Creating horror

The castles had to be magnificent but without a typical European style, something which could pass off as Indian

– Bhushan Patel, director

The biggest challenge of shooting a horror flick, according to debutant director Bhushan Patel, is how to invoke fear in the audience, and this can only be done if the director himself experiences the feeling of fear. "There are two ways of invoking fear in the audience in a horror film. One is by startling the audience with eerie sounds, which is very easy, and the second, which is more challenging is evoking fear by using silence. So, I decided to experience the feeling by spending some time alone in Vrams Gunnarstorp an ancient 17th century historical castle in South Sweden where we were shooting 1920 Evil Returns. Not that anything scary happened while I was there, but being alone in an old historical monument was scary," said Patel who shot on the location for almost eight days.

The decision of shooting at Vrams was taken by the producer Vikram Bhatt, after an extensive research and recee. "The original 1920 had been shot at a Yorkshire castle and Vikram wanted a castle for this film too, but with a different and more captivating architecture. The condition was that since both stories are set in India, the castles had to be magnificent but without a typical European style, and something which could pass off as Indian," he explained.

The other challenge faced by the director were the extreme cold weather conditions in Sweden where lead actors Aftab Shivdasani and Tia Bajpai had to shoot in a kurta pyjama and a short dress respectively, in minus two degrees temperature. "The low temperatures, one could deal with, but the cold chilling wind made us numb. There was a scene in which Aftab had to write on a piece of paper, but his fingers were so numb that he could not hold the pen properly or write on paper. I had to shoot the scene concealing the paper so that I did not have to show him writing."

... contd.

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