Kiranraj’s debut movie on man and dog bond

Rakshit Shetty-starrer ‘777 Charlie’ by director Kiranraj K has been a talk of the town for a while.

Around 40 per cent of the shoot for the film is done, and the film will be resuming shoot in May.

Director Kiranraj was inspired by some incidents involving dogs from around the world.

“I grew up with dogs and it inspired me to make this film,” he says.

The film was initially announced with Aravinnd Iyer but since the actor wasn’t able to dedicate as much time to this project due to prior commitments, Kiran was soon searching for another actor.

“After discussions, Rakshit told me that he was interested in working in the project. He had agreed to produce the film after he heard the script but, to have him on board as the star, was a blessing. The journey from then on has been interesting,” he says.

Kiran knew that the film, which is based on a relationship with a man and a dog, would take a while to finish.

“I knew that I wouldn’t be able to finish the film within a few months and release it right away, as it involved a lot of things like training the dog. But I was in for far more challenges than what I had presumed,” he says.

In the last one-and-a-half years, Kiran has been training Charlie for the shoot.

Kiranraj

“The most difficult part was that we had portions in the film where the dog had to be shown as a puppy. From the initial first photo shoot till now, I have four white labradors with me. All of them are called Charlie and they live in a house in Nagadevanahalli, near my office, with two caretakers. My life revolves around them now,” he says.

Explaining further, he says, “We started training our first dog while Arvinnd was around, and did the first photoshoot with him. We got a puppy after that which was training but the actor dropped out and the project got halted.”

“The dog grew up so we got another one, but it was too shy and could represent be the prankster we needed Charlie to be on screen. After this, we got the last Charlie, which we shot

the puppy scenes with.”

How was Rakshit with ‘Charlie’? “He likes dogs but was quite shy around them and didn’t know how to handle them. It worked well for me initially as the first schedule doesn’t show Rakshit expressing any affection to the dog. But in the next schedule, the bond between him and the dog has to be clearly shown, and we
have had regular training for it. In some scenes, the dog has to be overexcited around Rakshit, which it wouldn’t. Slowly they got used to each other,” says Kiranraj.

He is also awaiting the release of anthology film ‘Katha Sangama’, but is dedicating his time to ‘777 Charlie’ now.

“I knew this wouldn’t be an easy film to make but I am glad that it is my directorial debut,” he says.