Director Vetrimaaran Talks About Working Without a Bound Script
Zoya Akhtar asked fellow director and screenwriter Vetrimaaran how he works without a script. The answer left her feeling a little jealous.
At a recent roundtable by The Hollywood Reporter India, Zoya Akhtar posed a question to fellow filmmaker Vetrimaaran: how does he make films without a bound script? Vetrimaaran shared the surprising journey behind his films Viduthalai Part I & II, offering insights into his unconventional process, which is deeply intuitive, and driven by the story and its natural evolution on set.
What began as a small project during the pandemic quickly spiralled into something much larger. “I called my producer and said I'm going to do a small film within ₹4.5 crores because we are in a lockdown, and I'll finish the film in 40 days. I went on to shoot the film for nearly 200 days, and it's a two-part film now (laughs).”
His approach is spontaneous, building the story around the actors and their potential. “I have an idea. I go to the set. I start working. I see that character. I see the actor and I see the potential of the actor. Then I slowly start putting that actor into the world — in the terrain of the film. Then the terrain dictates how I tell the film.”
As the film grows, so do the challenges. With each new character, the scale increases, pushing him to rethink the film's scope. “I start making changes — then a few new characters come in. When new characters come in, then I ask for a bigger actor. When a bigger actor comes in, then their salary changes the budget. Then, because the budget is going higher, I think of blocking a sequence that needs to be big [to justify a big budget]...Then, when I was doing that, I realised that this cannot be contained in one film. It needs to have two parts to manage the budget."
Even after expanding the film into two parts, he wasn't finished. “I finished the second part and had a premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam [in January 2024]. Then I went ahead and shot for another 65 days."
Upon hearing this improvised, ever-expanding process, Akhtar couldn’t help but remark, “Am I allowed to say I’m jealous of this freedom?”