Costume designer designs outfits made of Jute in the music video ‘Neel Samandar’

 by Priya Jadhav

Mumbai, April 2019:  Neel Samandar has been in news for all the right reasons, be it crossing millions of views or the performances by the cast and crew.

National Award winner Director “ Pradeep Sarkar” has led the team as the captain of the ship and we all know how he has an eye for even the minutest details. He is an artist who tries with all his might to make his art perfect.

Costume designer Malvika Bajaj was given the task to design costumes that match the aesthetics and align with the subject line. The entire team made frequent trips to the Andamans to understand the feel that can be used. Dancing shadows team led by Isha.S.Kumar and Rahul Bagga wanted to maintain the perfect synergy of the reality and the fiction. And to create the same realistic magic on screen the team decided to get costumes made up of gunny bags.

Neel Samandar Inspired from a true story based on Andamans  has reputed names like Richa Chadda as the female lead, Meet Bros as the Composers and Benny Dayal and Prakriti Kakar having lend their voices. Stalwarts like Pradeep Sarkar and Swanand Kirkire have directed and written the the same respectively. The music video marks debut of Isha.S.Kumar and Rahul Bagga as producers and this is their maiden project under the banner of Dancing Shadows Productions. It is a musical drama that has a pinch of action and thrill to it and the project has already become a success with more than million views.

Coming from Journalism and Content background, Producer Isha S Kumar, says “ Being from journalism background my job was to infuse the realistic angle to the music video and wanted every minute details to be kept in mind.Malvika Bajaj understood our and Mr. Pardeep Sarkar’s idea and helped us in creating the costume”

According to Producer Rahul Bagga, “We wanted to create the entire feel of Andamans and a visual treat for our viewers and thus to give a realistic feel to the music video, we decided to go with the costumes made of gunny sacks, and Richa Chadda carried the costume with a flair”

Malvika Baja shared her experience saying “It was a difficult material to use in terms of costumes as it would lose its shape time n again because it’s a very lightly woven material. So keeping that in mind the job became a bit difficult and Mr. Pradeep Sarkar wanted the fit of the costume to be perfect. So we did couple of fitting on Richa Chadda so as to make sure the costume fits her perfectly. Different kind of beads and sea shells were used to accessories the outfit and make it look from the tribe in Andaman.”