Tahir Raj Bhasin and Nimrat Kaur share their experience of working in Y-Film’s romantic short film, The Road Trip, with Shrabasti Mallik and tell her how social media is increasingly becoming a “great little platform” for new talent
If we say Tahir Raj Bhasin, there are chances that you might not know who we are talking about. He is popularly known for his bad boy character of Walt in the movie Mardaani, but in reality he is your regular next door guy with added good looks and a penchant for delivering a great performance.
Bhasin is one movie old in Bollywood but as they say, ‘your works speaks for you,’ he is one of the many actors chosen for Y Film’s collection of short films, collectively called love Shots directed by Ankur Tewari. The first movie to be released online is The Road Trip and it stars Bhasin and Nimrat Kaur in roles they have not often portrayed.
The seven minute movie opens on the side of a highway with faint smoke billowing out of a crashed car with Bhasin and Kaur, husband and wife, contradicting each other on what they should and should not have done to avoid the crash — the regular tiffs of a married couple over the choice of music (as in the case of this film) and many other things.
If you have watched the video, you must have noticed the actors often looking at their watches. Finally Bhasin’s character, Nikhil, looks past his wife and softly says, “They’re here.” The picturisation after that, piognantly touches the heart as the characters talk to each other without moving their lips and the shot zooms into ambulances rushing in and carrying their lifeless bodies away from the crashed car, while their spirits stand close-by hugging each other — making it clear that they were already dead when the film opened.
The film also, in a very subtle way, at the end, touches upon how important it is to concentrate while one is behind the wheels. Anji’s (Kaur’s character) voice says that she should not have been adamant about taking selfies and wonders if their parents would be disappointed with them. To which Nikhil’s voice answers, “At least they have one happy picture of our last moment.”
It was a whole new experience for Bhasin and it was evident in his voice. “This is a new territory for me, and I fell in love with the story and the concept when I heard it. Plus it was a challenge and, truthfully, I loved it,” said the actor who took out a day off from his current project Force 2 to shoot The Road Trip, which was completed in a day.
Bhasin wanted to share more about his experience. He mentioned that Mardaani and this film belong to two very different genres. “In this, you have to understand the underlying message. It is appreciating the moment, and not worrying about the past and the future. That is the subtext of the film and it is beautiful,” he elaborated.
We spoke to Nimrat, too, and she told us that the film was shot on a highway outside Mumbai and how the entire team was extremely competent because the script required it to be shot between sunrise and sunset. “We shot in a very guerrilla style and had to be quick. There were, of course, issues created by the local villagers but our director of photography was amazing, and working with Ankur was a breeze, too,” she said.
The actors bonded over the fact that they both belonged to the service background — he from the Air Force and she from the Army. And they both had high praises for each other. Bhasin told us that they had one day of reading and after that things fell in place. “She was a great person to work with,” he said. Kaur added, “He is definitely one of the actors to look out for in the coming days. He is a nice boy — chilled out, bright and great to work with.”
Working with director Ankur was a delight for both of them and we realised that when they both, separately, spoke about how comfortable he was during the shoot. “He gave us a lot of creative independence. If we felt that we could take a different approach to a certain scene to make it look better, he would always listen to it and let us do that,” Bhasin said.
Kaur pointed out that when something is being made on a shoe-string budget — these are the kind of people that are required. “He was open to ideas and many times we bounced ideas off each other to make the film more interesting. It was kind of cool in a way because I believe that brings a fresh entity to anything that you are working on,” she added.
Both the artistes believe that time is absolutely right for short films because apart from the fact that they are concise and to the point, it is more impactful. “And social media lends a big boost, too,” said Kaur and added that such a format also pushes for better content and is also a “great little platform for new talent.” Bhasin echoed the same and added that in the time crunched space that we are living in, it is important to get a message across even when you have a small window.
While this is Bhasin’s first brush with the format, Kaur is no stranger in this territory. She has done several short films in the last seven years, apart from her film and TV projects. “They were low key and did not reach many people because the Internet was not that active then. We had to carry DVDs with us just in case,” she laughed, reminiscing.
Every Tuesday, for the next four weeks, Y-Films will release one movie from the collection.