Director Vi Anand is an architect from Chennai whose film Tiger starring Sundeep Kishan, Rahul Ravindran and Seerat Kapoor will be releasing soon. At the end of the final year of college he had to do a thesis and picked up Film City as his topic so that he could get in touch with film fraternity. A lot of work on pre-production and post-production, and a case study on RFC in Hyderabad gave him lot of exposure. After that he worked with Shankar’s assistant for a movie and then as an assistant director to A. R. Murugadoss . Added to that, Anand had a long stint in advertisement agencies as well and put in five years in the field did a lot of shoots and gained experience.
The director observes, “Advertisement is directly related, we work in detail though it is a 30-second film. One deals with compositions and colours in conceiving things visually. For Tiger , we chose Varanasi. I have been touring throughout India since college days and it helps me with my films in finalising locations. As an architect I can see how designs affect a viewer psychologically and we become wise in planning technically and during pre production stage.”
Last year, the Chennai-based Anand directed Appuchi Gramam , a science fiction village film and got critical acclaim. Tiger happens to be Anand’s third film.
How did the project kickstart? He quips, “I narrated the script to my Guru Murugadoss and he said he would do it with Fox Star Studios. Since they were tied up with a Vikram starrer, they said they would produce this film later and I was not willing to wait. At that time I suggested Sundeep Kishan would be the right choice for the lead role and he agreed and he sent me here to talk to him. Sundeep is also a familiar face in Tamil as he has done a few films and quite a few directors have stories for him. Sundeep wanted me to narrate the story to his uncle Chota K Naidu, a cinematographer and one thing led to the other and the project took off in no time. We also wanted an artiste who is charming and Rahul stepped in.” The director says the story is about two good friends; Sundeep plays a mass character and is dominating. Both Rahul and Sundeep are close pals in real life and the director wanted that chemistry to be extended to the screen.
He adds that Rahul is an under-rated actor. “What happens to a friend during certain situations and how they come out helping each other is the crux of the story. The film doesn’t have any punch dialogues, the characters are more down to earth.
Everyone has a friend who will come into your life and bring in a lot of change, so I felt Tiger who is Rahul’s friend should be the title. In Tamil also for one of the films we had ‘Akbar’ as the title, you will see how it is justified after watching the movie,” says Anand. He agrees Seerat is an unconventional beauty and plays the role of a North Indian girl living in Varanasi. She comes from the backdrop of Ganga. “We shot at the Ganga, Godavari, Rajamundry and Visakhapatnam; The element of water runs throughout the film and the viewer will connect with it,” he adds.
