Express News Service
CHENNAI: Remember the villain from Dhanush’s Vellailla Pattadhari? Amitash Pradhan, who has since made his Hollywood debut with Heartbeats, is back. And this time, he has come up with a music video, Sing for the Moment, a cover of Laal Ishq from the Bollywood film, Ram Leela.
Talking about the video, Amitash says, “I was jamming with my friend MT Aditya, who has worked with Raghu Dixit in Bangalore and with GVM for the Ondraga singles, one day and he said we should do a song. We were wondering if we should do an original song or a cover. At that point of time, we didn’t have the idea of doing a video. We took Laal Ishq, and we wanted to give it a Coke Studio feel.”
The actor then got well-known technicians from the city to join the project. “For example, the violin is played by Ananth, who is Anirudh’s violinist, and editor Rajkeerthy sir’s son RK Vijaay handled the video. We also had a seven-hour session with Nakul Abhyankar, who works with AR Rahman; he was my vocal coach for the song,” says Amitash, who was very impressed with the scratch of the song.
“It sounded really nice and we played the song to Anirudh, who recommended that we make it into a video. We also showed it to Vignesh Shivn, who told me to write the ending first and then work backwards for the script. That’s when I decided on directing it as well. We worked on it for four months and weren’t sure if someone else could do justice to it.”
The actor also got a lot of advice from veterans, Ravi Varman and Rajiv Menon. They then got Arthi Venkatesh of Solo fame on board as the female lead. “We didn’t want someone whose beauty takes time to grow on us considering the time limit. Also, the entire story is about her and casting a known face was important,” says Amitash, who showed the completed video to Anirudh. “We didn’t even expect it, when he said he wanted to release it.” Amitash clarifies that the video was not made for any commercial gain.
On directing for the first time, he says, “It was extremely difficult and now, I’ve got new respect for directors and composers. Acting and directing at the same time was tough as I had to keep switching my mind space from one to another. Sitting at the editing table for four weeks now has given me such a high that I want to direct a feature film soon after I do a couple of films as an actor,” concludes Amitash.
Source: The New Indian Express