Exploring the challenges and creative wins on “Girls Will Be Girls”

ARRI interviewed Director Shuchi Talati and DP Jih-E Peng about their experiences filming in India and their creative approach to the film.

Shuchi, you were born and raised in India, studied at the American Film Institute, and are now based in New York City. “Girls Will Be Girls” takes us back to India, where you also shot the film. Have you worked in India before? What inspired you to return to India for this project?

Shuchi Talati: After my undergrad in English literature, a postgraduate diploma in communications, and various work experiences in India, I came to the US to get my MFA in Directing from the American Film Institute and have now been here for 15 years. But when I sat down to write, my mind immediately returned to India. I try to find narratives that allow me to interrogate ideas, themes, and events that arouse strong emotions in me and feel unresolved. And I guess a lot of these are related to India! Many of my formative memories are in India and there were ideas about female agency and desire that I longed to explore.

In 2022, ARRI had the pleasure of supporting the UnderCurrent Lab, India’s first training program for women in the fields of grip and lighting. Could you tell us a little more about your experience with the program and your vision of having lab participants become team members for “Girls Will Be Girls”?

Shuchi Talati: The idea of UnderCurrent Lab was born when we were trying to build our crew so it would be led by mostly women. We wanted to create a safe space for the young actors to do brave and vulnerable work and at the same time, we wanted to create an environment for the women on the crew, who have often had to be in very male spaces on film sets. Finding a female gaffer in India was nearly impossible, so co-producer Tanya Negi proposed a training program.

Thanks to the support of Indian producer Richa Chadha, French producer Claire Chassagne, and the Institut français, the idea gained significant momentum. We are also deeply grateful for the backing of ARRI and Light N Light, one of India’s foremost lighting rental companies. Being chosen by the Berlinale Talents Footprint MasterCard Enablement Programme made UnderCurrent Lab a reality.

Nine women from forty applicants, were accepted into the program, which included an intensive course at Light N Light and a two-month internship. Many of our trainees ended up working with Light N Light crews on everything from commercials to series to feature films, and one, Chaitali Mitra, joined the lighting crew on “Girls Will Be Girls.” Several of the UnderCurrent fellows are now working as gaffers! And we are in the second edition of our lab.

Jih-E, it was your first time shooting in India. Given that technical staff in India is often hired along with equipment from rental companies, how did you find the collaboration with your camera, lighting, and grip teams?

Jih-E Peng: I received great advice from cinematographer Farhad Dehlvi, who helped me navigate some of the differences in the industry system between India and the US and was provided additional tips and resources from the Indian Women Cinematographers Collective.

Crew pairing with rental companies was new to me, as was the baseline size of crews in India. Indian crews are usually much larger, and for both creative and logistical reasons we wanted to keep our crew on the smaller side.

The system of hiring a team and gear from the same rental house sometimes meant that a rental house with the gear I required would not necessarily have the gaffer or camera team I wanted. I cannot overemphasize how major the support from ARRI’s International Support Program was—it provided me with significantly more flexibility in sourcing the right pieces to put the puzzle together, which allowed me to pursue options that would have otherwise been incredibly difficult on a budget of our size.

My fantastic team included Akanksha Shyam as 1st AC, who both nailed focus and was an excellent leader and translator between the local camera team and myself. The camera team was adept and warm, and despite language barriers, we formed a great bond.

Our lighting team, led by Sajid Saikh from All Film Equipment, was exceptional. They understood my vision and adapted to my style, including working with a smaller crew. Sajid and his team, including Chaitali Mitra from the UnderCurrent cohort, surpassed expectations, making the process seamless and collaborative.

“Girls Will Be Girls” is the intimate story of a 16-year-old girl exploring her sexuality while being a role model at a strict boarding school. Were these contrasts reflected in your cinematography?

Jih-E Peng: Mira’s character exists within a strict and patriarchal system, most conspicuously within her school life. We tried to emphasize those contextual pressures and her place in them by playing with her headroom and with rigid, symmetrical frames and hard lines. This sense of confinement even extends to her home, where we utilized a strong recurrence of frames within frames.

The camera is very much seated within Mira’s emotional perspective. In moments where Mira retreats into herself, we use a looser camera that moves with her. We also developed a visual language to determine how close we were to Mira, what lenses to use, and the appropriate aperture for different emotional beats. Early in the film, she is often framed in wide shots with deeper focus, emphasizing this sense of conformity. In contrast, in key intimate moments and often in the home, we come closer, and the lens opens wide to isolate her in the frame.

Color was important in distinguishing Mira’s worlds. The school tended cooler and felt more impersonal, while her home lives in warmer, richer tones. Her mother, Anila, who represents a step outside traditional societal expectations, is very much defined in these same warm tones. The home’s compositions also become busier, with layered textures and shots through multiple rooms.

How did you determine the format and lenses to achieve your visual intention?

