 |
HBO:
What were some of the challenges bringing such a big
story to film?
|
 |
|
Director Bharat Nalluri on the set of Tsunami, the Aftermath
|
BHARAT NALLURI:
I think that's the biggest challenge: is that
it's just a huge story. When we did
the research, the accounts
and the thousands of people involved,
and the idea of taking all of those stories
and compressing them into three hours of television is
an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. And I think
it starts with Abi Morgan's script with is pitch perfect.
She somehow galvanized an epic story into three
hours worth of drama. So that was the
biggest challenge, basically, was how do we
do that; how do we make something so big
intimate, basically because that's our job is
to make an intimate drama. And it's a huge scale
and still trying to achieve intimacy is always the
hardest bit.
HBO:
In the film, there are some very powerful moments that
show what people had to endure while coping with this tragedy.
Could you talk about creating some of those?
BHARAT NALLURI:
I think it's very important in a drama like
this to get to the essence of truth, and that's been the mantra
for this piece really is whether it's in the writing or whether
it's in the setting or whether it's in the acting is to try
and get to a moment of truth.
HBO:
Was it important to come back to
Thailand to film this?
BHARAT NALLURI:
I think it's part of our journey to find
the truth. I think it was very important to come here and shoot
here. I don't think we would've ever achieved anything like what
we have achieved in terms of true storytelling if we'd gone
anywhere else and basically faked it. We've been able to draw on
lots of people's experiences and I think the landscape has really
influenced our style of filmmaking as well. I think that's very,
very important.
HBO:
Would you talk a little bit about your
directing style?
BHARAT NALLURI:
This has been a very different piece for me because it's a big
ensemble cast. Normally you have one or two central characters
that you're following and it's technically simpler. So in a way,
it's been a huge job in trying to keep them all in shape, cause
they all cross each other, kind of interlinked stories. So, when they
cross they all, all have to be at the same points in their journey,
so that's been my key job, making sure everyone's on track.A piece like
this, I think what you have to do is you have to centralize
everyone, focus everyone, and take them on a journey, but you can't
say, This is it, this is how it was. Cause it wasn't. Everyone had
a different perspective on it. So I think on a show like this you have
to be really quite flexible. And that about sums up my directing style.
HBO:
What are the challenges of creating the look of the film, before and after the tsunami, and
making that look authentic?
BHARAT NALLURI:
The challenge was getting a very good production designer, so we got
Richard Bridgland in, who's a wonderful chap who I've worked with before
on some bizarre things like Alien Versus Predator, which you may think is
completely different, but it has a similarity in the sense that you have
to create scale and an epic-ness. I mean anyone who was involved in the
tsunami, anyone who's been down here and been to most of our locations,
always amazed at how realistic it all is.
And there's a lot of footage,
a lot of research, a lot of photos on the Net. There's lots of information
to be gathered, but the trick is achieving it. It's very easy to look at
those photos, but how do you do it practically? Cause there's a whole film
crew having to move around here. That's a hundred and eighty of us moving
around this. Now if this was just a bunch of junk thrown together, we'd be
in deep trouble. But it's really well thought out and processed and, it's
a lot of planning, a lot of preparations, a lot of communication. So, it was
difficult, but you know, everything's difficult. It's just a matter of
thinking about it and processing it properly.
HBO:
What do you hope audiences will take away
from the film?
BHARAT NALLURI:
When a thirty foot wave hits the coastline and
basically knocks the whole ground back down to its building
blocks and all the people, I think it was important for me that
at the end of it, there's no one to blame. And I think that's
been the key moment. There's a scene in the film, there's a very small
scene, it's kind of a throwaway scene, where Ian turns to Toni
and says, you know, You don't need to know everything, you know? It's
not your fault. It's no one to blame. And I took that scene as my central
point for the whole piece, and that's what I hope at the end that the
audiences will take with them, that there is no blame, there should be no
guilty, you know?
What can you do? You can only kind of circle the wagons,
maybe do something better next time in terms of coping with it happening, or
try to prevent it happening, but there are no fingers to be pointed at anyone.
And I was very keen that that came across after three hours of drama, that you
really couldn't point the finger at anyone and say, Well, you did that wrong
and you did that right. I think some people dealt with it better than others,
but that's human nature. But I think at the end of it, I want people to see
that it was a natural disaster and that was it.
|
|
|
|
|
