While shooting for the Naveen Chandra-starrer Eleven, actor Abhirami had some novel experiences. “ is my first truly bilingual movie, for which we shot in both Tamil and Telugu. We would shoot a scene in Tamil and then repeat it in Telugu.
Even single shots, regardless of whether it was a close-up or a mid-range shot, were shot in both languages. Director Lokkesh Ajls did not believe in compromises like doing lip-sync adjustments later in dubbing,” says Abhirami. Another challenge was getting the metre of acting in each language right.
“Acting in Tamil is different from acting in Telugu. So to capture that change in expressions and body language was an exciting challenge for me. Also, since I grew up speaking Tamil, memorising the Telugu lines and reacting accordingly was a lot more work for me since I only picked up Telugu as an adult.
But it was very interesting and I enjoyed the whole process.” She also got to play her character at two different ages. Abhirami says, “This was also a first for me.
Approaching the same character at two different stages in life required a change in body language and pacing of the dialogue. To work on the maturity that sets in with age was an interesting dilemma to deal with for me.” During the dubbing too, she had to work on changing the pitch and texture of her voice according to her screen age.
“We took a lot of time to revisit the scenes to ensure the voice change was significantly different for each age,” reveals the actor.