sound from outside, especially this kind of sound the sound of traffic, honking. It pierces through anything. These are bullets from which no steel armor can save you. You can triple glaze your window and you will still hear it. So my microphones don't show you that, but when you're out like in the middle of old Delhi city with all that chasing and running around we tried to include as much of real sound their and the cacophony of that space. We did try to do certain things like bring in isolated elements. Bring them in and take them out. For example if the car is passing through a narrow lane be brought in some music as if it's playing somewhere and with the effect of the cars passing by as it comes closer to the source you hear it and then we took it out. We had to be careful because if it was recognizable then there would have been copyright issues. That's another thing now, you can't just go out and use any piece of music just like that. Which

477 is good. So we tried doing things with that. And of course as soon as the guns started getting fired in that room basically to solve gunshots. We had issues there, because no handgun can go through a brick wall and come out from the other side and break chandeliers and champagne glasses. It is not realistic. Q: do you think that filmmakers, even the sound designers are generally a bit reluctant to include the real ambience in the outdoor sequences? For example here I'm getting your voice and I'm not using any filter. My intention is to get your voice. But in cinema you need production people to close the street. Why? Isn't it realistic to include all the ambient sounds?

V: you are right but in a different way. There is a process involved. The process is that when you are recording sound on a location the primary focus is to get the dialogue clean. All other elements can be added later. So you have the dialogue coming out of the center speaker on a surround system. The only two things that come out of the center speaker are dialogues and folly, like footsteps except. Atmospheres and ambiences are come out of the left, right and the surround speakers. So the reason why we want to keep things quiet when we are recording dialogue is so that we can add this separately and create a balance between the two and have some control over it. We need to have control, otherwise it is going to interfere so much with the dialogue that they will not be intelligible. There is a danger of losing intelligibility. That's essentially why people go through to even mute out footsteps. Like we put carpets on the ground when people are walking, so that we don't get footsteps. Because footsteps can be added later as part of the sound post. Anyway we're going to do folly for the film so that can be done. There are times when some footsteps sound unique because of the space in which the person is walking. I remember I worked with Wong Kar Wai on a short film - he caused a film so I will call it a film. It was a commercial for Chivas Regal. In seven days of shoot I only recorded one whisper of this girl. That was all I recorded. But I was there watching this gentleman work, and by god he had something. Something that I couldn't find yet in any Indian director that I have worked with. There could be, I hope there are. But the clarity with which he knows what he wants and how he achieves it, and when he achieves it you know he has achieved it as well. If you closely look at what is happening. The difference between take 1, 2, 3 and take 4 where he says "okay now we're moving on to the next shot" is palpably different. In that matter have worked with Wes Anderson on The Darjeeling Limited, and in that film Wes would take take after take without even cutting the camera. I think we shot around 22,000 feet of film in one day. Just to give you an

478 example that is the way he used to shoot. Thousand foot rolls in the Panavision cameras just running. He too had a quest to get things better, and if one by one the elements were getting better he would keep going till all the elements got better. There are some methods in his madness as well. So Wong Kar Wai asked me to record footsteps in that film. I recorded a lot of footsteps because we were shooting in the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jaipur. And there is this huge dome in this heritage hotel and we're shooting in the night. So in this huge domed area, the woman is walking down in her heels, their reflections and reverberations in that space make that whole thing sound different. And it'll be very difficult to emulate that to get exactly what there is. Not that if I emulated folly footsteps and created her reverberation sense to it, no audiences going to say "no this does not sound like it was recorded there." For heaven sake, then I'm not good with what I'm doing. I could do that. But Wong Kar Wai wanted those footsteps to be recorded. So we got both the actors, Chang Chen, his main actor in all his films was there. The girl was China's first supermodel that year or something. He made them walk 10 times up and down that space. And we recorded it in different perspectives. Walking up close to mic, away from mic, mic following the footsteps up close, mic following from a moderate distance, we did a lot of that. So my point is that eventually atmospheres and ambiences, unless they make real sense, they eventually end up becoming fillers to support the visual. If a visual like you are saying that you're able to hear me and you're having all this ambient noise of traffic and people talking there and whatever, you are focused on what I'm saying. If you are an audience watching a film, and if the film and the content did not have that kind of attraction to you, if it was in magnetic to you, would you still be able to focus? Right now you are focusing on what I'm saying because it is important to you and your project and we're talking about something that is of meaning to you and you want to know my point of view… that is why the focus. If it was in this, would you not let your mind drift a bit here and there and a few of my words just go away like that to a corner? I'm still speaking, but your record is not going to get me in the same way as your brain wants. You want cognize what I'm saying, you're hearing but you're not listening. Sounds cool through your cochlea and into your brain so you can sense that I'm speaking but you're not listening to what I'm saying. Q: what is the reason that you decided to sit here and not inside? V: the reason why I wanted to sit here is because, one, I wanted to smoke and the second is that it is a lot more difficult to focus in a space like this. It is probably easier to focus in there, but it is also easier to drift when you're in there. Out here, I've certainly not been very precise in my answers, because I guess even the topic is not so that one

