The curious case of Kannada film Dollu bagging the 68th National Award for a sync sound film while not being one

Lukose had tweeted “I pity the judgement of the jury who couldn’t differentiate between a dub and a sync sound film”. “This cannot happen at the level of National Awards,” he says, “Sync sound is location sound mixing, this was not at all done for the film, which was dubbed at a Bengaluru studio. This is, perhaps, the first time something like this is happening in the Awards’ history. The DFF (Directorate of Film Festivals which is now merged under NFDC and confers the National Award) must respond and take some action in this regard.”

I don’t know what happened behind the curtains of the National Award selections and it’s procedures, But I pity the judgement of the jury who couldn’t differentiate between a dub and a sync sound film, claims to be the experts in the scenario! @official_dff https://t.co/hmPBT43BhW

— Nithin Lukose (@nithin_lukose) July 22, 2022

“Unlike in a dub, in sync, we record live the dialogues and the sounds from the location when the shooting is happening, alongside the camera, on a sound-recording machine. So, there will be a sound team on location to capture sync sound. I wanted sync sound for this film but for budget concerns and other issues, it wasn’t done,” he adds.

The filmmakers are equally confused. The application form just mentioned the category Location Sound Recordist, “there was no additional clause in brackets ‘(for sync sound films only)’, without which the award is justified; if it were there, I’d have never signed it, it’s ethically, morally wrong,” said Puranik, who’d earlier won the 2019 National Award Special Mention for his non-fiction short Mahaan Hutatma (2018), on the Indian Army and Bhagat Singh. “The jury must have understood our difficulty and hard work in recreating the music. It could be a clerical error; even we aren’t aware why the brackets were added. It’s not there for any other film/winners. We never claimed the film to be sync sound nor applied in that format/category,” says producer Pavan Wadeyar, who’s a commercial Kannada director, and has worked with the likes of actors Yash (of KGF fame) and the late Puneeth Rajkumar. With Dollu, he dons the producer’s hat for the first time.

“The jury can’t make such a weird decision. They must have understood our difficulty and hard work in recreating the music. It must be a clerical error; even we are not aware why that additional bit in brackets was added. It’s not there for any other film/category among the winners,” adds Wadeyar, who hopes to release the film in theatres in August.

Shot in between the two lockdowns, “over 25-30 days with a big crew on the set,” says Puranik, Dollu trains the lens on the dollu kunitha folk drum dance and speaks about how urbanisation is affecting indigenous folk art forms.

The film is dubbed, only the audio of its performances was re-recorded. “The sound team has done an excellent job, Krishnanunni’s final mix is great. I may have been wrong in taking that decision, but at the time, I didn’t want to create additional problems in post-production. What happens on location is that eight-10 people beat the drums in a synchronised manner in a vast, open space, and there are a lot of echoes, ambient noise. If we had gone for sync sound, there would have been sound overlap with the next beat. While we have also recorded live, have pilot tracks, I wanted perfection and crisp, clear sound, which we couldn’t get in a dubbing or recording studio, we tried and failed,” says Puranik. Budget was lost, the director and producer fell out for a bit. After some persuasion, “Jobin flew in with his sync equipment, and the audio of the four-five performances was re-recorded, beat to beat, frame to frame” in a faraway place, on the outskirts of Bengaluru, which cost “around Rs 15-20 lakh more,” says Wadeyar.

The winner of the said award Jobin Jayan was sent for “effects recording”, to re-record the band/performers with their musical instruments in action for a day. “I’ve done additional recording, but that cannot be called sync sound,” says Jayan.

A junior administrative official at DFF said, “It’s not possible to review/scrutinise each and every one of the 300-400 applications that come in. We gave the applications to the jury and they gave us their judgement.” “We didn’t see the applications, we got a list of categories and names,” says filmmaker and jury (fiction) member Viji Thampi, adding, “We gave the award, after a unanimous decision, for location sound recordist. We appreciated their drum playing, which can’t be pre-recorded, and it wouldn’t have been easy to record. We saw the movie in a theatre, where it’s not easy to judge and differentiate sync from dub. We thought only for the drums, not dialogues or other sounds, we should give the award.” On enquiring further, he added, “There were no sound engineers in the jury committee.”