The Elephant Whisperers: Meet Shreyank Nanjappa, the Kannada connect to the Oscar-winning film | Exclusive

Shreyank Nanjappa, an alumnus of the reputed Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), has worked as a sound recordist on the Kartiki Gonsalves film

Shreyank Nanjappa

Kartiki Gonsalves' documentary film The Elephant Whisperers has done the entire country proud. Backed by the very tenacious and enterprising Guneet Monga (along with Achin Jain, Douglas Blush and Gonsalves herself) Kartiki was able to draw attention to an overlooked and incredibly endearing story that highlights empathy, love and co-existence in a most cinematic manner. She would have to spend years putting the film together but it wouldn't have seen the light of day and gone on to win the coveted Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) without the help of a solid on-ground and post-production crew.

And, as it turns out, there is a special Kannada or Karnataka connection to the Oscar-winning project and it comes in form of the sound designer and recordist Shreyank Nanjappa. Shreyank, an alumnus of the reputed Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), has already worked on a number of acclaimed projects including Natesh Hegde's Pedro and functioned as the production/sync sound recordist on The Elephant Whisperers.

"I came on board when a friend of mine put me in touch with the team. That's how I have found most of the opportunities so far, through a form of networking, but The Elephant Whisperers was particularly challenging because I haven't worked a lot on the documentary form. The challenges mainly existed because of the way the film was executed - first, there was a lot of running around which is physically taxing and on top of that, we were using two cameras simultaneously. What this does is it puts the onus on you, the sound recordist, to decide which perspective is more important. I had to be on my toes the entire time because in these cases, when you are dealing with nature in an unscripted manner, you must strive for authenticity," says Shreyank in an exclusive chat with OTTplay.

Authenticity, he describes is something that is captured in its rawest form and needs very little intervention or "fixing" in the post. "For me, the cleaner the on-set or production sound is, the more authentic the soundscape of a film is, which in turn accentuates the overall film. Though you can recreate all the sounds in the post in the form of 'foley', you can never produce some of the natural things that occur on the location. It could be the sound of the bell or the chain that's attached to the elephant, it could be anything 'weird' that occurs around you and if you find yourself in the right place at the right time, then you get to capture it," he adds.

For the unversed, here's how the process of production sound recording and foley work in filmmaking:

Would The Elephant Whisperers be his toughest project to date? "For sure. One, I haven't done a lot of documentary work but more than that, this project was demanding in a physical way. I didn't have a team with me, which means I was the only recordist on set and the forest area meant there was a lot of running around," shares Shreyank Nanjappa whose other credits include Vaghachi Pani, Shivamma and others.

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