479 can be very precise with answers, and I can say what I want to say in four sentences and it is done. Maybe I don't have that kind of clarity in my mind to be able to achieve that. It's an admixture of all this, but somehow despite the fact that it is noisy out here, it's not that noisy that we cannot have a conversation sitting on the state. So best of both worlds in the sense that rather than sit inside and feel comfortable and therefore get lost, I would rather be in a situation like as if I'm actually on location and I'm working. I'm sweating here and there are mosquitoes, there is traffic and noise, and there are distractions like people coming. In the middle of all these, if I can come up with conducive sensible answers to your questions. Not that it is an answer that you're looking for, it's rather an explanation or my take, it's better if I'm able to sit on the side of a road one whole night or day recording sound for a film and I need to keep my concentration when I'm working, then if I'm here talking about sound I should be able to keep the same level of concentration. Maybe that's why I said okay this is better. Q: is it not analogous to the transition happening in Indian cinema, that from a very comfort zone of clean sounds people are coming outdoor and recording ambiences and recording location sounds more and more? V: it has also got to do with the nature of the content. If you actually look at it not many films have been shot in absolutely realistic…especially I'm talking about Bollywood. Then there was this thing called parallel cinema almost all of them recorded sound on location. Mani Kaul certainly did in all his films, but he was a master, he had his ways, he had his approach to sound, which is quite unique. Q: did he do location sound? V: yes he did. Q: but Mani Kaul's soundtrack sounds like everything is dubbed -there is no ambience at all, take for example Duvidha. V: that is a stylistic element of his. I have seen Duvidha a very long time ago, and I haven't seen it again. I would like to, I'm hoping that after he passed away NFDC is going to wake up and get their jocks together, and releases his films as proper DVDs. I don't know if that is going to ever happen. But it should happen. I would like to see it again. I saw a print of it at least 16 or 17 years ago. What I remember of that film now is that absolute desolation in that landscape. I remember the beginning of the film. The first scene in the film is this guy walking down the desert with his feet in the sand. And then you realize that he's pulling a rope, which is tied to a bucket, which is inside a well. And he has got to walk that far, which means the water is that deep. Maybe 100 m deep. To access that water he needs to send the bucket hundred metres down and let it get

480 filled with water, and then he has to walk with that rope. I think that is the scene I remember well. Now that is the space. Now what he could have done is, the moment people say Desert people want to add the ambience. But he did not want that. He had a reason to not want it. If you were there and you asked why he would have had his exact reason to present to you. From what I think, by he did not want it is probably because he felt that it was an element that wasn't required. Having said that they - did you see Duvidha? Did you see a good print of it? Q: yes, in DVD. V: now may be you're not able to hear the ambience on that DVD because of the transfers. Q: probably yes, but relatively speaking his films have almost no ambience, even in films like The Idiot. V: I feel that it was an aesthetic consideration for him more than a lack of sound knowledge, which I wouldn't expect a person like Mani Kaul to be inflicted by. You look at parallel cinema of that time. Almost all of them recorded sound on location. Q: yes, for example Shyam Benegal. V: yes Shyam Babu still does. Whenever he makes a film he still does. But we're talking about Ketan, we're talking about all those people in that so-called parallel cinema movement. Then after a certain point parallel cinema, they say died. And then there was no parallel cinema for a while. Or maybe very little. The only cinema that you could see is Bollywood. If you look at the teams and content of Bollywood in the 80s, that is probably when parallel cinema was dwindling, post 80s or so into the 90s. Look at the films. Even a film like ’s Nayakan or a film like 's Parineeta, all supposedly realistic films in realistic conditions. It is only Kamala Hassan there instead of the real Nayakan, who might not be as good looking and handsome as Kamala Hassan, but Kamal does a very nice job in that doing whatever it does. The melodrama and all that he handles very nicely. In the music of course Ilaya Raja's brilliance is seen. The one thing that people don't realize, and I hope they do, is his ability to create background music for the film which to me is greater than his songs. In terms of its content, in terms of its application, and in terms of its musicality. When you have such a strong element like that, are you going to allow this thing called realism come in and start interfering? Possibly not. Maybe it was a conscious decision by Mani Ratnam and the others working on that film do not have realistic soundscapes in the film. I don't know but that could be a reason. It also could be that they did not know how to do it. But I'm probably not right to say that there were no sound people who knew how

