Fireflies Parth aur Jugnu director Hemant Gaba says 'child artistes are more natural' than senior artistes | Exclusive

Fireflies – Parth aur Jugnu, directed by Hemant Gaba and starring Meet Mukhi, Aekam Binjwe, Madhoo Shah, Priyanshu Chaterjee, Luke Kenny, Akshat Singh, Zoya Afroz, Varun Kapoor, Harshit Bhojwani, Anaya Shivan, Riva Arora, Rahul Singh, and Hitesh Dave in key roles, is all set to release on ZEE5 on May 5.

In an exclusive conversation with DNA, Hemant Gaba opened up about working with child artists and said that they are more professional than senior artists. On being asked about Van Rakshas, the director said, "So sometimes what we do when the children are growing up, especially at a very early age, and because we don’t want them to go to the forest so we just create this mythical demon. But in this particular show, there is also some truth to it. I personally don’t believe in demons, but we have heard stories from a very early age about Rakshas."

Hemant further mentioned that he never believed in these stories when he was a child. He stated, "I figured in my childhood that my elders are doing it to keep me away from a particular task, going to a particular place. I understood that intention that it was not the truth, they are just saying it to keep me away."

On being asked what was the first thing that came to his mind when he started working on the project, he revealed that he boarded the project when the script was already done and what seemed exciting for him was two things, one was the kid’s take. He stated, "I have also worked with kids before in a short film and that's what the producer has also watched before onboarding me as director."

While revealing the second thing that attracted him, he mentioned, "and the second was this fantasy tale and I think because there is hardly anything happening in the Indian web space, in the teenage and fantasy space, that genre itself was very very exciting and I had read the show bible, so it seemed pretty exciting and pretty different to get my hands into this project. Then we started working on the beginning of the project, so I thought the forest plays a huge role, also when you see the show, we have tried to create the visuals of a forest in the subconsciousness of who watches it."

"Then we were tempted to shoot it in a particular way, so that this forest also becomes a character, so that became very exciting, and overall the cave part was also very exciting. The cave was designed in 3D by a gaming developer. So all those elements were very exciting when I started to work on the project but I was not thinking about what I have seen in my past, I was just trying to keep away. I mean that could be exciting but I didn’t want to carry that with me because it would then automatically be like you are trying to compete or bring something out that you have already seen in your childhood. So I tried to keep those things at bay and focus on the written words by Alok Sharma, visualise what comes to my mind just try to do an interpretation of it while directing it," he added.

On being asked about the difference between working with a child artist and a senior artist, the director said, "I think child artists are way more natural and I will give you a small example. Let’s say you ask a senior artist to react to something, they’ll go into this mental thing, like oh what does this mean, what is my reaction gonna be but when it's kids, they just react to what naturally comes to them so that’s the best part. I mean some people find it difficult to work with the kids but for me, it was very easy. Also because all these kids were very brave, and talented. At the same, I just had to be there with them, teach them as adults, I’ll ask them questions and then they’ll come back with answers. So my approach was to ask them questions instead of telling them what they should do. There are always senior actors who ask me questions and I had to answer them, so I think that was the difference."

On being asked if child artists behave like senior artists or if they feel that they are each others' competitors, he replied, "I didn’t find this even with the senior artist in this particular series, but there was nothing like this with the kids. I mean there could just minor bits in a particular scene when two child artists had more dialogues for example, and the other one had very less or more of a passive role so then I tried to give them something, like a little bit so that it gives them a reason to be present in the scene."

He added, "There were characters who didn’t have anything to do or say, so I gave them something small so that they don’t feel left out. But generally, the kids use to react to the person who is saying the dialogue, and in a lot of the scenes I used to say, okay you are the anchor of the scene. So suppose there were 5 kids in a scene, I used to say okay kid number 3, you are the anchor. So I tried to balance so that they feel good about participating in the scene. But otherwise, I never felt like they were competing with each other, they had realised their scenes already and knew which was their part."

While talking about the challenges, he stated, "So we shot for VFX for 5 days in Bombay in a studio. So because in VFX, we had already put the green screen and there were only some elements on the ground, which was basically the mud and the rest was all imaginary. So we would place something in the center for the child to imagine that this is a tree and now we would tell him the directions, okay now you have to look this much up. Because the tree is not there and he had to imagine, so we used to give him (Ekkam) a pole. And they were very good at imagining, so it wasn’t difficult at all.  Shooting from a child’s point of view in a studio space, was easier because it didn’t have any climatic and other conditions. It was just the imagination and they were very good at it."

Hemant revealed one incident that he will never forget. He stated, "So we were towards the end of the shoot. There was a scene where a kid falls down, almost at the edge of a cliff, it required a little bit of stunt. So when we were doing this, the protagonist Meet Mukhi who plays Parth, his arm got hurt, like badly hurt, he couldn’t move his arm. He continued to work even after that and even the next day. I mean, being a 15-year-old kid, he could pull this off like, I thought he was more professional then than a lot of senior actors. He carried the shoot with the hurt arm, with so much pain and that was very very inspiring for me and that reflected his determination and dedication towards their art and craft and how professional they are. So that was my takeaway from the project."