Thirty two minutes of binge watching the eight episodes of the Pongal release Aanandham Aarambham, offered a fun storyline interspersed with ample laughter and eye-rolls. Actor-turned-director Jagan P’s directorial debut boasts a smart humorous script. Season 1 of Disney+ Hotstar’s first Tamil micro-series revolves around the romance and comedy in the daily lives of an endearing urban couple, Ramcharan and Ranjani, played by actors Santhosh Prathap and Abhirami Venkatachalam. We catch up with Jagan as he talks about the behind-the-scenes process and what went into the writing of the script.
Romantic interlude
Showcasing a script relevant to the times, expect scenes like a birthday party on Zoom juxtaposed with old school romance of handwritten love notes. The engaging banter between the couple shines with pop culture references and fresh humour. How challenging was it to create an episode within barely four minutes? “To be honest, my strength is writing copies for ad films. This time constraint is actually perfect for my skill set — writing short copies and headlines that are all about communicating more with less!” says Jagan, who is known for his role as Chitti Babu in Ayan. Collaboration between a popular coffee brand and the OTT platform, the series also finds innocuous reasons for a cuppa throughout the narrative and even draws the viewer into a coffee drinking version of truth or dare!
The filmmaker agrees that a lot of the magic happened at the editing table, giving each segment a seamless narration of less than five minutes that lead into the consecutive episode. Jagan also lets us in on how he resorted to shooting some scenes in one shot to support the editing process because “unlike a feature, we didn’t have hours of footage to edit and play with.”
Cast central
Actor Santhosh, who is currently cooking up a storm in the television show, Cooku with Comali Season 3, surprises with impeccable comic timing and an easy guy-next-door charm in sharp contrast to his intense and layered character in his last outing in the period sports drama film, Sarpatta Parambarai. We ask Jagan about his cast and the preparation that went into the making of the film. “I treated the prep like I would treat a theatre play. I needed the cast to be comfortable in the skin of their characters,” says the artiste and comedian, who designed a three-day workshop for the main characters of the series before beginning to shoot the episodes and who has been part of the professional theatre circuit since 2000.
Talking about the modern twist in the storyline where men and women share equal partnership, Jagan says that he was striving to offer a story that was real and also “gave a contemporary female perspective to the narration.”
Aanandham Aarambham is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.