481 to record atmospheres and put them in the film. But I think it is more of an aesthetic reason why it wasn't or very little was included. There is a certain nature to the beast. But at the same time if you think about a film that was shot around the same time in Bollywood or in Europe, it's like a period piece. When Nayakan was made it reflected a time in the past. Their quest for authenticity and recreation is a lot more than ours, because the sense in our film is defined and decided by the melodrama. In their film it's not melodrama. They go by the classical idiom and essentially they have a very strong quest for authenticity. Which is why everything looks very authentic in their period piece. (Firecrackers in the back) it did not affect me. Q: because I have been in Europe I have a much lower… V: yes and you wouldn't hear something like that unless it is a particular day and you know there are going to be fireworks. I know. Sometimes I'm very scared of this, that my sensibility and sensitivity to sound, as a sound guy, is all the time at risk. I'm being invaded. Q: but I think we have to slowly wrap up because it is already 9:30. One thing is that earlier films had ambience in the center, taking the reference of a mono mix. As you said Tarkovsky’s ambiences were kept in the center creating an atmosphere even in a mono mixing of sound. But contemporary films are more and more spreading the ambience in the surround. What's the difference? V: The difference is in the way you hear it. You hear the sound spread around you, engulfing you in some way. Q: yes, but how does it influence the perception in the audience’s end? V: if it is used in a meaningful way then it makes sense. It will make sense only if it is used in a meaningful way. Part of the whole problem is that we inundate our films with the need for realism. So we needed it to be like that. Now that we've got away to engulf the audience… For example you are sitting here and you close your eyes, and you can hear the sound all around you. From behind you, from the front from the left and the right. And we have this glass wall here on this side next to which we are sitting. Stuff is getting reflected from there as well. But even if you ignore that at least 180°. You've got sound coming and hitting your ears from behind you, from the front and from one side at least. Or if you turn to the side the left ear and you right ear, you can actually locate the sources of sound is moving, traffic etc. so it's a complex soundscapes here of various sounds and noises. If your film defines the need for being realistic, and defines that to be a primary need then you're stuck with this. You are not going to be able to do anything except try to emulate reality. But if your film is not that, if you're trying to separate the

482 reality of the world in which you are seeing these actors and do something else, then comes the scope to be able to add something else to it. Otherwise no. For instance Jean- Luc Godard. How many times in his films have you seen somebody ask a question, and the other person starts explaining something. And you as the audience want to hear the explanation. And what does he do? He completely obliterates that by having a plane pass overhead. And all you can see is the lips moving of this person who is giving the explanation to the question, and the words are obliterated. Why does he do that? Because he thinks that explanation is not important to his audience. But the process of drawing the audience to sit up and say "now I'm going to get an explanation" and have something so completely… It can happen, why not? Doesn’t it happen when you're on the phone? Look at how our sense of communication today is. You were searching for this place, I made one called. It got cut off and I was not very happy with my explanation of how to get here. Because it got cut off suddenly, I wanted to call you back and complete that process. I kept trying and I couldn't get through to you. It said that this phone can't be reached right now. So all I could do was sit here and hope that you will find your way eventually, which you did. That whole process of me trying to explain to you the way to get here couldn't happen. So we faced this kind of truncation in life all the time. What Godard is doing is just actually… Q: oh! V: you have run out of battery. I was wondering how long these batteries would last. Anyways what I'm trying to say is that every filmmaker needs to have an urge to understand deeper what he wants to say, and find in cinema and cinematic elements the right kind of vehicle to take that to the audience. Now there is no hard and fast rule that every scene should have ambience and it should be realistic even if the image is showing a real situation. But what people do is they take the easy way out. Which is the moment they want to do something like that they put music. Music is the biggest crutch. You know what Bresson has said about music. You have read notes to the cinematograph. So I don't need to explain that to you. What Bresson does, if you see a film like Pickpocket, where does it bring in music, at times when you least expect it, at times when you most expect it. And what kind of music? He's getting a Bach piece play at you. It is fucking powerful man. And what is the imagery? He has drawn the thing out. He's drawing it out. It is like showing the thing through a small hole and drawing out a filament. He has cut down the fat from the flesh. It is like sushi meat with not a gram of fat in it. And then he suddenly hits you with this absolutely deep involving music from Bach. He does it! How does it do it? Why does he do it? He added that moment of time felt that the musical

