Calls, connections and lockdown content

BENGALURU : A techie by day and a filmmaker by dusk, Abhijeet Sahay found himself without a creative outlet during the lockdown. But wishing to recreate the physical brainstorming sessions over cups of hot coffee, he decided to make Ankit ki Dulhania, a four-episode web-series during the lockdown. The story in Hindi revolves around a US-based engineer, who is visiting India on a business trip and gets stranded due to the lockdown. Because of his parents’ insistence and with the help of a priest, he meets four potential brides on Zoom. Each episode is a funny take on his experience of meeting them and the reason for rejection.

“In these challenging times, we were not only socially distanced, but also emotionally distanced. But we were determined to make the most of the situation and after brainstorming we came up with the idea of a webseries which allowed us to work remotely and respect all the rules of the lockdown,” says Sahay , who is passionate about performance arts and has been a part of the Bengaluru theatre circuit for over five years.  

The team, including five actors – Arjit Srivastava, Pranati Sahni, Samiksha Saxena, Mimansa Ojha, and Debanjana – rehearsed extensively on video calls for two weeks for each episode, after which the final shoot was done on the video conferencing platform and recorded on a smartphone in a selfie mode. Later, the footage was collated and edited.”We faced many challenges as this was the first time our actors were working online.

The first hurdle was getting a script which worked around the lockdown theme and appeared believable. Rehearsing remotely meant that we had to do multiple sessions to get the emotional connect between two actors. And let’s not forget the connectivity issues which lead to delays,” he says. Having enjoyed his stint as an actor for many years, he feels this is the best phase when he has the liberty of scripting stories and directing young actors. The series is streaming on LockDown Productions’ YouTube channel