Musician of Oscar-winning ‘Smile Pinki’ is thrilled

Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 4:03 pm

A Boston-based Indian composer says he is “thrilled” to be part of the Oscar-winning Megan Mylan directed short documentary ‘Smile Pinki’ for which he had to race against time to score music for it in just three days.

Ace Guitarist and composer Prasanna, who had worked with Oscar-winning music composer A R Rahman, was involved in the composition, performance, recording and mixing the music for ‘Smile Pinki’, the tale of a Uttar Pradesh girl and her fight against the social stigma of a cleft-lip.

Sharing his experiences, the 38-year-old musician told PTI in an e-mail interview that Megan came to know about him from a common friend and she called him and told him about the documentary.

“She was orginally thinking of licensing some excerpts from various Indian classical CDS for the music but after our first phone conversation, she was convinced that an original score would be a great idea but the time was too short as she had her final sound edit schedules all confirmed,” he said.

As it turned out, he had “just three days one day to see the film; one day to record and mix the entire music and one more day for some minor corrections she wanted, and it was all done.”
Surprisingly, Prasanna and Megan never met each other.

Prasanna graduated from IIT Chennai but music was his passion and he plunged into it whole-heartedly. He was felicitated by his alma mater here yesterday (March 18).

Everything was discussed over the phone and Megan could not make it for the recording sessions either. “But she gave me an accurate cue sheet and we were both clear about what is needed and trusted each other.I still haven’t met Megan interestingly,” Prasanna said.

‘Smile Pinki’ was his first documentary score and he is “of course thrilled” that it won an Oscar.

Prasanna, a trained carnatic musician, learned the compositions from late Tiruvarur Balasubramaniam for six years and with violinist Kum. A Kanyakumari.

The instruments he used for the score were acoustic guitar, sitar, tabla, flute and “a touch of tambura and shakers here and there.”

Prasanna, who said he was “hopeful but did not know” if the film, a true story of Pinki Sonkar could win an Oscar.

“Unlike Slumdog Millionaire and big commercial films like that which have huge marketing and buzz-building very few people would have seen ‘Smile Pinki’ or any of the other wonderful documentary films which got nominated so it’s more difficult to predict which would win,” he said.

Prasanna said the film has already transformed the life of Pinki Sonkar and so many other children born with cleft lip.

“Indian government is also waking up to the reality and is now interested in doing more for this. The film’s success obviously will have a powerful impact on the big social issue.

“As for myself, well, it was just another day albeit an exciting day at the Oscars. My work has been critically acclaimed and I am happy with that.”

On A R Rahman’s Oscar success, Prasanna said he was “personally thrilled for him as a friend, as a colleague and as a collaborator. I knew that Rahman would get an Oscar for this even before the film became a commercial success.”

He said he saw the film in the US in November end “way before all the hype happened.

“Rahman was true to himself, did music that is what comes to him naturally, did not pander to Hollywood and at the end of it, one can see from the Hollywooder’s angle that his score was so refreshing in the midst of other Hollywood scores which haven’t changed one bit in the last 25 years or so.” Prasanna had worked in many Rahman’s movies, including ‘Lagaan’.

On Resul Pookutty who won the Oscar for sound mixing, he said Resul was involved in editing the sound for one of his concert projects more than ten years ago.

(With inputs from Agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

Musician of Oscar-winning ‘Smile Pinki’ is thrilled

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