This article is the fourth in a series of articles featuring movie posters from across India, released and unreleased works too, for their merit. Keep watching this series for more.
24am, a Chennai-based agency founded by Tuney John, showed us some promise after it caught our attention with the posters for Jigarthanda. For some context, in Tamil Nadu, cinema fans can tend to be fanatics, many literally worship their film stars.
Though the industry has evolved, it is perhaps very slow and still too commercial for designers to have much of a free hand here. But cutting away from this is the youthful creativity of Tuney and his team of 8.
“Jigarthanda,” explains Tuney, “comes as a combination of the words, Jigar (meaning heart) and Thanda (meaning cold). [Neither of the two words are Tamil.] It’s just a colloquial slang.” The story of Jigarthanda is that of a young, aspiring film director who wishes to make a gangster movie in Madurai, a city notoriously infamous for its local mob. The youthful spirit of the movie comes through in the posters.
“The director [Karthik Subbaraj] is a friend and I was on-board from the very beginning. Basically, the concept was unfinished art. Because everything that the protagonist tries to do in the story remains incomplete till the end, due to problems that arise whilst making his movie.”
The ‘unfinished’ art in the posters has been hand-drawn by one of the designers at 24am and the digital compositing was done by Tuney. Jigarthanda is also a rose-coloured drink served on the roadsides of Madurai, a cool drink to beat the heat, and so it was natural to use a vibrant, bright pink throughout.
The Recycle Bin
While most designers were reluctant to share the unreleased works because of their obligations to their clients, some of those who were more willing preferred to call it the “recycle bin” versions… because ideas never die out.
We also got our hands on the unreleased/unused posters for Jigarthanda, thanks to 24am and Tuney, which show a different take, bang on in terms of explaining the film, but not as viable commercially.
We hope you enjoyed 24am’s work. For more, browse through their Behance.
A version of this article was published in Kyoorius 26.