Decoding the Mise-en-scene of W/O Ram

The story behind the look and feel of the movie W/O Ram explored with director Vijay Yelakanti, where he explains how a concept art became the basis for the entire film’s look and feel. For developing visuals of an intriguing script, director Vijay Yelakanti did an exhaustive preproduction work with the crew.

The suspense thriller Wife of Ram is the story of Deeksha whose husband is murdered in mysterious circumstances. She sets out on a quest to find the murderer and in doing so, faces a cruel and harsh world unwilling to aid her. As the plot revolves under the protagonist exploring the dangerous world around her, we wanted to create a strong visual theme representing the threat around her.

When we finished the script of W/O Ram, we knew that the movie is going to be highly visual and audial as dialogues are very less. Movie heavily depends on the environment presented visually and the diegetic sound which creates the audial atmosphere which is essential for any thriller genre.

The character Deeksha played by Lakshmi Manchu is an ordinary woman working in an NGO, she is a sober and controlled woman, and we wanted to stay true to the character, hence avoided any glorificationof the character cinematically. So we chose to show the pain, suffering, and anger of Deeksha through Mise-en-scene. The simple way to explain Mise-en-scene is ‘put into the scene.’ As red color is the most dynamic color which signifies danger, we decided to use red throughout the film.

Almost in every frame, there will be red color in some form, be it sets, props, costumes or lighting. Not only we wanted to show the character’s emotions through Mise-en-scene, we also wanted the audience psychologically feel the threat of Deeksha and empathize with her. Considering that red color draws attention, it’s easy to see why it’s so often used in warning signs.

Red has to do with the body’s fight-or-flight response, so too much red leaves the person feeling not just alert, but also stressed out. We used the same principle in playing with audience psychology and make them go through the same feeling which Deeksha is experiencing.

For creating visual theme, the strong red has to be balanced, hence we chose blue as complementing color. It is also a choice we made to show that the balance exists in the world. If there is evil, there is good too in the society, which signifies the duality theme of our movie. Additionally, we used other colors in the movie to strike a balance along with dominating red, which we will explore in Production Design. Based on all the above considerations, director Vijay Yelakanti worked with concept artist Omkar Daware to present the look and feel of the film.

We used the colors and lighting scheme and created this concept art, which paved way for the seamless shooting. W/O RAM releasing on July 20th Wife of Ram is directed by Vijay Yelakanti. Raghu Dixit is making his music debut in Tollywood with this film. Samrat Reddy, Aadarsh Balakrishna, Priyadarshi are playing key roles. People Media Factory and Manchu Entertainment jointly producing this suspense thriller.