Kiran Rao breaks down the visual texture of ‘Laapataa Ladies’

Mumbai: Filmmaker Kiran Rao, whose directorial ‘Laapataa Ladies’ bagged 13 Filmfare Awards, has deconstructed the production design and the art direction of the film.

One thing that really stands out in the film, apart from the performances and the story, is the way the visual texture of the story has been designed.

Probe her further about the production design, and she told IANS, “A lot of this film, I felt would work only, if we created this world that was textural. It had some of the beauty of Indian villages without being unrealistic, without trying to beautify it or make it glamorous. Also we didn’t want it to be too culturally specific but draw from the various kinds of local art and craft that we have. So Vikram Singh, my production designer and I worked for at least 6 months prior to the film”.

She further mentioned, “We were not just immersing ourselves in a lot of photographs of villages from the last 20 years because some things have changed in the last 20 years and we wanted villages that were on the cusp of change. Not too remote and not too much stuck in time. The district where Jaya comes to do her printing and all of that, that also we wanted to mimic in the sense of what a small town close to a village would be. So a lot of time went into visual research, we studied a lot of photography, we also studied a lot of local art forms especially traditional painting on the outside and inside of village homes”.

Presented by Jio Studios, ‘Laapataa Ladies’ is directed by Kiran Rao and produced by Aamir Khan and Jyoti Deshpande. The film has been made under the banner of Aamir Khan Productions and Kindling Productions.