Hellaro

Context & Challenge One wintry day in Jan 2018, frequent collaborator Sheel Thakore and I were approached by Harfanmaula Films to handle production design for an ambitious period project. The film was set in a small hamlet located in the Banni region of Western Kutch in the mid 70s, and revolved around the escape of a group of women shackled by patriarchal suppression.

The film demanded us to create an intriguing world that also needed to be equally believable. The land that was locked to be shot on was completely flat; the village needed to be designed, planned and constructed from scratch and the environment needed to look so authentic that if it had to travel back in time, it would easily blend in that milieu. It sounded challenging yet exceptionally thrilling. The sheer notion of pulling it off in less than two months excited us enough for us to say yes right away.

Approach & Execution We got in touch with architects Kulbhushan Jain and Meenakshi Jain who shared their exhaustive documentation of Banni, a region in Kutch (and the area the film is based on) that they had studied in the '70s as a part of their thesis. This gave us a very clear idea of the architectural makeup of Banni in the 70s, which helped us get into the details. We also met artist and photographer Jyoti Bhatt, who gave us access to a shit tonne of his archived documentation of Banni and neighboring village-scapes at LLDC Shrujan.

Our extensive research at 'KHAMIR' (Kachchh Heritage, Art, Music, Information and Resources Centre) aided us in creating textures, palettes, tones, techniques, and a lot more that made the final product so convincing that a lot of locals thought it was a real village - and one that seemed to them to have a striking semblance to the one their ancestors grew up in.

For the designing and layouting of the village, we took major inspiration from the real plans of the village Ludia as it existed in the mid 70s. However, reel life is different from real life, which is why unlike predominantly circular layouts as traditional hamlets used to have, we went for a more concentrically layered layout, which ensured a better cinematic range and dynamism for the shoot.

Chasing Authenticity The construction work was sub-commissioned to a local contractor who hailed from the nearby village of Kuran. He in turn distributed the labor work to two teams under him - the first consisting of fifteen to twenty men responsible for the heavy lifting, the logistics, and setting up the framework, while the second consisted of ten to fifteen women responsible for cosmetics of the huts, which entailed creating and applying 'lipan' to the walls. Lipan is a mixture of cowdung, mud, and adhesive that is characteristic of the region.

Authenticity was our topmost priority, which is why utmost attention was paid to every minute physical detail while keeping the design of the layout as visually layered as possible. However, we ran into a problem once the village framework had been set up. When Sheel and I were reviewing a drone footage that was taken by the associate director, we realized that our village lacked trees, and that we needed a few to make the settlement look organic.

So neighboring areas were scouted extensively and several trees were located that looked aesthetic enough to be a part of our set. However we didn't have the heart to uproot trees that were doing absolutely fine in life. So a few that were on the verge of dying were handpicked, uprooted by a JCB, transported to site, and rerooted where required. To prolong their life as much as possible, pits as deep as ten feet were dug so the trees had higher chances of getting the water they needed.

As for the mudwork and paintwork, that was another mammoth task that was sub-commissioned to another local contractor, who came with his own team. Attention was paid to the ratio of water and mud in the paint that was used, since too much paint meant too much contrast with the walls it was being applied on, which wouldn't be too befitting to a community that has lived in the hamlet for several decades.

The interiors were carved with intricate local motifs that were designed specific to each character's hut. These houses also usually have plenty of shelves and a few sanjeeras (cabinets). Since the actual sanjeeras weigh around 100 to 200 kgs, it wasn't practical to use them on set as they had to be mobile and shoot friendly. So, we employed an idea of making the skeletons out of fibre plastic and then getting the outer layer covered with plaster of paris by artisans from hollywood basti whose communal occupation is making ganpati idols for festivals. We then decorated those sanjeeras with mud designs and mirrors to give it the authentic look.

The Set & the Shoot Designing and constructing the hamlet was just half the work. What followed was an entire month of unfathomable madness. Shooting the film took approximately 32 days, with pretty much the majority of the script being based within the village, and the rest in the scorching flat-lands of Kutch.

One of our proudest moments was when local passers-by would see our village and express their surprise. People from the region not being able to tell this wasn't an actual village became our biggest flex during the shoot.