Sanjay Kapoor on shooting The Gone Game at home: ‘It was a challenging experience’

Sanjay Kapoor shares the challenges he faced as he shot at home for the recent thriller series, The Gone Game.

Actor Sanjay Kapoor has shared the novel experience of shooting at home while working on Gone Game. Directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, the thriller also Arjun Mathur and Shweta Tripathi Sharma. The four-part series premiered online recently. Shot during pandemic, it was filmed by actors themselves.

Sharing how challenging the experience was, Sanjay told Mid Day, “As an actor, it was a challenging experience. Here, I have not met any of my co-actors, which has never happened before. We only met over Zoom calls. We had to do everything on our own — from placing the camera to brightening the lights. I had to deliver my lines without having a co-star to react to them.”

Talking about the change in working style of the film industry - from the time he earlier worked in films, Sanjay told Hindustan Times last week, “We do workshops now. For my next show, which is with a major streaming platform, we had fitting tests, and the cast met each other. It wasn’t like landing up on sets on the first day and saying, ‘Who is this person?’.”

“What a 25-minute short film (Lust Stories) did for me, a two-and-a-half hour blockbuster didn’t! Things have become more professional, and the only way to survive is if you have a bound script. Earlier, if the shooting was supposed to start at nine in the morning, it would start at 12.30pm. Now, be it a digital film or anything, the material output is per day. In my days of Raja, Prem (both 1995), whatever we did in a day and a half, today, it’s done in a day, with better quality and professionalism. That’s the best change,” he added.

About Sanjay’s latest outing, Hindustan Times said in The Gone Game review: “The show taps into the idea of isolation rather well. The restrictions leave little room for flamboyance but they encourage invention. Aided by a groovy jazz-inspired score that regularly enters the ring when the screenplay runs out of steam, The Gone Game is an effective attempt at experimental cinema.”