Kartikeya 2

Express News Service Karthikeya 2 is growing bigger with each passing day and Karthik Gattamneni, who served as the director of the photography and editor, couldn’t be happier. It is the culmination of a journey that began before the pandemic, crossed multiple waves, faced roadblocks ahead of the release, and finally emerged as a winner. Shot across several locations, from Dwaraka to Greece and Spain to Portugal, Karthikeya 2 was indeed a journey, a fruitful one, of course. As we catch up for a conversation over Zoom days after the film’s release, Karthik shares how the team incorporated various locations into the script. “Since the film is about Sri Krishna, we were connecting the dots from our research about Uddhava’s journey and started mapping some places. Govardhan Giri, for instance, was one such location. I had picturised it as a perfect triangular structure in my mind but in reality, it looked like a normal hill. It is then I felt we should opt for a more cinematic look and we started fictionalising it. Filmmaker Chadoo Mondeti wanted me to be a part of the scripting process and we would often toss ideas about where specific sequences should be set in. As the script was being penned, we were creating a route map parallelly. At times, it was confusing whether we were looking at a script or a route map. I think the unison of these two facets helped us a lot.” The film’s most visually striking part is an action and chase sequence set on a frozen lake. Karthik’s experi...