How ‘Kill’ has set new standard for action films with ground-breaking sound, stunts

Kill, which first premiered in 2023 at the Toronto International Film Festival, made its theatrical debut this month and immediately got everyone buzzing. It arrived in cinemas with a lot of clout, having received rave reviews from foreign critics who billed it as the Bollywood equivalent of The Raid, and became the new benchmark as far as action (as a genre) was concerned. While it did just that and with aplomb, what it inadvertently also brought about is a welcome change in the Indian cinematic discourse: refreshingly, it made film technicians, the savants who operate from behind the camera, get the credit that they deserve in the public eye.

And fittingly, the work in that direction began right at the very beginning, says Sahoo. The revered sound man, who has worked on countless films in the past, including Omkara, Neerja, OMG 2 and others, was brought on board around the same time as Bhat took the film to producers and he was very much a part of the script readings along with the rest of core cast and crew. The script of Kill, he says, carried the clarity and the vision that the director was in search of but Sahoo’s job was to translate all that into a sensory experience of its own kind. “I don’t follow any film as a reference while doing my job,” he says, meaning that everything is put together through a process constructed carefully over the years.

“If you don’t lead yourself into the story with your real-life experiences, then it is very difficult to understand its soul. As much as the shooting sets (designed by Mayur Sharma) helped — you know, it all happens across a couple of train bogies — I need to borrow from my own experience of travelling in trains to get the ‘vibe’ of it all.”

One of the earliest steps Sahoo took was to convince the producers to go with sync sound (live recording of sound during the shoot) even though the film isn’t dialogue-heavy. Capturing the essence of a particular moment in a story such as this was paramount and the entire team, led by the director, gave as much importance to the lines mouthed by the actors as to the rest of the surroundings. A slash of a knife, a kind of heavy breathing, somebody moving through the aisles, somebody falling, etc. — everything had to be captured while it happened and recreating that later in a dubbing studio with the help of a Foley artist wasn’t going to produce the same results.

“That moment during the shoot, in which an actor puts all their preparation, their time and their genuineness into it, has to be captured at any cost. And it isn’t like the slightly older times when performances were of one certain kind — Kill isn’t like the usual commercial stuff that we get to see but a completely different narrative, and it needs a special approach.“Chalo hum dubbing mein hum dekhlenge,” won’t work here because it will end up sounding and feeling like any other run-of-the-mill film,” adds Sahoo.

Sahoo describes that the soundscape of Kill is a delicate blend of realism and cinematism in that it amplifies that swipe of a knife across human flesh and that thud of a heavy fist landing across someone’s face — the kind of sounds that normally do not make any significant sound. Everything had to be felt and experienced because the devil really lay in the details and the thumb rule for him and his team then came to be striking the right balance. The on-location sounds captured by the boom operator were combined with the Foley sounds, along with additional sound effects produced to round it all up. “You want to retain the realism, that grittiness of these sounds but you have to elevate them as well. Otherwise, this will become parallel cinema while we are trying to invite audiences of all sensibilities,” says Sahoo.

That said, Kill posed newer challenges to Sahoo & Co. who really had to experiment with the proportion. The film follows a young NDA commando’s bloodied, ultra-gory expedition on-board a moving train as he counters not one, not two but nearly 50 dacoits wielding knives and whatnot. Everything becomes a weapon — from the fire extinguishers to the commodes inside toilets — and the film isn’t for the queasy by any means. Bones crack like cookies, faces get bludgeoned to complete pulp and blood streams out of bodies without any forewarning. The trick for the Sound team was to use ample time to test out the threshold and work on the said balance over and over again. While Sahoo oversaw all of it, each team member of his — from the sound editor (Vinit Gala), the mixing engineer, the assistants and the director to the valet who worked in the studio — contributed immensely to the task.

“The credit must also go to the film’s music composers — Haroon-Gavin, Vikram Montrose and Shashwat Sachdev,” Sahoo says. “You often see films overusing music to highlight a particular scene and in a way influence the audience. Here (in Kill), the balance of sound design and music is so beautiful that you can feel the rawness of a particular situation. When there’s no action or drama in play, the stillness and the silence of the moment are so palpable that they take the experience to a new high. You can hear the curtain flip, a small object move or even the heartbeat of a person and that’s where the beauty lies — you feel just how large that moment is. It all comes down to director Nagesh Bhat’s conviction who chose to not crank up the music just to create that high.”

Similarly, just as the incisive sound design did, Kill’s supremely inventive action choreography won a lot of praise from critics and audiences alike. The stunt work, aided beautifully by Rafey Mehmood’s long takes and clear cinematography, became a spectacle in its own right owing to the authenticity, precision and intensity that action directors Parvez Shaikh and South Korea’s Se-yeong Oh brought to the table. The two would combine their respective distinctive styles that included many different combat techniques and work closely with actors to create something quite out of the ordinary.

The Federal caught up with both of these accomplished artists to understand their process, the method they chose to work together, working with the cast and so much more. Excerpts:

Could you take us through the conversations you had with Nikhil Nagesh Bhat before the film went on floors?

Se-yeong Oh: I remember that I got very fascinated by the story of the film because it’s based on true events that have happened in the past in India. But soon after that I got very concerned about how to design the action because I was briefed that all the action has to happen within a very compact train. Nikhil sir’s central focus was keeping all the action sequences very violent and brutal. At first, I was confused about the level of cruelty he wanted to express, and also whether he just wanted the “feeling” of brutality to be expressed. So, we had to go through numerous discussions and meetings about it for me to fully grasp his intentions.

And I remember that some were still under discussion, even until right before the shoot, whether we should show the brutality in a direct manner or express it indirectly. During preparation, we had to examine many different methods and had to go through tests to show the audience the gruesome action in a direct manner. We also had to redesign all the action sequences to meet the nature of the film.