Jih-E Peng: Shuchi really wanted to emphasize this contrast between the top of the film—when Mira is literally and figuratively high on a mountain—into the later scenes, when the walls would almost close in around her. We spoke a lot about the differences between emotional interiority and externalization, which factored very heavily into the choice of camera and lenses.

We couldn’t do extensive lens tests due to time and logistics, so we reviewed old tests and focused on lenses that would “cradle” Mira’s face. This film requires so much gentleness. We chose vintage Zeiss Super Speed MKIIIs for their softness and character. And, like the ALEXA Mini, they were workhorses that were not only beautiful to the eye, but ergonomically unbeatable.

At what point did you decide for the 4:3 aspect ratio?

Jih-E Peng: During our preparations, we often looked at art references and would visit museums together. One clear example of this was the choice of the film’s 4:3 aspect ratio, which partially came from looking at a lot of Chinese-style landscape painting and the verticality of those depictions. In the film, Mira exists within an extremely structured space in a patriarchal society. We spoke about how that little bit of additional vertical space could be utilized to highlight her external constraints. 4:3 was a special ratio in that it could simultaneously bridge that sense while also allowing for a more personal and intimate world.

We shot in the 4:3 2.8K format with the ALEXA Mini to maximize the use of the full sensor area. The other major consideration I had with choosing format was around our lighting choices. I knew I wanted to shoot sunlight and exteriors at exposure as much as possible to lend a certain gravity to the scenes and allow the play between shadow and light to emphasize the relationships between the characters.

As we know, shooting exteriors at exposure when filming interiors typically requires a ton of firepower, which we just didn’t have the resources for. The major boon of the ALEXA Mini is still its impressive latitude. I’ve shot with the model for many years now and can light to its latitude by heart. We were able to get extremely close to my references with just a combination of the ALEXA Mini and smaller, big-bang-for-the-buck units like the M40 and M18, which are must-haves for me on any request list. With a lesser sensor there would have been much greater struggles.

The main character’s journey of initial inner excitement and crackling tension takes a distant and aloof course. Apart from the staging of her acting, did you change anything to support this change, e.g., the lighting, the footage, the framing? 

Shuchi Talati: The film is shot from Mira’s perspective. We do not see anything that she doesn’t see, we do not know anything that she doesn’t know. And most importantly, our perspective on the other characters—her mother, Anila and her boyfriend, Sri—shifts only as Mira changes her own. This was essential in how we shot, edited, and sound-designed the film.

Jih-E Peng: In this film and in our last one, I wanted to really play with the movement of the “sun” for what it did emotionally for the characters, and to create a hyper-specificity of time. Having the harsh sunlight splash on parts of the interiors while the characters lived in its bounce light also gave a contrast that lent the scenes some gravity. At Mira’s age, everything feels like life and death, and the minute moments feel like years; it was important that the lighting reflected that quality and seriousness.

I make it a point to try and light scenes instead of shots. This meant we built out the setup at the top of each scene as fully as possible to minimize turnaround time throughout the process, giving as much room as possible for Shuchi and the actors.

Jih-E, you operated the camera yourself. Is the use of handheld, Steadicam, and tracking shots something that was decided from the outset as part of the concept? How closely did you work with Mira?

Jih-E Peng: The choices made regarding camera movement were primarily influenced by Mira’s perspective. Shuchi and I spoke about how much the rigidity of the unmovable frame created a sense of unbearable tension, and how we could utilize it in contrast to a softer, gentler handheld motion that would move with Mira, especially at the top of the film, as she finds small moments for herself away from the spaces where she can feel herself being perceived. The handheld deliberately begins to feel less soft and takes on a slightly jerkier quality later in the film as she feels her worlds closing in on her.

A big reason why we selected the ALEXA Mini as our camera was for its size—the fact that we could break the camera down to a tight setup allowed me to maximize my choices for handheld movement. We could strip it all down and give it a rougher feeling or add more weight for better stabilization to create gentler movement for the scenes. I’ve been shooting with the Mini for many years now and it remains one of the most flexible camera bodies that exists, catering to a variety of scenarios.

I had a playful relationship with Preeti Panigrahi (Mira), and I worked to build an atmosphere of trust with her. In a film exploring teenage sexuality, it was extremely important for me to ensure that the actors knew that we were watching out for them and that they had agency in the process. For intimate scenes, we would take photos of what each shot would look like and get the actors’ approval before we went through with it. We did everything we could to make sure that at every point in the process they felt like they had the power to say no, and that their “no” was heard.

Production Credits:

Produced by: Dolce Vita Films (France), Pushing Buttons Studio (India), Crawling Angels Films (India)
In co-production with: Hummel Films (Norway), Cinema Inutile (USA), Blink Digital (India), Arte Cofinova (France)

Photos : Kent Bassett, Jih-E Peng
​​​​​​​Opening Image: The creative team behind “Girls Will Be Girls,” director Shuchi Talati (left) and DP Jih-E Peng.