Character Development in Film Acting

As Ranabali, Vijay, I twirl my mustache one way,

Ranabali twirls it another way.

My walk is one way, Ranabali's is another.

Ranabali's gaze is different too.

I...

No matter how rash you think I am, I speak very slowly,

but Ranabali speaks very rashly.

So,

That character—designing the character

and becoming him is one process.

You can learn the character's accent,

but the volume at which he speaks,

the gravity with which he speaks.

Sometimes, when I was doing a scene, Rahul would be there

and say, "Vijay, say it like Ranabali." Even if I said it emotionally, oh...

That...

Especially

When all those people came, I'd ask something, like...

"Where did you come from—"

"Who are all of you, grandpas?" A simple dialogue.

Here, I am Ranabali. Who are

all of you, grandpas?

Even if I said it with genuine concern and emotion.

Rahul made me do three, four takes for that.

It has to be like Ranabali. He wouldn't ask that way.

Whenever Ranabali asks someone, he'd say, "Who do you lot think you are?

We don't have that around here," in his own way.

So, designing everything about him, from his walk, his

stature,

to the way he fights.

I throw a punch one way, but Ranabali throwing a punch

should look different.

So, fully designing that character

takes time. It requires

the director to have

complete clarity. What helped was that Rahul had complete clarity

about it.

First of all, since he's from Rayalaseema, he knows what people from Rayalaseema are like,

how they look and speak, how their grandfathers and uncles,

and people from those villages, speak and walk.

On the first day of shooting,

we did that one scene. The whole day,

it was a single-take shot. We trimmed it a bit and only

kept a little of it.

The first five takes were just for Ranabali's

walk to be fixed.

Wow!

Each of his steps had to have a certain weight and a certain way

of landing, because he doesn't walk normally like us.

So it just took like five, six takes to figure that.