Soukarya shares experience of dubbing with special child, Mahabrata

Making a film is a journey that involves building work relationships and in many cases life-long friendships. With a film wrapping up, the ties don’t end and neither do the experiences like on-set fun and dubbing days. Dubbing, among other post-production work, takes up a lot of time. So, when Soukarya Ghosal’s Rainbow Jelly made a new mark on the horizon, we all wanted to know what went behind such beautiful portrayals.“Dubbing is an important part of filmmaking and Rainbow Jelly’s dubbing was the most extensive one. Dubbing with Mahabrata (Basu) was difficult because he is a special child. Also, due to fund issues we took almost a year to start dubbing after the filming was complete,” said Soukarya.
The challenges were many. There was a three-month rigorous acting course behind Mahabrata’s stellar performance in the film. But then, the huge gap between filming and dubbing posed a challenge again. “When Mahabrata again joined us for the dubbing, he was out of the character and forgot all that was filmed. But he was the one who had the maximum dialogue in the film,” said Soukarya, adding, “He has a reflex problem and I had to make extra effort.”
Soukarya shared that he does take special care of all the kids he works with during dubbing. But with Mahabrata it required a lot of personal involvement. “He would sit on a chair and I at his feet. I would use the headphone. The screen would be put off and Mahabrata would close his eyes. I would say the dialogues like he would say and Mahabrata took a pause and repeated. The sound engineer would place the dialogues later with lip sync. It was a lot like repeating the anjali mantra,” said Soukarya.