Dhoomam trailer: Director Pawan Kumar addresses the Kannada dubbing quality; promises better output in film

Filmmaker Pawan Kumar presented the trailer of his upcoming film, Dhoomam, this week. A Malayalam film with Fahadh Faasil, Aparna Balamurali and Roshan Mathew, among others, in pivotal roles, Dhoomam is set to release in theatres on June 23, with dubbed versions in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Since the time he announced the film as a Malayalam original, netizens have been far from kind to Pawan, wondering why he’s not made it in Kannada, after all. The filmmaker, of course, had his reasons, including the fact that most actors that he’d approached were not excited about the subject of the film. Now that the film is ready for its date with audiences, netizens have been finding fault with the dubbing quality of the Kannada version, so we decided to check in with Pawan about that.

“In the past, there was Pushpa or, say, Vikram, which was dubbed into Kannada, but they were essentially Telugu or Tamil originals that had Fahadh in both of them. The same agency that did the dubbing for those films did it for us too. But with Pushpa or Vikram, no one had an issue, because they don’t really see it as a Kannada film. But with Dhoomam, since I am involved, as well as Hombale Films, there was a strong Kannada connection and, hence, the expectation of good quality of dubbing,” he begins to explain.

The filmmaker adds that one ought to look at the reality that Kannada as an industry has accepted dubbing only 3-4 years ago, compared to, say, Telugu, Tamil or Hindi, which have been dubbing for decades. “Now, if you look at the Telugu and Tamil dubbing scene, they are better, because they have that many years of experience of writing scripts, encouraging voice-over artistes, who have done thousands of films and they get a variety of voices. With Dhoomam, it is not that we have not shown interest; the truth is that we showed more interest on the Kannada version because it is our personal responsibility that we should have a good product. But we don’t have people; there aren’t enough dubbing artistes. For instance, if the Telugu and Tamil output came to us in 10 days, Kannada is still going on and we are constantly auditioning people and asking for more options. If someone’s voice matches, he/she may not have the art of dubbing, or voice-versa. Dubbing is something that the industry is still learning,” adds Pawan.

This also means that when films are being dubbed for pan-India releases, the Kannada version is always at number 4 in the priority list. “If a Hindi series is being dubbed into other languages, they will first do Telugu, Tamil and only then do a Kannada version. The Kannada dubbing industry is still at a very early stage. The people who can speak the language, emote in it and make it look and sound realistic is going to take a couple of years for them to get better at it. This is the truth. Ultimately, people should just think, why would we not want a good Kannada dubbed version?” asks Pawan.

The trailer of Dhoomam was released with only a fortnight to go for the film’s release. “The only reason we kept delaying it was because we wanted to get the Kannada dubbed version right. What you hear now is the best we got at that time. Imagine a scenario in which I released the trailer in all languages except Kannada - that would have been even worse. The whole public opinion would have been that we don’t want to do a Kannada film. On that day, whatever best we had, we released, but for the film, we have actually found another person, who is trying and seems better than the voice that was used for the trailer,” says Pawan.