#KetchupTalks: Priyanshu on the making of The Pill, a film about exploring conflict and emotions

With Ahsan Vazir as the lead, storyteller and content creator, Priyanshu talks to us about his film The Pill and everything that went behind creating it.

No matter how you look at social media, storytelling is the crux of why creators are loved and followed online. Social media is a place that celebrates diverse voices and the mundane. While we see people thriving with their creativity, one can also argue that it is where most people get to experiment without the fear of dealing with face-to-face criticism, and it won’t be wrong. Especially for people who love to dissect and take a deep dive into humanity, life, emotions and more, social media becomes an easier space for them to share their thoughts in bite-sized content that’s just as impactful as any other form of storytelling. This is exactly what people like Priyanshu are doing.  

Priyanshu is a writer and filmmaker who often refers to himself as someone between Jordan and Kundan. He is one of those creative individuals who has successfully established himself as a popular presence online. By sharing videos about things that inspire him, make him pause and reflect, and often remind him of what it means to be human, he has been showcasing his storytelling skills. Recently, he decided to expand on this talent with his latest feature film, The Pill. The movie talks about a musician who, while chasing glory, discovers a pill that allows him to suppress his emotions, eventually changing everything in his life. Highlighting the idea of how ‘art comes from emotions’, he uses his storytelling skills to talk about an artist and the things that motivate his art. We had the chance to discover what led him to create the film, working with Ahsan Vazir and paying homage to movies that inspire the storyteller in him.

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Here's what he had to share:

The Pill feels like your love letter to Bollywood, celebrating and highlighting the dejected and underdog artists. As someone who’s always been inspired by this world, how did the idea for The Pill first come to you?

The first thing that came to me of the idea was this one simple line, which is also the core of the film — ‘art comes from emotions’. As for the underdog artist troupe, I have always been attracted to that in films, from Jordan in Rockstar to Andrew in Whiplash, so when I had the idea, I knew I wanted to execute it in this way.

Emotion is a major theme of your movie. As someone who feels things deeply, how do you deal with them? What does our outlet look like?

I write. That, for me, is the only and the best way I vent out my emotions. I have been writing for so long that it has now become another way of expressing myself rather than an art form, and I love how comfortable that feels.

The film also explores how shortcuts to ambition often come with consequences. What does working toward your own ambitions look like?

Learning and executing. Showing up every day with a minor improvement. Those are the only things that I keep in mind while pursuing my ambitions. That is what makes you fall in love with the process, and when that happens, you just know you are on the best track possible and from then on, reaching your destination is a matter of when and not if.

You mentioned Ahsan Vazir was always your first choice for the lead. What makes him such an irreplaceable presence in this story?

I love his dedication and his control over his craft. He is really hardworking, knowledgeable, and confident and he knows it, and I love that about him. What he has done in the film requires an incredible amount of skill, which he has somehow still made to look effortless. Just him being on set made me ease up about that department and helped me be better at direction.

There is a smart use of silence in the film. How important is silence to you, especially in these times when we are constantly overstimulated?

I always feel conflicts happen in silence just as much as they happen in dialogues, if not more. Since this was a film majorly about conflicts — one between the protagonist and the people around him and the other happening inside his brain between what he wanted to escape from, and what he couldn’t escape from. If there hadn’t been the silences that are in the film, it would have all been too chaotic and not half as impactful as it currently is. Silence is super important to me as a creative professional as well. I think creativity, like conflict, happens in silence too, so it is a part of the job to maintain that silence and the peace that comes with it.

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You have masterfully added comedy while talking about something deep and human. Was it important for you to blend these two and did any films or filmmakers influence that choice?

I did not actively try to do that. Honestly, I have come to realise there are so many laughable points in the film, only after screening it for so many people. I think this has happened because of how inherently instinctive laughing is to us when we see something so tragic that it is beyond our bounds of comprehension. If you really think about it, apart from a few dialogues of the peddler Lal Bhai, there aren’t any such dialogues that are inherently funny in themselves. It is the situation that Sehar, the protagonist, and we, as the audience, find ourselves in that leaves us with no option but to laugh about it.

The camera work and the visual mood of the film are something that make it so you. How important were visuals to you? Let us know the process behind it.

They held such a massive role in the whole film because I wanted it to look like a visual treat. I wanted the visuals to carry people throughout the story of Sehar, and the best way to do that was to make the camera (and the audience, through it) feel like it was a third person closely observing this character's journey through his problems, his decisions, and their consequences. That was a key reason behind going for those long one-takes, too. My inspirations for the visuals and the colours were also films that I love with all my heart, like Birdman and Whiplash, so I, with my DOP Tushar Singh, wanted to do justice to those inspirations to our best capacities. Which, I think we did, because everybody who watches the film tells me that they never felt like it was 30 minutes long, which is greatly made possible by the visuals being as immersive as they were.

Lastly, if you were ever offered The Pill yourself, would you take it? Why or why not?

I think I definitely would, and that is why I have written this story. Even while writing it, I wrote everything, asking myself — ‘what would I do if I were in this situation?’ Because the character we see in the film is 100% me. I am so easily overwhelmed by emotions that I would take The Pill at the first opportunity. I shouldn’t, haha. But I know I would (multiple times, too).

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Are you a fan of Priyanshu's storytelling? Please share with us in the comments below.