“He was a different person with multiple personalities.” – Resul Pookutty on Hrithik Roshan

Oscar-winning sound editor Resul Pookutty worked very closely with Hrithik Roshan’s character Rohan Bhatnagar for his movie Kaabil. One may think that all the voices that Hrithik mimics must have come to him pretty naturally. Or did it?

Well, Resul has a different story to share. He looks back at the 10-month long dubbing process. This was a crucial element, given Hrithik Roshan’s role in the film. Director Sanjay Gupta had seemingly put an enormous amount of responsibility on poor Resul.

“He said I have written these scenes with you in my mind, which put a lot of pressure on me, as every sound man would enjoy a line like that from your trusted director. But it put me in a spin.”

This is the moment that the film became about Resul and Perfectionist Hrithik, rather than Hrithik and Ronit. The main challenge lied in Hrithik’s mimicry of the villains in a public place. If you imagine that to be difficult enough, add in the sound of a passing train to the mix. That’s what Hrithik (and even Resul) went through in real life!

“HR told me when we mimic – he himself was a good mimic, so was I in my college days – we sound ‘like’ the other person but not exactly as the other person. Which means a part of you will remain in all the mimicking process. It was a very important realization, but a tough thing to achieve technically.”

The easy way out was to just simply use the old fashioned dubbing technique. But Hrithik wanted authenticity in his work. Now the challenge lies in making the character of Rohan believable!

For this, a different approach was taken. All the villains in the films were called and were asked to dub the scenes in an exaggerated tone. As that was the key element of being a mimic artist. Hrithik later rehearsed with the tapes putting in his career-best! Then came the process of combining the two voices. Resul had no experience in that.

When spoke about the initial scenes of Rohan the voice artist, as the voice of a few cartoon characters:

“We made character sketches first for HR to modulate the voices… and write the scene around those sketches. He took his own time to rehearse and shot that scene at one go and we did animation around his performance.”

Now the main task at hand: Impersonating Big B himself! Resul’s remarkable recollection of Big B’s voice played the trick, which was beautifully replicated by Hrithik Roshan. After all said and done, they arrived onto a version which was “dangerously close to the original Big B.”

Audiences hardly have any knowledge of what happens behind the scenes. Resul can swear by it. After this episode, Resul has discovered the artist that lies within. Resul rightly says “There is no limit to anything you want to achieve in films these days.”

This just earned both Resul and Hrithik some tremendous respect!