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Decoding the Mise-en-scene of W/O Ram

Decoding the Mise-en-scene of W/O Ram


The story behind the look and feel of the movie W/O Ram explored with director Vijay
Yelakanti, where he explains how a concept art became the basis for the entire film’s look and
feel. For developing visuals of an intriguing script, director Vijay Yelakanti did an exhaustive
preproduction work with the crew.
The suspense thriller Wife of Ram is the story of Deeksha whose husband is murdered in
mysterious circumstances. She sets out on a quest to find the murderer and in doing so, faces a
cruel and harsh world unwilling to aid her. As the plot revolves under the protagonist exploring
the dangerous world around her, we wanted to create a strong visual theme representing the
threat around her.
When we finished the script of W/O Ram, we knew that the movie is going to be highly visual
and audial as dialogues are very less. Movie heavily depends on the environment presented
visually and the diegetic sound which creates the audial atmosphere which is essential for any
thriller genre.
The character Deeksha played by Lakshmi Manchu is an ordinary woman working in an NGO,
she is a sober and controlled woman, and we wanted to stay true to the character, hence avoided
any glorification of the character cinematically. So we chose to show the pain, suffering, and
anger of Deeksha through Mise-en-scene. The simple way to explain Mise-en-scene is ‘put into
the scene.’ As red color is the most dynamic color which signifies danger, we decided to use red
throughout the film. Almost in every frame, there will be red color in some form, be it sets,
props, costumes or lighting. Not only we wanted to show the character’s emotions through Mise-
en-scene, we also wanted the audience psychologically feel the threat of Deeksha and empathize
with her. Considering that red color draws attention, it’s easy to see why it’s so often used in
warning signs. Red has to do with the body’s fight-or-flight response, so too much red leaves the
person feeling not just alert, but also stressed out. We used the same principle in playing with
audience psychology and make them go through the same feeling which Deeksha is
experiencing.
For creating visual theme, the strong red has to be balanced, hence we chose blue as
complementing color. It is also a choice we made to show that the balance exists in the world. If
there is evil, there is good too in the society, which signifies the duality theme of our movie.
Additionally, we used other colors in the movie to strike a balance along with dominating red,
which we will explore in Production Design. Based on all the above considerations, director
Vijay Yelakanti worked with concept artist Omkar Daware to present the look and feel of the
film. We used the colors and lighting scheme and created this concept art, which paved way for

the seamless shooting. W/O RAM releasing on July 20th Wife of Ram is directed by Vijay
Yelakanti. Raghu Dixit is making his music debut in Tollywood with this film. Samrat Reddy,
Aadarsh Balakrishna, Priyadarshi are playing key roles. People Media Factory and Manchu
Entertainment jointly producing this suspense thriller.

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