“There is this magic that always seemed to happen on set.” Ashwini Kale is recalling that particularly eerie red wall in Aavesham. The scene is set. Bibi, acting on his instincts, scrapes the wall inside the house, looking for that blood-stained paint they’ve heard so much about. “We did a small patch on another wall to make it peel off in layers of red and white paint. We were a bit worried because, before the shot, it just wasn’t coming off in layers. But when the camera rolled, it weirdly just happened.” Was it Ranga’s “dead brother” that helped pull it all together, the set wondered in jest.
The art director is behind the unhinged atmosphere that we’ve come to love in the Jithu Madhavan film. Loosely based on a Bengaluru gangster Jithu met during his college days, Aavesham revolves around three college kids (Hipzster, Mithun Jai Shankar, Roshan Shanavas) who befriend Ranga (Fahadh Faasil), a Malayali gangster who is as fragile as he is fierce. “Jithu has gone through this in his real life, so he was very particular about every small detail, right from Ranga’s look,” she says. “When we made the juice shop set, he actually said that it looked just like the one he had gone to.”