‘A Lullaby for the Missing - Kandha Padhya’ has been conceptualised to spread global awareness about women and children, who have gone missing from their hom...
As part of an idea regarding this music video Ashvin A Matthew and I were exploring, we had received a list. A list of incidents involving unjust violent acts committed towards women. I was disturbed because these acts were so plainly mentioned in an Excel sheet. Statistics. Like 1. 2. 3... As if it was normal. I remember telling Aarti Shetty about how wrong that felt. And then she reminded me that this was just from a single year. I'm not someone who cares when it comes to someone else other than my closest of friends, my family and me. But people around me are. People I work with, spend time with. They are people with good intentions and they always try to put their words in to action. The song carried the emotions particularly well because of four major elements. Dossmode & Fidel Asok with their music. madhuri_seshadri with her voice. Karthik Saragur with his writing. The original poem written by Ashvin . All these things create an environment where you feel the pain of the mother looking in the distance waiting for her child. A child that never comes.Few days later, Ashvin was speaking to his friend Anu-George-Canjanathoppil who was at the center of rescuing women, men and children from slavery and trafficking. They came up with an idea of dedicating the song, Kandha Padhya to throw a light over the issue that's so prevalent and the solution associated with it. Ashvin came up with a brilliant concept of marrying the beautiful song with some stark visuals throwing light upon the beautiful words and also the factual data points regarding the issue.Now, the video, again 4 important things that made it work. Ashvin's direction. Gokul Pillai's direction of photography. Vishnu's associate direction and Aarti making sure we all arrive at the intended vision that Ashvin had dreamt up.Also, thank you Karthik's Pictures for the additional photography and Sahad for the amazing drone shots. And how can I forget Vipin and Ansar who were making sure we had all the things we needed to complete the shoot in Wayanad and Shiva Kagawade made sure we had everything for the Bangalore shoot.Bringing them all together, on the edit, I had such a good time. With Ahron helping me collate everything and making sure we had correct files, it was easier to scrub through hundreds of shots. I felt the visuals flowed naturally with the song and the need for VFX was only limited by its factor of compliment to the visuals. I laid out around 35 VFX elements before deciding they might have been too much (as in they take over the visual) or they were nothing but gimmick (not giving enough to the visual). What you see are what made through.I cannot choose any particular shot to be my favorite but what I can comment on is the line that appears in the end. "Everyone is someone's child". True. Simple. Powerful.Yes, I do love this music video and you might call me biased but I just love it. I love it because it is disturbing. Because it is haunting. Because it is melancholic. But I also love it because there is hope. Hope that when a mother calls for her child, there would be an answer."Justice is exclusive to some... but motherhood is not. You don't have to birth a child to be a parent". A statement so true, it stands without contest.I'm proud of this project of ours.
