Did you notice that the lavender flowers on the car in the Sonam Kapoor film, Aisha, were part of a larger scheme? And that the accented walls in Taare Zameen Par fulfilled a purpose? What about the greys and blues in The Lunchbox? If your eye caught these minute details, then Shruti Gupte has succeeded.
The seasoned production designer and architect says, “My practice is that whatever I design, it should fit naturally in the canvas of the film. The art direction should not distract you. Even if I make the most beautiful set, I don’t want it to take the focus away from the script. It should organically fit into the canvas of the narrative.”
Making things believable
In a film like The Lunchbox, says Gupte, it is better not to ‘talk’ about colour palette because it will distract the audience. “When you are watching the film you are so engrossed in the story. Everything that we have created should be natural and believable that you take it for granted.” However, in Taare Zameen Par, the script itself gave value to colours. “It was shot in 2006-2007 when the trend of accent walls had just set in,” says Gupte. “We took that concept to establish the living space of a working middle-class family. My brief was that the mother is an educated woman who has left her job to be a housewife to take care of her kids. It is her conscious decision. So the house had to be simple but tastefully done.”
It’s a widely observed fact that films feature furniture from well-known stores. In fact, it’s not about tie-ups with brands, but rather is a requirement of time.
“If you are designing today’s reality then you will go to the same market that people go to,” says Gupte.
“I draw inspiration from the real world so that I can give my credence to my characters. I can take inspiration from a real-life person but my interpretation of it will be through my character. When you are designing a film it is not a flat process, it is layered. It is about my interpretation, the director’s vision and the actor’s personality. All of these affect the space and what eventually comes out is a completely new space.”
And then the audience tries to copy it? “You can correlate, what’s about that space that you like. That’s what you will adapt and it will never be exact because your space will be different and your requirements will be different, which is the beauty of it. Art inspires life and life inspires art.”
The primary protagonist
She says you’ve got to envision yourself as the primary protagonist of your life. “Design, at the end of the day, is very intuitive. So you can have many people telling you what works for you but at the end of the day you know what works for you.” If we look around, Gupte says, rural spaces are still very vibrant, but when we come to urban settlements suddenly colour goes out of our life.
“It becomes practical or mundane. To break that, one has to re-think. Every mundane person has his own guilty pleasure. Somebody will have a favourite flower. So you can introduce it to your living space. Practical doesn’t mean boring. It can be fun.”
Like the real, aspirational and moody films, Gupte says our homes are not just reflective of who we are. “They can be reflective of who we want to be or of who we were as children.” And this explains how she approaches The Lunchbox and Aisha, which are almost antithetical to each other. If one demanded the blues and greys not to show up, the latter demanded the backdrop to play a role. The architect insists it is not a designer film.
She creates the moods of the characters, but they also affect her choices. “While I was doing Khoobsurat and was designing Milli’s house, I had just moved apartments. It impacted me. I realised I have a personality trait which is colourful and warm. I am somebody who is very structured and practical and will be found in white and greys but then this completely fictitious person implored me to try some colour. I started with something as simple and replaceable as curtains. It is fuchsia pink with silver motifs. Nobody could have ever believed that I could do something like this and now they have begun to accept them as part of me.”
