When I listen to a basic thought, I try to visualise the cinema in it. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes boyish, sometimes amateurish. It is a trial and error method. But the bottom line is that I want to entertain the audience.
The closest encounter I had with films in my childhood was sitting on the lap of my father at a shooting set, and he would say ‘rain,’ and it started raining, and then he would say ‘song,’ and people started dancing. I thought I was sitting on God’s lap.
My thought process is in Malayalam. So, every time I have to work outside Malayalam, the process is a little stressful. I have to translate my Malayalam thoughts into English and back to Tamil.
Mohan Raja is an interesting filmmaker. He is constantly, if I may use the word, contradicting himself. He explains a scene, and then he will try to break that and rebuild it. That, to me, is filmmaking. Every scene is constructed after a lot of discussions.
As an actor, you create a character from your understanding of what you have heard and your observations. Eventually, every film is an extension of the images that I have seen or what I have heard or read somewhere.
