It was just a 3-hour thing for us to watch “Rangasthalam” on big screen and return to our daily lives. But, have you thought of the groundwork that has been made to bring the ‘realistic 80’s feel’ ? After talking about the set design & art work, one thing that deserves a special mention is the costume designing. While watching Chitti Babu, Ramalakshmi, and other characters, there was never a feel of watching ‘created’ characters. The costume designing is so natural that we see only Chitti Babu/ Ramalakshmi and not Ram Charan or Samantha dressed as Chitti Babu/Ramalakshmi. And the person responsible for this perfection is Krishna Shanthi.
Krishna Shanthi - A Young and upcoming stylist who made a mark for herself with the film “Awe”, is garnering praises for her character design work for “Rangasthalam”. An alumni of NIFT, Shanthi is the one who sketched and designed costumes for all the characters of Rangasthalam. A must mention is the way she brought ‘Ramalakshmi’ to life.
She penned the village girl’s look right from her hair to anklets. Shanthi spoke at length to ChaiBisket to tell us the thought process of these character designs. It is always a tough task to travel back in time - especially to a period where you were not even born. The challenge was in creating a design for a character - without losing the feel of that particular time period. To achieve this, unlike few of her counterparts, Shanthi hasn’t used much of ‘internet/Google’ to know what people wore in the 80’s. She travelled to coastal Andhra and visited places like Rajahmundry, Palakollu, Bhimavaram and clicked some 5000 odd pictures of villagers. She even spoke to these people and learnt about their color preferences when it comes to dressing.
Shanthi says that while listening to the director as he narrates a character, she starts the design process’ in her head. Interestingly, for ‘Rangasthalam’, Shanthi says she learnt more of the character preferences, backstory, influences, body languages, mood swings from Sukumar, whom she says is a ‘core perfectionist’.
Shanthi recently shared an illustration of ‘Ramalakshmi’ on Facebook to explain her art work. A ‘freehand person’, she said that when she started off the initial sketch for Ramalakshmi, she started imagining Ramalakshmi as to how.. she would dress up.. and what colours would she pick.. how she would do her hair... and what body language she would have. . besides taking into consideration of her financial and cultural influences.
Terming Ramalakshmi as Raw and Rustic, Shanthi said she was glad her vision matched to director Sukumar’s expectations and he loved it at the very first sight. “That's when I understood how exactly raw he was looking at his Characters... Later WE discussed further and developed... the possibilities of her costumes... depending on various scenes and opted to take least cinematic liberty in the songs where there was a practical scope to do so…,” she added.
The research work Shanthi did is something that needs to be told. After coming up with a sketch/ character design, she would then begin the costume designing keeping key factors such as ‘Fabric’, ageing and sampling in mind. As handloom was the only source of fabric back then, Shanthi extensively travelled to places like RJHMDY, Kakinada and Hyderabad. One of the most noteworthy points to be mentioned is that she bought these fabrics from real handloom weavers. In a bid to promote the handloom sector, Shanthi purchased from state handloom corporation (AP & TS), where money goes straight to the one who has worked on these handloom fabrics. Other dresses were purchased from regional places so as to not to loose the feel or essence of ‘village’. It might be surprising, but the dress of the police officer who beats Chitti Babu in PS - was sourced from a shop in Chennai because the ‘material of the cloth’ is something she felt is not to be compromised with. Even when it comes to Chitti Babu’s sister and Kumar Babu's love interest - an educated girl, living away from the village in a hostel - there has been a lot of homework before going ahead with the final design. Here’s the sketch of the two girls:
Terming Sukumar as a perfectionist, she says that she was surprised to see how Sukumar gives in-depth detailing to his characters. She even tells that Sukumar used to talk about how people at his village used to look like, wear , walk around. From ‘Bottu’ to Bangles, Sukumark is said to have precise idea of how he wants his character to look on screen. This is how she designed Phanindra Bhupathi, the antagonist:
Here's the sketch work of Dakshina Murthy, Rangamattha, Mahesh and other random villagers:
For those wanting to know how Kumar Babu's 1980's role came to life.. here it is:
Shanthi began her career with Sunil's KSD Appalraju. For RGV's "Attack" she visited Dhoolpet and clicked 1000+ pics of people in and around the area. She even spoke to ‘goondas’ in the area to study their body language and other aspects which she says helped her design costumes. She is definitely not the regular costume designer you see around, because her selection of scripts tell us she is always up for challenges. Shanthi is now working for Mammooty's "YATRA", a biopic on YS Rajashekhar Reddy and also director Jeevan's "Dandayathra". “This is how i work.. i choose scripts where there is scope for costumes and characterisation…,” she added. So guys, watchout for this young talent, who is set to make her name RESOUND in days to come!