483 element, one of the elements of cinema is apt for that moment. In how many of his films do you hear ambience? Even in the best prints of some of the Bresson's films that I have seen in festivals. Not festivals in those packages that used to come.

Q: that is because of optical recording. It couldn't add ambience. But in digital recording you can add as much ambience as possible. V: exactly the same thing which applies to the fact that, now that you have all the space are you going to utilize it in the right way? I have all the elements. I can even take the sound of a honk under a dialogue word and take it out without affecting the word now. So does that mean that I had to subject myself to a noisy location? For this film that I worked on, I bought a microphone from a company called Schoeps, Germany. The super CMIT. Now this is a digital shortcut microphone. What it does is if the mike is pointed at me anything that is coming off axis it reduces by 15 DB. It is incredible. It is a game changer. But if the mic is not correctly pointed at me, and it is slightly away, even my voice goes off axis, so it starts truncating my voice also, which you don't want. So it needs to be operated very carefully in the hands of a very fine boom operator. I used this mic extensively on the film that I just did. Because, this film when it came to me, we had a situation where the director said we are going to ratify locations only if you okay them. And I said this is the first time director is telling me this. Otherwise I go to a location scout and the locations are already decided. All I'm doing is just looking at it and gauging what kind of trouble I'm going to face. It is like an x-ray of my stomach, which is going to tell me that I have an ulcer. There is no prognosis there. I cannot imagine anything. I'm only seeing the problems as they are. And a lot of problems, which are going to come - which I cannot see because they are not evident. Many times this happens in my work. So it starts this way that we are going to go and look at locations. The film is set between 1975 and 1985. Which means that a lot of vehicular traffic needs to sound different. And there shouldn't be any cellphones. But very quickly that film transformed into yet another film. That important position that was given to sound suddenly just dwindled. Then it came down to a point where I got an SMS from the director saying that, "well they said to me that our sound guy is really great. So he will be able to manage it." “What am I? A fucking magician or what?” If you give me a location like this and say it is 1980 Bombay, how am I going to take the sound of these bloody rickshaws? I can't. But I tried. So I got these microphones that reject all these off axis noise. I put them in the hands of the finest boom operator in India, my brother and my colleague for years Jahangir. And between the two of us we did what we could. Now when it goes to

484 post they are going to enjoy the fruits of my labor. And my technical proficiency that made me go out and get this microphone. But as we went into the film the compromises in the sound department grew. They only grow. They don't go backwards. The day that happens I would be ecstatic. I would almost be in a state of grace. Q: well, I think we should stop here.

485 Biographies and Filmographies

Aloke Dey (Sound Re-recording Mixer) Selected filmography: Kahaani (Story, Sujoy Ghosh, 2012) Love Aaj Kal (Love Nowadays, Imtiaz Ali, 2009) Jab We Met (When We Met, Imtiaz Ali, 2007) Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (Aparna Sen, 2002)

Selected awards: 2005: Zee Cine Awards, Nominated: Best Sound Re-recording for Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo (2004) 2004: Zee Cine Awards, Nominated: Best Sound Re-recording for Koi... Mil Gaya (2003)

Anil Radhakrishnan (Sound Mixer, Sound Recordist) Selected filmography: Dedh Ishqiya (Abhishek Chaubey, 2014) David (Bejoy Nambiar, 2013) Road, Movie ( Benegal, 2009)

Anup Dev (Sound Re-recording Mixer) Selected filmography: Chennai Express (Rohit Shetty, 2013) Son of Sardaar (Ashwani Dhir and Anil Devgan, 2012) Shahid (Hansal Mehta, 2012) Ra.One (, 2011) Delhi Belly (Abhinay Deo and Akshat Verma, 2011) 3 Idiots (, 2009) Moksha: Salvation (Ashok Mehta, 2001)

