Sujoy Ghosh is the latest to join the list of filmmakers who are exploring the digital medium. The screenwriter, director and producer is busy promoting his debut web series Typewriter, which will start streaming from July 19. The Netflix original revolves around a haunted house and a book (The Ghost of Sultanpur) that stirs the imagination of four young ghost hunters who intend to capture the spirit that plagues Bardez. They have a dog too.
The Kahaani filmmaker says that he wanted to make something that children would enjoy watching too. “I wanted a story where the protagonists are children who have grown up reading Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew,” he says.
He admits that he initially wanted to make a film with children as protagonists but it never happened. “Then I met the team at Netflix and I told them about the idea. They suggested to make a series out of it. I was apprehensive because I had never attempted a series and barring Ahalya, I had never worked on the digital platform either,” he adds.
Typewriter features a young cast — Arna Sharma, Aaryansh Malviya, Mikail Gandhi, and Palash Kamble along with Purab Kohli, Paulomi Ghosh, Jishu Sengupta and Samir Kochhar.
Connection with ghost stories
Those who have grown up in a Bengali household will swear by the ghost stories told to them by their grandparents. “You are right. In Bengali households, you grow up listening to ghost tales, not really horror ones, but stories like someone calling out your name in the middle of the night, seeing a ghost-like creature and then realising that it was actually a shirt on a hanger, also stories about pishach. It was all fantastic,” Sujoy says.
At one point of time, he was scared of ghosts. “I am not sure if I am scared any more. But it’s a guilty pleasure. You are scared of it but you still want to listen to the stories,” he says.
A tricky genre
Filmmakers attempting supernatural and horror genre are always in a tight spot. If they use too much technology, people say that they are trying to ape Hollywood and if they Indianise it completely, it may fail. How does one create a middle path then? “I think the horror genre has always had commercial issues. It needs to be backed by a pretty good technical outfit in terms of VFX, sound, colour, which we have but it’s all very expensive. Making a horror film seems easy but is actually quite difficult in terms of the whole packaging. For me, to make a very good horror film, I would need a lot of money or someone who supports the project,” Sujoy says.
Also, in a ghost story, says the filmmaker, the star is always the ghost. “If you already have a star in your film, no star will do it. So how do you make an expensive film without a star? It’s a vicious circle. Having said that, I could be wrong in theorising it,” Sujoy adds.
The filmmaker says that he approached Typewriter just like his grandmother used to tell ghost stories. “My grandmother did not use any VFX, special effects, extra sounds, she just concentrated on telling the story and that for me is the middle path. I do not want to compete with the technology of the West nor do I want to compromise on the quality. So, I feel I should concentrate on the story, which does not demand too much,” says the filmmaker whose last film Badla was a box-office success.
Story is the key
The best part about the digital world is that the focus is always on the content, feels Sujoy. “It’s not about the director, actor, writer but the overall content. Everything is great here and you have to exploit that rather than make something which is star-oriented or theme-oriented. Just get the story right,” he says.
Currently, the digital platform looks very promising in India but the filmmaker says that the only area that the industry needs to concentrate on is writing. “You have to get the writing right. It’s not like good writing is not happening but that’s the key difference between films and the digital world. We need to invest and spend a lot of time on writing because once that is right, everything will fall into place,” the filmmaker points out.
Isn’t the digital medium less stressful for filmmakers than movies, because while making the latter, one has to focus on box-office numbers? “Not at all,” says Sujoy and adds, “I do not deny that while making a film, you have the pressure of box-office collection and that will always be there. But in the digital world too, you have immense pressure to put up good content. The question is ‘How do you stand out from the clutter?’ For example, I am making a series, but how do I make you or others watch my series so that you recommend it to others, because people have access to hundreds of them. It’s a bigger challenge than box-office collection, if not equal, I feel.”
“Why am I feeling so scared and nervous,” he asks and answers the question himself saying, “That’s because the acceptance in the digital world is much tougher. When my series start streaming on a Friday, there are hundreds of others streaming too but along with my film, there may be two or three films releasing,” he explains.
Obsession with darker stories
Those who follow his films know that Sujoy has a thing for darker stories, layered characters and thrillers. But he says, it’s nothing like that. “Making such films is fun. Because I am being allowed to make these characters and audience are accepting them. Beside that, anything I do is a reflection of the society around us. Today, people are aware that even good men have bad side to them. When I was growing up, good was good, bad was bad. There were set characters on screen which had similar personalities but today, the hero can be the villain, he can be the comedian and so on. We are allowed to experiment,” he says before signing off.
