‘ I would dream of the world where I could work 8 hours a day and…’ – Firstpost

Director Rohan Sippy is on cloud nine after his show Criminal Justice Season 4 starring Pankaj Tripathi, Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub, Shweta Basu Prasad, and Surveen Chawla has become the most viewed show in recent times. It has fetched more than 27 million views ever since it has started streaming on Jio Hotstar.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the filmmaker opened up on the responses he has received so far, his film Bluffmaster completing 20 years this year, and his idea of actors and filmmakers’ work-life balance amid Deepika Padukone’s 8-hour shift demand.

Edited excerpts from the interview

_Criminal Justice_ has now become the most viewed web series. So what are the responses that you have received so far ever since the show has streamed?

It’s been, wonderful. Fortunately, it’s my third year or so. I’ve seen it grow each season that it’s released. The response seems to be getting better, which I think is, you know, just fantastic. And this one probably more than even the previous ones. So I think it’s also the power of the platform Jio Hotstar merging means we have an even bigger audience. What happened even because of the weekly release, lot of people are catching up on the old seasons, you know, people who are not maybe Hotstar subscribers, who are Jio subscribers and discovered this and were able to so there’s a lot of catch up viewing also happened.

Since the show has now reached its season four, and so has Madhav Mishra, the very popular lawyer, how do you make sure that the character’s essence remains the same and yet there is an evolution

I mean, that’s the art of writing and then, frankly, there’s a lot of people other than me also, you’ll see first of all, it starts off at the Jio level, then you’ve got an Applause that puts a lot of work into the creative aspects. So there’s lots of work. And if you see that his personal life is something that has evolved you know, we had the wife come in season two, then the brother in law comes in season three, and now there’s even Shivani, who joins in. I think these things also help bring new dimensions in without disappointing the audiences that they’re going to see Madhav Mishra as well.

That is I think the beauty of a format like this, like a legal show or a police show, is you have a certain amount of continuing characters, but then a complete freshness when you bring in a Surveen and a Zeeshan and all the characters that are related to the case. So we had a nice opportunity to create a balance of giving audiences some familiarity of a promise of what they can expect. But, obviously, each time the world is different, the crime is different. And I think that’s why as a format, a legal a well-executed legal show can also be very long running. All over the world, we’ve seen that, you know, you crack it correctly. It is something that can be very satisfying because it has the right balance of freshness and familiarity.

The plot twist of the films or the series that you make, you know, be it Bluffmaster, be it Dum Maaro Dum, be it the final episode of Criminal Justice, what does it take to integrate a plot twist into a story.

I can’t take credit for that because I don’t write the show and, you know, Bluffmaster is the film that Shridhar Raghavan wrote. I would never want to take a 100% of the credit for the twist that goes to the writing. You can work with the writers and understand if you have some questions that how do we make it more convincing. But I can react as an audience when I read it and instinctively feel this is satisfying. And then let’s work out the best ways to make it pull off, and then the other things we can put in the earlier episodes or earlier which will make it more satisfying.

Your film Bluffmaster is completing 20 years this year. What are your memories of making that comic caper?

It was just an incredible ride. Some things, they come together quickly, and then there’s a momentum. And that’s what happened. Suddenly, the whole film gained the momentum. We had been speaking to Abhishek about it, and then suddenly, a gap opened up in his schedule. I think there was some Karan Johar film that got delayed by a few months. And, you know, literally, with four to six weeks notice, we had to put the whole film together, and it came together. And each element of it kept getting better and better with Ritesh coming on, Nana coming on, you know, the way the music shaped up.

And we had released the film within six months of shooting it, you know, starting the shoot. So I think these things don’t often get planned, so you really enjoy surfing that wave. And you realize how rare it is twenty years later because that it doesn’t happen that often. It’s when you can find a lot of people to collaborate with, to everyone bringing their best to it, whether it’s actors, whether it’s crew, whether it’s music directors, you know, everyone putting their best foot forward. It was a lot of fun I’m glad that, even now, occasionally, people ask me about its glabs.

What about Dum Maaro Dum?

It was a script that Shridhar was very excited about, and I shared the excitement once I read it. And there was this excitement of trying something new with the narrative structure. It was not a twist thing, but this kind of a multiple character, was something quite different from a conventional Hindi film. But yet, like you said, the core of it is essentially, what do you call it? Masala or fun in a pulpy, police crime thriller. So it was very exciting. And then collaborating again both with the actors and then the wonderful production design team, the DOP Amit Roy. We’ve just had a lot of fun just pushing things as much as we could in terms of executing things, trying to bring as much edge to it. Very satisfying getting to shoot in Goa in as new a way as we could, finding new places, you know, creating that world was a lot of fun.

I wanted to ask you about the working hours of actors or even yours. Are you okay if you want to work for eight hours for a particular day or any of your actors, or do you believe in the idea that we have to get the job done even if it comes at the cost of working extra?

I would dream of the world where I could work eight hours a day and we can if it makes a difference. You have to do a lot of work here. I mean, that’s just the economics of it is that every single day, you need to get probably three to four times as much as you output as you were going to film that you’re working on, you know, because that’s just the way the economics are. But having said that, what I’ve really worked on over the years and learned and understood is how best and how productive can we be so that even if it’s a lot of work, I try an ideal scenario where we caninish in ten hours.

Instead of a twelve-hour, they can be finished in eleven hours. Well, I think what happens is you’re especially on a show, you’re working so, there’s such intense amount of work. There’s lot of pressure on thr actors. Imagine all the courtroom scenes in Criminal Justice, we probably finished, I think, if I’m not mistaken, in seven to eight days. We did almost a 100 pages of work. And, you know, talking about very elaborate work, lots of choreography, so many actors, many camera setups. So you really do want to try and be as efficient as you can because I know actors like Pankaj, Surveen, Zeeshan, all the others, Kalyani, so many of them.

I mean, they’re all going to do their job. Let me set it up in a way that I can make it as efficient as possible. We got a three-page scene. I’ve to find a way that I can do it in two, three hours without making the actors do it 20 times. Because they’re professionals, they’re going to do that. But I know at the end of that day, it’s going to show. And the exciting challenge of doing series is that you do have to push yourself, but you have to work very intelligently to optimize things so that you get the best out of actors. You send them home so that they have enough time.

But it’s also exciting because, you know, in the sense it takes advantage of the fact that I’ve been now working almost thirty years. There’s so much experience you gave with each project that you have to use all these tools every day. And that’s what we’ve been able to do more successfully with each project is understand that and work towards that.