Selected awards: 2014: IIFA, Best Sound Mixing for Chennai Express 2010: IIFA, Best Sound Re-Recording for 3 Idiots (2009) 2001: , Silver Lotus, Best Audiography for Moksha: Salvation

486 Anup Mukherjee (Sound Designer) Selected filmography: Jogajog (Shekhar Das, 2015) Chaar (Sandip Ray, 2014) Rupkatha Noy (Atanu Ghosh, 2013) Koyekti Meyer Golpo (Those City Girls, Subrata Sen, 2012) Iti Mrinalini (An Unfinished Letter, Aparna Sen, 2010) (Goutam Ghose, 2010) Kailashey Kelenkari (Sandip Ray, 2007) Herbert (Suman Mukhopadhyay, 2006) Iti Srikanta (Anjan Das, 2004) Dekha (Sight, Goutam Ghose, 2001) Utsab (The Festival, Rituparno Ghosh, 2000) Lal Darja (Red Door, Buddhadev Dasgupta, 1997) Agantuk (The Stranger, Satyajit Ray, 1991)

Selected award: 2005: Silver Lotus, National Film Awards, Best Audiography, Iti Srikanta (2004)

Biswadeep Chatterjee (Sound Designer) Selected filmography: Bajirao Mastani (, 2015) Piku (Shoojit Sircar, 2015) Teenkahon (Bauddhayan Mukherji, 2014) Buno Haansh (Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, 2014) Madras Cafe (Shoojit Sircar, 2013) Satyanweshi (Rituparno Ghosh, 2013) Cloud Capped Star (Kamaleswar Mukherjee, 2013) Afterglow (Pratim D. Gupta, 2012) Do Dooni Chaar (Habib Faisal, 2010) 3 Idiots (Rajkumar Hirani, 2009) The Last Lear (Rituparno Ghosh, 2007) Lage Raho Munna Bhai (Rajkumar Hirani, 2006) Antarmahal: Views of the Inner Chamber (Rituparno Ghosh, 2005) Parineeta (Pradeep Sarkar, 2005)

487 Raincoat (Rituparno Ghosh, 2004) Choker Bali: A Passion Play (Rituparno Ghosh, 2003)

Selected awards: 2014: Silver Lotus, National Film Awards, Best Audiography, Madras Cafe (2013) (Shared with: Nihar Ranjan Samal) 2014: Apsara Film Producers Guild Awards, Best Sound Mixing, Madras Cafe (2013) (Shared with: Justin Jose) 2014: Zee Cine Awards, Best Sound Design, Madras Cafe (2013) (Shared with: Nihar Ranjan Samal) 2010: IIFA, Award for Technical Excellence, Best Sound Recording, 3 Idiots (2009) (Shared with: Nihar Ranjan Samal) 2006: Filmfare Award, Best Sound Design, Parineeta (2005)

Dileep Subramanian (Sound Recordist, Sound Designer) Selected filmography: (Outlaws, Ali Abbas Zafar, 2014) Jab Tak Hai Jaan (As Long as I Live, , 2012) Cocktail (Homi Adajania, 2012) RockStar (Imtiaz Ali, 2011) Mausam (Season, , 2011) Guzaarish (Request, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2010) My Name Is Khan (Karan Johar, 2010) Love Aaj Kal (Love Nowadays, Imtiaz Ali, 2009)

Dipankar Chaki (Sound Recordist, Sound Designer) Selected filmography: Take One (Mainak Bhaumik, 2014) Jaatishwar (, 2014) The Last Poem (Suman Mukhopadhyay, 2013) Mishawr Rawhoshyo (Srijit Mukherji, 2013) Me and My Girlfriends (Mainak Bhaumik, 2013) Shabdo (Sound, Kaushik Ganguly, 2013) Kanamachi (Raj Chakraborty, 2013) Aborto (Circle, Arindam Sil, 2013)

488 Maach Mishti & More (Mainak Bhaumik, 2013) Dutta Vs. Dutta (, 2012) Tasher Desh (The Land of Cards, Qaushiq Mukherjee, 2012)

Selected award: 2013: Silver Lotus, National Film Awards, Best Audiography, Shabdo (2013)

