Nawazuddin embraces FaceTime in NYIFF-winning film

Last week, Bollywood's highly acclaimed actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui won the Best Actor award at the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) for his role in Main Actor Nahin Hoon (I’m Not an Actor).

Directed by Aditya Kripalani, the movie revolves around the two leads Adnan Baig (Nawaz), a retired Kashmiri banker in Frankfurt (Germany), who has taken quite a shine to drama and wants to learn acting. And, Baig seeks the help of Mumbai-based struggling actress Mouni (played by Chitrangada Satarupa).

The film explores each other's aspirations and struggles of achieving their dreams. Most of the conversation and emotions in the movie are all captured through iPhone's FaceTime calls, as the two people live in two different continents.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui was very resistant initially about FaceTime, but by the end of the film, he had grown to like the iPhone's video call feature.

Even the editing of the movie was done with Apple MacBook Pro, Mac mini and software such as Logic Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro and Luna.

DH had the opportunity to interact with Siddiqui and the director Aditya Kripalani on use of technology in their movie project. Here are the edited excerpts.

DH: How was it to be constantly connected via FaceTime on iPhone for a movie?

Nawazuddin Siddiqui: It was a new idea for me. I've never done a film before where I had to connect with my co-actor on a phone screen but FaceTime was a big boon for that. As an actor, it took me a few days to get into that idea and realise that I have to perform while connecting with someone who is in another country via video calls. After the initial few days, it became easier as on video calls you see the person's face more and look into their eyes and directly connect with them. So slowly the background disappeared and it became easier to focus on the person on call. As with any technology, so also with FaceTime if it works well, it disappears and becomes invisible, and so very soon we just forgot that we were on video calls and the emotions going back and forth took over.

DH: Can you tell me one feature on the iPhone that you absolutely like?

Nawazuddin Siddiqui: We were connected throughout the film on FaceTime calls. So it's something that I really like as I've used it so much now. The picture and sound clarity are very important as it’s a dialogue oriented film and if I can’t see her expressions I can’t react naturally. So both being clear really helped. we were shooting all over the city in Frankfurt and Mumbai and at each location, whether it's the local tram or local trains, garden, the crowded city centre. I feel that since the shoot I myself have been more comfortable talking to family members in other countries on FaceTime. I was resistent to it before.

DH: Which native or third-party software app and Mac device (model) did the editor/director use to edit the movie

Aditya Kripalani: We used an Adobe Premiere Pro software to edit the film on a Mac mini with M2 Pro Chip. The initial edit was done online where the editor from India and the director in Germany connected over FaceTime calls to edit the film.

"The Background score was created using the Luna and Logic Softwares on a MacBook Pro 14 inch (M1 Pro, 2021) with 16gb memory and 1TB Storage. The colour grading of the film has been done on DaVinci Resolve on a MacBook Pro 14 inch (M1, 16 GB). The final film has been exported in Apple ProRes Codec. And the beautiful part was we had absolutely nothing to do with Apple professionally. We were just quietly making our film with the things we normally use. Then someone from Apple (Shloka Kini) happened to be there by accident at the World Premiere in San Jose, California," added Kripalani.

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