"E Preethi" started it's shooting schedule today. The muhurat was today morning. Ram, Gokul and I went over. We met the lead actors- Diganth, Tejaswini, Nina and Bharat. Priyabharathi Joshi is the director, storywriter and editor of the film. We'd met up with her 3 years ago in connection with another project. And the connection here is - The Music Mint is making music for the film!
Before the muhurat was the press conference. Gokul and Ram coolly looked the other way when we were called up to address the press.
The first song to be shot is the Deepavali song- Deepa deepa ve maathadu. Our dear friend (we used to meet in literary contexts before, book releases and stuff) Jayant Kaikani is doing the screenplay and the songs. Most of the actors have already heard the song and love it.
The arrangement is lavish with a vast string section, thanks Nelson, Amarnath, Jeff, Manoj, Praveen and the rest of the violinists. We also used clarinet, and a huge, huge section of assorted festive drums. Caleb has given us beautiful chords on the guitar. Ram arranged the string section most expressively and gave some old wordly phrases to Nagendrappa on the clarinet.
We had given Priya many tunes to pick from. I worked on 2 tunes on my veena. Ram too did two tunes. It's fun to access our common talent pool! Finally my tune with Karaharapriya strains went through. When Ram did the arrangement, he sprinkled flowery Kafi phrases on the string section and the chorus parts. It sound exotic and lilting.
The second song is in Natakuranji and a bit of other ragas doing guest acts! For this one, we needed special work. Sunil Chandy's choir was stunning and wow! Jayant is yet to give us lyrics for this one. We've got some sketches for the other three songs, but haven't done enough work on them yet. The "E Preethi" theme is to be dumped on to the Nagara( the spool recorder which goes to sync sound to the shoot) on Saturday. That's a fusion of Karnatik violin and rock band! Priya has even talked to a rock band to do the acting for the shoot!
More in a bit!