Hitendra Ghosh (Sound Re-recording Mixer) Selected filmography: Jodhaa Akbar (, 2008) (Colour it Saffron, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2006) : We, the People (Own Country, Ashutosh Gowariker, 2004) Aks (The Reflection, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2001) Ashoka the Great (, 2001) Mammo (Shyam Benegal, 1994) Parinda (The Bird, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, 1989) Saaransh (The Gist, , 1984) Ardh Satya (Half Truth, Govind Nihalani, 1983) 36 Chowringhee Lane (Aparna Sen, 1981) Bhumika (The Role, Shyam Benegal, 1977)

Selected awards: 2007: IIFA, Technical Excellence, Best Sound Re-Recording, Rang De Basanti (2006) 2005: Zee Cine Awards, Best Sound Re-recording, Swades: We, the People (2004) 2001: IIFA, Technical Excellence, Best Sound Re-Recording, Jungle (2000) 1984: Filmfare Award, Best Sound Recordist, Vijeta (1982) 1982: Filmfare Award, Best Sound Recordist, Kalyug (1981) 1980: Filmfare Award, Best Sound Recordist, Junoon (1979)

Hitesh Chaurasia (sound designer) Selected filmography: The Bright Day (Mohit Takalkar, 2015) Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain (Ravi Kumar, 2014) Maunraag (Monologue, Vaibhav Abnave, 2013) Gajaar: Journey of the Soul (Ajit P. Bhairavkar, 2011)

489

Jayadevan Chakkadath (Production Sound Mixer, Location Sync Sound Recordist) Selected filmography: Perariyathavar (Names Unknown, Bijukumar Damodaran, 2014) Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (A Play of Bullets, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2013) Olipporu (The Guerilla War, A.V. Sasidaran, 2013) Inkaar (Denial, Sudhir Mishra, 2013)

Jyoti Chatterjee (Sound Recordist, Sound Mixer) Selected filmography: Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, Satyajit Ray, 1984) Ekdin Pratidin (Mrinal Sen, 1979) Shakha Proshakha (Satyajit Ray, 1990)

Kunal Sharma (Sound Designer) Selected filmography: Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap, 2014) Lootera (Robber, Vikramaditya Motwane, 2013) (Amit Kumar, 2013) Bombay Talkies (Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, , Karan Johar, 2013) Shaitan (Devil, Bejoy Nambiar, 2011) Udaan (Flight, Vikramaditya Motwane, 2010)

Selected awards: 2012: Screen Weekly Awards, Best Sound Design for Shaitan (2011) 2011: Filmfare Award, Best Sound Design for Udaan (2010) 2009: National Film Awards, Silver Lotus, Best Audiography for 1971 (2007)

Manas Choudhury (Sync Sound Recordist, Sound Designer) Selected filmography: Aisha (Rajshree Ojha, 2010) Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (Shimit Amin, 2009) Well Done Abba (Shyam Benegal, 2009) (Shyam Benegal, 2008) Firaaq (Nandita Das, 2008)

490 Chakde! India (Shimit Amin, 2007) Three Walls (, 2003)

Selected award: 2008: IIFA, Best Sound Recording, Chak De! India (2007)

Bobby John (Sound Editor) Selected filmography: Peepli (Live) (Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui, 2010) Blue Oranges (Rajesh Ganguly, 2009) 15 Park Avenue (Aparna Sen, 2005)

Nakul Kamte (Production Sound Mixer, Sound Designer, Sync Sound Recordist) Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2013) Delhi-6 (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2009) Like Stars on Earth (Aamir Khan and , 2007) Om Shanti Om (, 2007) Loins of Punjab Presents (Manish Acharya, 2007) Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (, 2007) (Rakesh Roshan, 2006) Rang De Basanti (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, 2006) Bride & Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha, 2004) Lakshya (, 2004) Dil Chahta Hai (Farhan Akhtar, 2001) Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001)

Selected awards: 2014: Apsara Film Producers Guild Awards, Best Sound Design, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag 2007: IIFA, Best Sound Recording, Rang De Basanti (2006) 2002: National Film Awards, Silver Lotus, Best Audiography, Lagaan (2001)

Pritam Das (Location Sound, Sync Sound Recordist, Sound Design) Selected filmography: Titli (Kanu Behl, 2014) Shuddh Desi Romance (Maneesh Sharma, 2013)

