Visualising the world of Kayamkulam Kochunni
As we all know, lot of period flicks are coming up in Malayalam cinema. Among them, Kayamkulam Kochunni is one of the most awaited. The movie directed by Rosshan Andrrews stars Nivin Pauly as Kayamkulam Kochunni while superstar Mohanlal plays an extended cameo as Ithikkara Pakki. The national award winning writer duo of Bobby and Sanjay have scripted this movie based on the life of Kochunni. He was a legendary highwayman who was active in the Travancore region during the 19th century.
Kayamkulam Kochunni went on floors in October last year. But the team had started the pre-production works long back. Even before the scripting started, each department including art, cinematography, action choreography, costumes and the make up team were involved in research works. The makers had a creative meeting one month before the movie went on floors and discussed in detail about the research materials conducted by all these departments. The whole team including director Rosshan and lead actor Nivin Pauly attended the creative meeting and shared their ideas.
Kayamkulam Kochunni is perhaps the first Malayalam movie to have had a previsualisation (previs) to get an accurate picture of how each scene should be shot. Since the movie had a lot of prominence in action, director Rosshan and his action research team stayed in Mumbai for two months to develop a storyline for the stunt sequences alone.
Once the movie started rolling, almost everything went as per plan. They had planned to wrap up shoot by 145 days but it got extended to 161 days due to some weather and other issues. Kochi, Mangalore, Udupi, Goa, Palakkad and Sri Lanka were the shoot locations. Currently, the post-production works are progressing at a brisk pace. Since it is a period flick set in the pre-independence era, the movie requires a lot of VFX works to make the setting look authentic. Firefly Creative Studio, who handled the VFX in films like Baahubali and Enthiran, has been signed for Kayamkulam Kochunni as well. Gokulam Gopalan of Sri Gokulam Films is producing this big budget movie which is expected to hit screens in August.
