This is where the gimbal operator and the focus puller come in, Nuni adds. “They had to really learn the song themselves because they were the ones inside the set, and Brinda ma’am was communicating with them constantly from the outside, telling them their movements. They needed to become dancers themselves.”
The single-take, a technique that the film uses for many of its scenes, was a gradual experiment, Nuni says. “One of the first times we attempted a long take was when Simbu’s character enters the top floor of the parotta shop. The camera goes behind him. With long takes, the main challenge is to avoid shadows, because when the camera moves, the shadow of the camera falls on the characters.”