The brand reached out to us with the script and entrusted us to bring it to life cinematically on the big screen. The film captures Rahul Dravid's enduring association with Bloom, portraying him as a Bloomer who finds comfort and respite in the brand. Through his compelling narrative, we integrated the essence of Bloom, creating a cinematic journey that resonates with the viewer.
The script, written by Bloom, looked back at Rahul Dravid's journey through the idea of reliability.
Few people embody the word quite like he does. Across decades, different roles and different moments in Indian cricket, there has been something remarkably consistent about Rahul Dravid.
The film drew from that association, almost as a reminiscence of his journey, before bringing it back to Bloom and the promise the brand wanted to make.
If reliability is something Rahul Dravid has come to represent, Bloom wanted to be a name he could vouch for with the same confidence.
It gave us a simple emotional centre for the film. We weren't trying to create another celebrity endorsement. We wanted the association between the person and the brand to feel earned.
Finding the frame within a real space
Shooting inside an operational property brings with it a very different set of considerations from shooting on a set.
When we construct a hotel room for a film, we're rarely constructing a literal hotel room. Walls can move. There is space behind the camera. Lights, stands, crew and equipment can live just outside the frame.
Here, the architecture already existed. We had to think along the lines of how to make the existing space work for the image rather than compromise the image for the space?
Lighting, camera placement, equipment and crew movement all had to be planned around what the property allowed us to do. Every setup needed to be considered not only for how it looked, but for how quickly we could move into the next one.
With approximately three hours of filming time, efficiency wasn't simply a production concern. It became part of the filmmaking itself.
Three hours with The Wall
Then Rahul Dravid walked onto set.
There is something slightly surreal about directing someone whose story you've known long before you've ever met them.
But what stayed with us after the shoot wasn't the stature of the person we had just filmed. It was how little of that stature he carried into the room.
He was incredibly humble, gracious and wonderfully easy to work with. There was no sense of the clock being held over the production, despite how limited our time with him was. He worked with us through the setups and made what could have been an extremely high-pressure few hours feel remarkably easy.
We completed the film and the photoshoot within our allotted window.
Despite the tight timelines and the challenges of shooting within an existing space, this was one of those wonderfully enjoyable days on set. Working with Rahul Dravid was every bit as lovely as one would hope — gracious, humble and incredibly generous with the process. We walked away with a film we loved, but also with the memory of a shoot that reminded us why, after all these years, we still love making them.
