Who has’t loved and hummed along the songs of Shoojit Sicar’s Piku? From The Journey Song, to Lamhe Guzar Gaye, Bezubaan and others by Anupam Roy, those soulful melodies have always provided a sense of melancholia yet solace. Now singer-composer-lyricist Roy is back with another Hindi single, Aisi Raaton which was released quite recently.
Personally, I’ve always been more fond of his Bengali songs as there are certain things, which are better expressed by any artist in his own mother tongue. But, Aisi Raaton definitely strikes a chord in these tough times, aided with resonating visuals created in animation by Ghost Animation Studio’s Upamanyu Bhattacharyya and Kalp Sanghvi.
Aisi Raaton depicts a couple living together, homebound owing to the pandemic imposed lockdown, and the ups and downs of a relationship. Beautifully resonated through the lyrics, mood and soothing voice of Roy, this is the first time the singer has collaborated for an animated music video for his song.
Roy told AnimationXpress, “I’m a big admirer of animation. I enjoy watching animation movies, Miyazaki being my idol. Animation creates poetry with magic and realism. I always wanted to work with animators, and lockdown gave us the opportunity. Since we cant shoot music videos now, this was the best time for making animated music videos.”
Said Sanghvi on the collaboration, “We met Roy a year back after which the music video we were planning did not materialise. Finally during the lockdown, he decided to put out some of his new tracks with a music video. That’s how we collaborated. Working with him was a great experience.”
Roy briefed Sanghvi and Bhattacharyya about his imagination for the music video, who then further developed the visuals and the animation. The animators used Photoshop for the music video and completed it in about 10 days.
Taking us through the process of animation, Bhattacharyya mentioned, “We had worked on some simple lyrical music videos before. So, we went through the track a couple of times, and I handled the pre-production for Aisi Raaton after which we split up the production stage. We knew we wanted to keep the animation minimal yet relatable and simply portray a day in a life of a couple under lockdown. Once the production was done, Kalp handled the post production. We love Roy’s work and tried our best to do justice to his track with our animation.”
Roy was also quite satisfied with their work, “I find them [Sanghvi and Bhattacharyya] extremely talented and they have the right attitude. They are professional and very focussed. It was great working with them,” he expressed. Last month, Sanghvi and Bhattacharyya won an award for their animated short, WADE at Annecy 2020.
Roy also thinks that animation as a medium has all the potential to be the next big thing in India, as it has now become an extremely important form of entertainment.
“For the mainstream audience in India, animation is still new. People still don’t appreciate this form much, but I feel it’s silently growing. With so much talent in our country animation has huge potential,” noted he.
With leading singers like Roy falling back on animation for his latest Hindi single, and animators from Ghost Animation making it into a wonderful representation through simple, yet soothing and resonant visuals, animation in India will soon reach newer heights.
