Credits
Banner: Dharmapatha Creations & Big Ben Cinemas
Cast: Vijay Devarakonda , Ritu Varma, Nandu, Priya Darsi, Abhay, Anish Kuruvilla. Guru raj, Kedar Sankar, Padmaja. etc
Cinematography: Nagesh Banell
Editor: Raviteja Girijala
Music: Vivek Sagar & Tapeloop
Lyrics: Shri, Rahul Ramakrishna, Shreshta, Ranjani Sivakumar & Nikhil Bharadwaj
Production Design: Latha Tharun Dhaassyam
Producers: Raj Kandukuri & Yash Rangineni
Story, Screenplay, Dialogue & Direction: Tharun Bhascker
Release date: 29 July, 2016
Interesting Facts:
How about two contrasting personalities meet for Pelli Choopulu. What happens if things go horribly wrong? That was the basic idea. I wanted to include food in the film. I wanted to name this film as ‘Anukokunda’, but somebody else had registered it. Hence we found Pelli Choopulu to be the apt title.
It’s a conflict between heart and mind we go through every day in our lives. Chitra can never emote and you can’t think what’s going through her mind. Prasanth is all heart. He feels something, he says it loud.
This is a good script and directed extremely well by Tharun. This is a drastically different characterization from what I done earlier. Once I joined Tharuns team, I don’t know how time passed off.
After approaching Suresh Babu garu, Raj Kandukuri garu and Yash Rangineni garu, the project took off because we had everything on paper including managing the artists call sheets and budget control measures. They just believed in our younger lot. Later, the production was wrapped in meager 35 days.
We used sync sound to reduce the cost. Vivek Sagar later mixed many themes and sound tracks to enhance the realistic treatment. One month back we were ready with the first copy and confident that people will love our work.
Our team has done Pelli Choopulu with heart and soul. Everyone in our group was between 25 to 27 years at age. We believed in script and kept trust on each other. Producers gave us complete creative freedom. Our belief has today proved to be right because patrons are entertaining thoroughly in theaters.
I wrote story in 45 days. I was working with Lakshmi Manchu at first. She loved the script. We worked on it together. She had a lot of personal commitments. She asked me to go and spread my wings first. I approached Vijay Devarakonda and then I met Raj Kandukuri. Things started falling in place once I met Raj Kandukuri. 15 minutes into narration and he said that he would do the film. He followed it up regular. We started pre-production after 15 days.
Music director Vivek Sagar is from Chikkadpally. He is a part of our band. He has also worked with AR Rahman in the past. He calls himself as musician, not as music director. He is a chilled out chap. Raj Kandukuri was skeptical about music as Vivek Sagar was not using many instruments. Vivek Sagar told us that silence is also music and let's experiment. Vivek used minimalism and instrumentation as per the requirement of scene. He scored songs and background music as per the requirement of script, but not to boast his portfolio.
I have been traveling with the cinematographer Nagesh Banell for the past seven years. Latha has done art direction and costumes design. A lot of thought process has gone into while selecting locations and props.
It won’t be right to say that I wrote all the dialogues. We had workshops. I wanted the dialogues to be colloquial. I want them to understand the diction and be honest about it. A dialogue like ‘naa chaavu nenu chasta. Neekunduku’ has no effect if you tell the dialogue to anybody outside. But that dialogue is the best dialogue of the film because of the scene. It also represents the frustration of just graduated youth. That question irritates the unemployed youth. That’s the constant pressure youth face. I have a good bunch of friends who keep my life interesting. Most of the conversations written to Priyadarsi are from my personal experience with friends. I draw inspiration for these characters from my friends.
