“Humour is a rubber sword—it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.“ (Mary Hirsch) It’s a true statement indeed. Speaking on critical issues is like walking on barbed fence, you can never be too careful. When we created ‘Bachke Rehana Re’ we wanted it to be humors but nonetheless it should in no way minimize the severity of the pandemic. We wanted to tell people- you will suffer if you are incautious but we didn’t want to draw blood.
The right visual images have more impact than words. Video is something that people watch more than reading a news paper. At Magic Lantern we have been making 2D animations for a over many years. We have plentiful experience in 2D animation and a talented crew to complete the task.
With rise of COVID cases and incautious crowd every where the situation looked quite grim. We wanted to bring awareness of the importance of social distancing to both young and old alike. Since we had very little time, we decided to do a 2D animation awareness video.
The idea was to keep the story simple and engaging. Although the entire city was under lockdown a few enthusiastic small business owner were running their business being totally indifferent to the pandemic.
We decided a local barber shop to be the back drop of our story, because a few barber shops I knew were still running behind closed doors though the roads looked empty inside these shops there was still considerable crowd.
The above images are just for reference and belongs to own owner.
Working on this project was great fun and learning as well. Everyone in the team had something to offer about their experience. Stories of the first hair cut they remember they had to scared feeling of sitting on a saloon chair listening to the sound of scissors. We learnt a lot in this project, we learnt that we all somewhere share similar memories. This gave us a lot of confidence to complete the project.
We wanted this video to be exclusively for Indian public. So we did a thorough research on how a most common local barber shop looks like. Because the essence of the video was that of a message to the most common people of India, everyday workers, rickshaw drivers etc.
Pre-production meetings were filled with reference images of barber shop, hair dressers etc. We identified a lot of common elements to make our barber shop look like a familiar one to any viewer. If the viewers observe they would notice details such as a over hanging wire, a light bulb that I hung loose because there is not socket for it. Photos of most common celebs, a radio that is antique and mostly inherited by fore fathers. The ‘Vived Bharathi’ program that is most common in the mornings in rural India. The choice of songs that are played. All of this was brainstormed and planned to bring in most authentic expression of local India. In a visual story it is vital that you have an eye for detail.
