Pushkar and Gayatri create a buzz

TOI catches up with director duo Pushkar and Gayatri, who have created a buzz with the innovative teaser and trailer of their film, Va - Quarter Cutting...
About the film...
The movie happens in one night. It starts by 6.30 in the evening and ends by 6.30 the next morning. It is set in the month of Aadi. So, there will have little rain and Amman thiruvizhas, with all the serial lamps and loudspeakers.It���������s a journey of two characters ��������� played by Shiva and SP Charan ��������� through one night and the people they meet. It���������s essentially a comedy that has also got a sense of adventure to it. But yeah, the storytelling is quirky.
The cast and crew...
We cast Shiva because whatever he says sounds funny. Even if he says ���������Good morning���������, it comes across as funny. The only catch here was that he had to play a guy from Coimbatore and he had to get that dialect right. We wanted a sweet-faced, slightly chubby guy for the other character and we zeroed in on Charan. And for Lekha���������s character, we needed someone with a schoolgirl kind of face, who looked vulnerable. Lekha has that paavam look. And, there is a host of quirky supporting characters like choreographer Kalyan, Craig, Abhinayasri and of course, John Vijay, who plays the villain. We have basically gone for the same crew with which we worked on Oram Po ��������� Nirav Shah (cinematographer), GV Prakash (composer) and Anthony (editor).
Shooting during the night...
Shooting during the night is quite difficult. And, we were mostly shooting on actual locations. So, we could start only by 11.30 pm because of the traffic and wrap-up by 5 am as by that time, daylight filters in. And it also messes up your biological clock. After 2 am, there would be a natural dip in the energy of the whole unit. So, we never started a new scene after the break.
Chennai at night...
Everyone says that Chennai doesn���������t have a traditional night life ��������� there are not many places open after 11 pm. But if you look inside the underbelly of the city, there are a lot of things happening. It���������s just that we don���������t get to know of them. The term night life is often restricted to the upper-middle and upper classes ��������� pubs, clubs and stuff like that. But there is lot more to night life ��������� roadside paratha shops, people who work in the night like poster boys, cops and so on. There is no USP to Chennai���������s night life; it���������s generally quiet but little incidents keep happening throughout the night. And, these are the elements that we are looking into in this film. We didn���������t really have to do any research having been born and brought up in the city. All the incidents in this film would have happened to all of us at one stage or the other. The only difference is that all of these happen to these two characters in a single night.
Going the quirky way...
Usually, films are nothing but stories about a hero ��������� one who makes it big, who does something for the others or who does something meaningful. But in real life, there are other guys as well. Their lives are meaningful too. There is a myth about how a character should be in a film and we like breaking that. We underplay some characters and overplay a few. We give each one a unique personality and that is something that we like seeing in films too.
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