In the past few years, quite a few talented actors and filmmakers from the Northeast have left their mark in world cinema. The names of Adil Hussain, Rima Das, Bhaskar Hazarika, and Geetanjali Thapa among others  have become synonymous with a brave new kind of Indian cinema that has a global appeal. At the same time, technical experts from different parts of the Northeast have started to make their presence felt.

Be it a cinematographer or a sound designer technical experts are an indispensible part of the craft of filmmaking.

Storytelling through the medium of cinema is after all both an art and technique. Sushmit Bob Nath, an FTII graduate from Silchar town of Barak Valley in Assam is one such expert who has made a name for himself as a sound designer par excellence who has been part of some acclaimed projects.

In a freewheeling chat with Subhadeep Dutta (via telephone) the Silchar lad spoke about his remarkable journey  in films, the special bond of friendship he shares with Assamese filmmaker Rima Das and a lot more.

Nath who has worked in acclaimed films like Chauthi Koot, Bhavesh Joshi, Rama Raghav 2.0, and Bulbul Can Sing among others is a firm believer that cinema is beyond language.

“ The story and how it is being said creatively and technically makes all the difference”, he says. So, when he got the opportunity to work in his first Assamese film with none other than director Rima Das he felt special professionally as well as personally.

“ Bulbul Can Sing was my first Assamese film and in a way it was the symbolic union of Barak and Brahmaputra Valley”, Nath iterated.

Brahmaputra Valley has its own film industry which has produced quite a few gems over the years that have left an indelible mark in Indian cinema as a whole.  How can Barak Valley be left behind? 

“ Rima is very talented. I mean the way she tells her stories, the way she gets performances from her actors is amazing since most of them are non-actors”, Nath added. Both of them can be expected to work together as  a team in the future also.

Rima is currently working on the sequel of Village Rockstars besides she is going to direct her first Hindi film, he informed. “ She is also someone who does not interfere much and it is an easy process to work with her. Now she also prefers to work with me. It looks like a long collaboration...hopefully”,  the sound designer said.

However Nath is not someone who likes to blindly follow the director’s handbook. “ I believe great directors are the ones who improvise. When you strictly follow the script things do not turn out to be as great as expected”, he iterated.

He also prefers to get involved in a project right from the beginning. “ Sometimes beautiful accidents happen in terms of sound in shooting. Otherwise it becomes really very difficult to imagine if you don’t go on location”, he insists.

The sound designer also highlighted that in Europe and America people who do location sound generally do not get  involved in the post-production stage.

Interestingly, there is one documentary film, Machines by director Rahul Jain which occupies a special place in the filmography of Nath. It has earned a lot of appreciation from all over the world. In that film everything in terms of sound was done in the post-production stage.

“ I came onboard when a sizeable chunk of the film was already shot. I immediately realised that it could be very powerful with so much to explore as far as  man-machine relationship was concerned”, he said.

The factory in which the film was shot was actually owned by the grandfather of the film’s director at some point in the past.

 ‘ I spent almost a month in that factory and recorded the sounds of all the machines from different perspectives. It was the first Indian documentary to be mixed on Dolby Atmos”, he said before acknowledging that designing sound for documentaries is far more challenging than fiction.

There were reports that during the lockdown phase earlier this year sound engineers had captured ‘pure sounds’ when the din and bustle of everyday life was absent.

But Nath says that he keeps recording sounds whenever it is possible or if he visits a new location. “In India be it in big cities or small towns there is always some construction activity going on or somebody is honking nearby. We don’t value silence that much. You feel the difference when you go abroad where even in big cities there is hardly any noise”, he maintained.

These days there are many softwares  that have expanded the horizons of sound designing in the post-production stage. Nath recently finished working on a documentary on  pollution in Delhi with director Rahul Jain for which he used sounds of firecrackers during Diwali recorded 9 years ago when he was a student at FTII . “Me and a friend recorded those sounds from the terrace of our hostel building. All these years I never got the chance to use that sound but in this documentary there were a couple of sequences where that sound blended in nicely”,  Nath said.

 Talking of being a student, Nath used to be a musician  before he discovered the magic of films. He was a part of a musical band in his college days back in his home town.

Later Sushmit and Anis John, an award winning sound designer were part of a band at FTII. He says a background in music helps in sound designing.

“ Every film has its own rhythm its own beat. If you have a musical background it helps in understanding that and you can lay your sound without breaking the rhythm”, he pointed out. At the same time music and films are different.

You cannot replicate in films what you would do in a musical background, according to Nath.  

He thinks that institutes such as FTII play a huge role in bridging the gap between less affluent sections of the society and a bourgeois art form like cinema.

 “ See whether we like or not it is an art form of the rich or intelligent people. It isn’t easy to break into the fold”, Nath says.

He insists that if he had not studied in FTII he would not have ended up where he is today. “ Having said that not everyone who goes through FTII makes it big”, the sound designer added.

The Northeast is a unique  in many ways. Being someone who  has grown up in this part of the world the region  has  undoubtedly played a huge role in shaping his consciousness as a citizen of today’s globalised world.

Everyone has so much to say one cannot compartmentalise things in terms of regions, he says while acknowledging that people from diverse backgrounds should come into filmmaking.

“ Our culture in the Northeast is much more inclusive. People here value art more and respect women. Also you grow with a lot of greenery around which is not the case in most other places”, Nath signed off.