The Knocker is inspired by an incident in the US, says director-actor Ananth Mahadevan

Many people stayed home during the COVID-19-induced lockdown last year. Such intense isolation for long peroids can trigger just about anything in a person. Filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan has chosen this as the subject of his upcoming short film, The Knocker.

“The whole idea was generated during the pandemic lockdown,” Ananth told Cinestaan. “A filmmaker like me gets withdrawal symptoms when they are not shooting and feels terribly restless. So, you have a camera and you have yourself. It’s like a challenge. How do you make a film? I realized it’s not difficult if you want to.”

The Knocker is inspired by a real-life incident, the filmmaker said. “I was looking at a lot of case studies of people who have been living alone," he said. "There was this intriguing case study in America of a man living all by himself for many years. One day, he felt he was not alone and there was somebody in the house.”

Ananth Mahadevan himself is the only artiste in the film. “I developed this main protagonist as a scriptwriter, not a very successful one," he said. "He is trying to write scripts and he is fascinated with the medium of cinema.”

The protagonist starts experiencing strange happenings in his house during the lockdown. “Somebody has written something on his bathroom mirror. What is constantly bugging him is feeling that somebody is at the door. Even when he is listening to music through his headphones, he can hear the knocks. But when he opens the door there is no one there. That’s when he calls up his psychiatrist for help,” the actor-director said.

The film is a psychological drama rather than a psychological thriller, Ananth explained. "It affects most of the people in the city who are all alone. Is whatever affecting you real or imaginary? And how do you exorcise this state of mind?”

Ananth Mahadevan has made films on real-life personalities like Mee Sindhutai Sapkal (2010) and the upcoming Dr Rakhmabai. “Those films were a full tribute to the people concerned," he said. "But this was a real-life case that I took up and developed on my own.”

He shot the film with a Sony HD camera. “But the problem was how are you going to focus and do things? I had to keep dummy objects where I was supposed to stand. I had to go up to the camera, focus it, then do the rest,” he said.

“I did a lot of moving camera [as well]," he continued. "There are shots where I am moving the camera and it’s on me. But it feels there is a steady cam operator following me. I had to make sure it doesn’t appear in the viewfinder that my right hand is holding something. I wanted to make it look like there was a cameraman on the set.”

Shooting the film himself also taught him something. “I realized that to make a film you don’t need anyone," the director said. "We go with these huge units of 80, 100 or 200 people. I keep telling my producers, please don’t crowd the sets, just give me the essentials — the light man, the cameraman. It should not go beyond 25, 30 or 40 people. Incidentally, the number of crew members has been cut after the pandemic to avoid crowding. Just goes to show we can achieve the same results with fewer heads.”