Parvez Shaikh: First of all, I must say that Nikhil sir came to me with a script that was so detailed and clear that I felt that all the action and stunts were right in front of me. But for him, realism was always the operative word. Nikhil sir wanted the action to not be similar to what we typically see in Bollywood or South Indian cinema but very close to life, yet very, very brutal as Mr. Oh pointed out.

What he also gave us is the freedom to go all out with our imagination. Almost every film I have worked on has restrictions concerning the gore and the bloodshed because the makers would want audiences of all ages to watch the film. Here, there was no such hindrance. And it was fun to work with Se-Yeong Oh, who has been my partner on many films including Fan, Bharat and War. We were able to blend our individual sensibilities to create something truly out of the box.

When someone approaches you saying, “I want to make a film set completely inside a moving train and one guy has to kill nearly 50 people,” how do you react to this?

Parvez Shaikh: The immediate reaction is, of course, ‘Yeh kaisa hoyega!’ (laughs). But having been around for so long, you know you can find a way. What helped us was the collaborative effort of the whole unit — from the director, the tenacious cast members and other departments like Mayur Sharma’s production design. The sets erected looked extremely real and were fully equipped with the paraphernalia we could use to design our action sequences and there was ample time given to train the entire cast.

Se-yeong Oh: I would react differently depending on the genre of the film. But if the film is based on true events, and if the director wants to express the action most realistically, I would get very tense and worried. For Kill, the amount of action is immense where the protagonist has to fight against nearly 50 people from the start of the film until the finish. If all the sequences have the same, super realistic tone of action, then the audience will get numb and bored. So finding the solution to keep action fresh is the biggest challenge.

This film also needed many actors, including leading man Lakshya and antagonist Raghav Juyal, to pull off some deadly stunts and action sequences. What was the process of working with the actors like? What were your discussions with them like?

Parvez Shaikh: We began training the actors, especially Lakshya and Abhishek Chauhan, well in advance and this involved a bit of theory, building the physicality, teaching them the essence of action and, of course, the stuff that they need to execute during the shoot. The stuntmen from my team worked with the actors during the prep phase and Mr. Oh would then take over and train them in his way. We took about 4-6 months to prep for the film and I don’t suppose in my 30-32 years of experience, I have put in this kind of time and effort into a film.

The tougher part, though, was to work with actors who had no prior experience with stunts and action. The film had several character actors who weren’t in the greatest of physical shapes to pull off the stuff we had designed but it was important for the story that they did so. So, we spent a lot of time with them, trained them beforehand, worked with them again during the shoot and somehow managed to do a great job. There wasn’t much room to use body doubles either because we were shooting in such a confined space that we couldn’t afford wide shots.

Se-yeong Oh: Because so many actors had to be involved in so many deadly stunts and action, I told my producers that training had to be started as the priority. And they have arranged it promptly based on my request. One of the important factors of training is the safety of the main cast and the opponents they have to fight against. Staying away from any injuries or accidents is the priority and that’s why training is such a crucial step in preparing for action sequences.

Lakshya is naturally gifted in action, so we didn’t have to train him as much as we expected to, so we focused more on putting emotions into his action. I have specifically briefed him to put emotions in every single movement. The details of the briefs I had given him are confidential! (laughs). Raghav is a highly sensible actor. I tried to take that as an advantage and utilize that and put his ideas into action.

We worked in a really confined area so we became very close to each other in a short period of time. Doing action in such a compact space can make the action look mundane, but we trusted and supported each other to make the action look as fascinating as possible. I hope I can work with them again in the second part (if there is one) of this film. Again in a confined space.

What were some of the biggest constraints?

Se-yeong Oh: When I first read the script for Kill, I was dumbstruck to find the amount of action sequences there were. After I finished reading, I put the script down and said to myself, “How do I do this…? How are THEY (the producers and the director) planning to do this?”. When Nikhil sir first briefed about this film, he had said that a very vulnerable person gets himself into the centre of an incident, and becomes more evil than the antagonist and the goons. And he said he wanted to show the process of that.

So I asked myself once again, “How does an innocent, vulnerable person become evil and who makes him become that? And what’s the aftermath of that person?” Those who have seen the film would know that the story is not complicated to understand. However, that’s what was challenging for the director, the crew, and the actors. To have the untold story and its emotions within ourselves.

Could you name your favourite scene from the film? And the one toughest to shoot?

Parvez Shaikh: Almost every scene was difficult to execute in this film (laughs). But my favourite scene isn’t the one involving any action choreography and was actually filmed when none of us were present on the sets. The one in which some of the characters open the door to the next bogie and find many of their men hanged to death — that’s the one that really I gasped at when I watched the full-length film much later.

It just goes to show you that when the story strikes a chord with you, then the action too is elevated. I took my wife to watch Kill in a cinema hall and even though she doesn’t watch many movies, she was drawn to the emotions that she would yell out at the screen, wanting the hero to give it back to the bad guys. The kids sitting in the row ahead of us were literally on the edges of their seats.

Se-yeong Oh: The most challenging yet favourite scene would be the commode sequence, where Amrit has to fight with two goons. As we all know, a restroom on a train is a very compact space. My intention was to involve as many people as possible in the smallest space on the train, but given such confinement, nobody could be on the set except for the actors. Usually, in more open spaces, we get to see the actors perform action live and adjust or comment as we go, but for the restroom sequence, nobody could watch it but only assume what was done in there.

How we were going to execute the shoot was another challenge for the team. I think the restroom sequence is the one that gave the most limitations to everyone; the camera department, the art, the lighting, the actors, and everyone else. But even with these limitations, I am very thankful to Lakshya and the actors who played the goons for performing such realistic action without any injuries.