In search of that magic frame

Director Vikram Kumar talks about his journeys in Poland and Romania

One of the bonuses of filmmaking is that you get to travel far and wide in search of the perfect frames. Malayali filmmaker Vikram Kumar who directed Suriya’s 24, which incidentally is all about travel of a different kind — time travel — took the cast and crew all the way to Poland for this movie.

Recollecting the location hunt for the film, Vikram says, “Majority of the film was shot in Poland. We had to shoot many scenes which set against the backdrop of 1980s. The major challenge was to get the kind of terrain seen 30 years ago.”

It was after scouting many places in Romania that the director moved to Poland. “We travelled all around Romania, but could not find apt places conceptualised on the screenplay. It was then I decided to travel to Poland along with our line producer Sooraj (brother of actress Jothika) and my cinematographer,” he says.

No one can easily forget the scene which features a train passing through a railway bridge. About how he zeroed in on that location, Vikram says, “It was shot at a relatively rural place in Krakow. One day, during location scouting, our production managers dropped us near a railway track. We decided to walk through the track as the climate was good. Another factor which forced us to walk that way was that we were pretty sure that no train will come through that track as it was partially abandoned. When we walked around seven kilometres, we saw a tunnel near a bridge. To be frank, it was the same frame in my mind, while writing the script,” he says, adding, “But the main doubt was how we could bring the camera unit and other equipment to that spot. It was then our production managers informed us that we have reached near a road.”

Vikram shares with us a spectacular scenery he witnessed during the shoot of a song. “The song Naan un, which features Suriya sir and Samantha was shot at Poland in a desert situated amid a forest and sea. The interesting part is that a lake was also flowing through the other end of the forest. It was really a spectacular visual and I could film these elements in a single shot,” the director shared during a flight to Hyderabad, where he was joining the pre-production team of his next film, in Telugu.