Priyanka Ghose, the debutant Director of the extremely successful ALTBalaji series Broken But Beautiful 3, is happy and contented with the kind of returns that the series, on the whole, has given the entire team.
Priyanka who was earlier seen in the position of Associate Director for Aarya 1, gets into a conversation with IWMBuzz.com over her dedicated work for the series and much more.
Broken But Beautiful 3, how has this journey been for you as the captain of the ship?
An incredible journey, to say the least. This can never be a short answer (the details might lead to me writing a novel!) as it’s beyond tough, to sum up, the last 9 months of my life – as this project is the only thing that I lived, breathed for this long! Too many things I learned. Lifelong bonds I forged. Even in a pandemic, I lived in my own bubble of Broken, looking forward to each and every day. The team becomes my family. Dealt with too many challenges & pressures, but kept high spirits throughout. I am very lucky that what I get to do for a living is what I truly & absolutely love! So all I can say is, I’m extremely grateful and hope my next journey is as gratifying.
How would you in your own words describe this complicated love tale of Agastya?
Agastya fell prey to his own softer side when Rumi came into his life. Sometimes you don’t realize it, but your feelings for someone can completely change you in a good or a bad way. For Agastya it led to a phase of denial leading to self-destructive pain which then gave way to healing which is possibly the best way to discover yourself. I think all of us can relate to this as everyone has had shades of this on their own lives.
As a Director what are the prerequisites you want to have in the project you are working on?
My first requisite is obviously a story and script that resonates with me. For us directors, it’s a very long commitment on any project, it’s like a marriage – you literally live and breathe this while everything else in your life takes a backseat. So it’s very important for me to be convinced about the content and the writers. Then comes the other factors like the producers or the studio or the platform, the lead cast, the production budget – these are usually the things that are predetermined before the offer comes my way. After that of course I would ideally want my choice of HoDs, my ADs etc.
Tell us about your career path.
I grew up in Calcutta pursuing a lot of extracurricular activities alongside academics. That was the foundation for my love for the arts. I started out with an internship on Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” while in college. Then I came to Bombay to pursue filmmaking and slowly climbed to the position of a First AD to various directors on feature films. Then I freelanced as a Line Producer in ad films & worked a lot with Equinox Films. Ram Madhvani & Manoj Shroff saw my potential and brought me on as a Director in the company and it’s been 6 years that I have been an Ad Film Director on Equinox’s panel. I also got a chance to be Associate Director on Aarya Season 1. Post that 11:11 Productions offered me to direct Broken but Beautiful Season 3.
What is in store next?
I hope I have an answer to that real soon. I am too restless a person to sit idle for too long. Even in between projects, you’ll find me trying to learn something new or doing something or the other to keep myself busy. Currently apart from all my usual hobbies of painting, playing guitar, learning capoeira, writing, reading etc, I am also reading a few scripts of web series that have come my way – hoping a suitable project presents itself soon enough for me to jump into it right away ?..I would love to continue directing ad films, hopefully, get to direct my feature & want to be able to direct more exciting web series…absolutely loving the OTT space…I basically want to be able to tell all kinds of stories across platforms.
How was it to work with Sidharth Shukla and Sonia Rathee?
I couldn’t have asked for a better lead cast to work with, on my web series debut. I think we have become such good friends that understanding each other and hearing each other out was almost second skin to us. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed working with all the other actors also in this show – we have all become friends.
Other than his huge fandom, Sidharth of course comes with a lot of experience as an actor which has taught me a lot. He is also really observant and usually very aware of everything on set which helps a director so much. Sometimes I felt like he could read my mind after giving me a take and knew exactly what I wanted differently. Before we started shoot every day after I had explained the shot breakdown to my DoP & my team, while it’s being set up, Sid & I did this exercise of going over all the scenes to be shot that day – we used to talk it through and figure out how we were seeing it and if ever there was a different interpretation that either of us had, we would discuss and come up with the best solution. Then as he came on set, he was a livewire of energy, most of the time busy cracking us up, but the minute “action” was called he used to snap into character & shock me with his performance.
Sonia on the other hand surprised me so much that it was hard to tell that she was facing the camera for the first time. I had a blast working with her. We started collaborating on ideas well before the shoot, over various sessions at my house or at the office. She is quite like me in that case where even on set she needs that quiet time by herself before we started filming the scene. Both she and I used to go to our quiet corners to think and get into our zone. While Sid & Anik sir (our DoP) or some of the other actors were cracking jokes on set, Sonia & I were trying hard to keep a straight face while they pull our legs.
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