491 Shanghai (Dibakar Banerjee, 2012) LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (Dibakar Banerjee, 2010)

Selected awards: 2011: IIFA, Best Sound Recording for LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha 2011: Filmfare Awards, Best Sound Design for LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha

P M Satheesh (Sound Designer) Selected filmography: Baahubali: The Beginning (S.S. Rajamouli, 2015) Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2013) The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair, 2012) Ishqiya (Romance, Abhishek Chaubey, 2010) Road, Movie (Dev Benegal, 2009) Kaminey: The Scoundrels (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2009) The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey (Ketan Mehta, 2005)

Selected award: 1999: National award, Best sound recording and design, Kumar Talkies (Pankaj Rishi Kumar, 1999)

Promod Thomas (Sound Re-recording Mixer) Selected filmography: Rajdhani Express (Ashok Kohli, 2013) Akashathinte Niram (Colour of Sky, Bijukumar Damodaran, 2012) Jaane Kya Tune Kahi (Do Know What You Say, Nisha Ramakrishnan, 2012) Veettilekkulla Vazhi (The Way Home, Bijukumar Damodaran, 2011) Walkaway (Shailja Gupta, 2010) Enthiran (Robot, S. Shankar, 2010)

Resul Pookutty (Sync Sound Recordist, Sound Designer, Production Sound Mixing Specialist)

Selected filmography: Highway (Imtiaz Ali. 2014)

492 PK (Rajkumar Hirani, 2014) Ra.One (Anubhav Sinha, 2011) Ghajini (A.R. Murugadoss, 2008) Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, 2008) Black (Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2005) Musafir (Traveller, Sanjay Gupta, 2004) Selected awards: 2012: Zee Cine Award for Best Sound Design, Ra.One (2011) 2010: National Film Award, Best Audiography, Pazhassi Raja (2009) 2010: Padma Shri by Government of India 2009: Asianet Film Awards - Special Honour Jury Award 2009: Academy Award, Best Sound Mixing (with and ), Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 2009: BAFTA Award, Best Sound (with Glenn Freemantle, Richard Pryke, Tom Sayers and Ian Tapp), Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 2005: Zee Cine Award, Best Audiography for Musafir (2004)

Shyam Benegal (Director and Screenwriter) Selected filmography: Ankur (1973) Nishant (1975) Manthan (1976) Bhumika (1977)

Selected awards: 2005: Dadasaheb Phalke Award 1975: Second Best Feature Film for Ankur 1976: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Nishant 1977: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Manthan 1978: Best Screenplay for Bhumika 1979: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Junoon 1982: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Arohan 1984: Best Historical Reconstruction for Nehru 1985: Best Biographical Film for Satyajit Ray 1986: Best Director for Trikal

493 1993: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda 1995: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Mammo 1996: Best Feature Film in English for The Making of the Mahatma 1997: Best Feature Film in for Sardari Begum 1999: Best Feature Film for Samar 1999: Best Feature Film on Family Welfare for Hari-Bhari 2001: Best Feature Film in Hindi for Zubeidaa

Subhas Sahoo (Location Sync Sound Recordist) Selected filmography: N.H 10 (Navdeep Singh, 2015) (Vinil Matthew, 2014) Mickey Virus (Saurabh Varma, 2013) Once Upon a Time in Mumbai (Milan Luthria, 2010) Kaminey: The Scoundrels (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2009) Manorama Six Feet Under (Navdeep Singh, 2007) Khosla's Nest (Dibakar Banerjee, 2006) Omkara (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2006)

Selected awards: 2008: Silver Lotus, National Film Awards, Best Audiography, Omkara (2006) (Shared with: K.J. Singh)

Sukanta Majumdar (Sound Recordist, Sound Editor, Sound Designer) Selected filmography: The Churning of Kalki (Ashish Avikunthak, 2015) Kangal Malsat (Suman Mukhopadhyay, 2013) Four Chapters (Suman Mukhopadhyay, 2008)

Vinod Subramanian Selected filmography: Umrika (Prashant Nair, 2015) Sold (I) (Jeffrey D. Brown, 2014) Patang (Prashant Bhargava, 2011) Delhi Belly (Abhinay Deo and Akshat Verma, 2011)

494 Rock On!! (, 2008) Ab Tak Chhappan (Shimit Amin, 2004)

Selected awards: 2009: Filmfare Award, Best Sound Design, Rock On!! (2008) (Shared with: Baylon Fonseca)

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