Going behind the scenes of Varun-John starrer 'Dishoom' with background music composer Abhijit Vaghani

Ever wondered, what makes a particular sequence in a movie stand out from the rest? What is it that caters to your senses when you watch a film, but goes unnoticed? It is the background score of a film. It's the score in fact that creates the mood of a film, be it a fast car chase sequence or a scene high on emotions and drama. With the advent of technology, creating the score in Indian cinema has also gone International. The work that goes into this art is not talked about much.

One of Bollywood's ace background score composers , Abhijit Vaghani, who has earlier composed for movies like Band Baaja Baraat, Jab We Met, Race, Fan and many more over a span of 16 years in the industry, is the man behind creating the mood for Varun Dhawan and John Abraham's action adventure flick Dishoom. In a candid interaction, Abhijit talks about the art of creating background scores for films and what goes behind it. 

How far, in your opinion, is the background score of a movie important in keeping the audience engaged?

The background score can make or break the emotion in a particular scene. It is the background score which caters to the particular mood that the director has perceived in terms of that sequence. A sequence can be sad but you can make it seem very happy, or a better example is, if there is a scary sequence, you can lighten it with music, if you don't want it to be that intense. So basically, the background score is the most important tool in a film to cater to the emotional needs of the audience. The best background scores are the ones that are not noticed and they cater to the particular subject of the scene. Each scene has its own story to tell in terms of sections of the movie. And overall, the movie should have a particular sound.

How have the latest innovations changed the face of composing the background score of a film? What are the changes that you have witnessed?

Unfortunately, the whole idea of the live aspect where you have people sitting in one room, with 50 violins and 40 musicians, and compose live with a huge ensemble had reduced 16 years back anyway. But the point is that now, with technology, we have computers and so we have many user-friendly softwares, like DAWs, to work on that we kind of don't feel the need to work on anything live. So life has become very simple nowadays with even loading the video and scoring over it. Because of the softwares and the plug-ins these days, it has become easy to modulate any sound and to replicate any sort of score. But we usually take references just to get the feel of a particular movie. Like, for Dishoom, I thought that the Sicario and The Social Network kind of sound palette would work. Of course, putting in a little bit of Bollywood commercial masala has to happen in terms of a score. So with respect to technology, it is just a computer. That's it, there's nothing else. Like in Dishoom score we used just live guitars, but for the orchestral parts and grooves and everything, we have produced in the software. Probably that's why the budgets have also reduced these days because everyone knows what the procedure is.

What do you look for when you take up a particular project? 

Well, I first gauge what the style is going to be of the particular project because I want my style, my speciality — which is hybrid scoring or EDM — to show. I want to do projects that show my innovation and I want to push my limits to doing and defining Bollywood sound. I look for those qualities in a film or a track or a score that I am accepting.

What made you take up Dishoom?

I could see that Dishoom would give me the scope to score like a Fast and Furious, and on the lines of Brian Tyler, Junkie XL, Hans Zimmer... it would give me a combination of aspects from all these people plus commercial Bollywood. I have been doing this in songs and scores earlier too but this (Dishoom) is my first movie in terms of hybrid scoring and I wanted to do all of this and it was beautiful. And I could do it! Rohit Dhawan gave me all the freedom, he never questioned me. He never has shown any authority that he doesn't want a particular cue. He has kept everything that we have done. It's really nice of him. 

Could you give a brief insight into the scoring process for Dishoom, from conceptualisation to the end product?

The process was quite simple! So Rohit (Dhawan) and me had a great brainstorming session on what would be the cues— he had some which were taken as references. But then he gave me full freedom in terms of doing all of this, like being creative, using new sounds etc. Initially we had thought that it could go as a very International Fast and Furious sort of a score because the movie demanded that with the action scenes and it had a lot of interrogation scenes which we didn't want to keep dry. So, we wanted to score them in a very creative way because the interrogation scenes wouldn't have many sound effects, hence the score would be noticed and he (Rohit) was very keen on featuring the score on a little higher end of the level. So that was nice. 

What was the most challenging part while composing the background score for Dishoom?

The most challenging part was the deadline but frankly, apart from that, we have had a wonderful time scoring it. Like there were shots which were just meant for scoring and I knew Rohit had put them so that I can do something different with them. The only real challenge was to finish on the deadline because there were a lot of changes... not in terms of the edit but in the team that he had. So everything got delayed for everyone and we were working for about 14/18 hours at a stretch to meet the deadline.

Any scene in particular?

The last chopper scene was really stressful because that was a long shot and it took a while to combine everything, every sound. So this was a mind-numbing experience— it needed so much of attention in terms of details, different tempos, different keys and to combine all that... Thankfully, we had done the trailer and so, in terms of the chopper scene, it was pretty much sorted. But then when you are scoring a cue, there are certain bits and parts that you need to sync to musically, you have to have the knack for it because, otherwise, it just sounds bad. 

Screengrabs from video.

Dishoom also stars Jacqueline Fernandez, Akshaye Khanna and Nargis Fakhri, and releases on July 29.