19 hours Ago
Babil Khan says filming his next, Logout, was 'challenging'. He compares it to going to 'an acting school and learning the craft'. Babil Khan is gearing up for the release of Logout.
After its screening at the River To River Indian Film Festival in Florence last year, it’s all set for its digital premiere on Zee5 on April 18. The film sees Babil playing a social media influencer grapping with the duality of digital fame, who faces dark consequences of the digital world that now controls and manipulates his life. Speaking to News18 Showsha exclusively, he talks about his experience of working on the film that led him to ‘act for the first time’.
He says, “It was very challenging for me because I really depend on my co-actors. I feed off their energy and the environment including the props. But in this case, there was nothing around me.
For the first time, I had to act. Before Logout, in all other films, I would only react. Reacting used to be acting for me.
But this film taught me the craft of it." For the unversed, for most part of Logout, it’s just Babil shouldering every frame, with gadgets like a laptop and a headphone being his only co-actor. He further adds, “I had to land every line on the beat, otherwise the pacing of the film would get affected.
This film had to be paced properly. I don’t know how Amit (Golani; director) sir did it because Biswa (Biswapati Sarkar; writer) sir’s writing is very intricate. There are loops inside loops inside loops.
I had to land every beat on time while not reacting to anything. I had to trust my imagination. It was like going to an acting school and learning the craft.
" Logout also gave him the chance to understand his own instincts as an actor, which became instrumental for his journey ahead. “For the first time, I had to lean on my imagination and trust that it would take me to this place I needed to go without having a person interact with me and me feeding off their energy. I had to solely trust myself," says the Qala and Friday Night Plan actor.
What spoke to Babil about Logout was, in fact, an epiphany and his judgment against those thriving on social media for ‘validation’. “I was on a journey where I was being judgemental of everything in life. I would judge people and situations too quickly.
And I wanted to be curious rather than judgmental. I was so far away from posting things on social media and obsessing over likes and engagements," he points out. Babil continues, “I wanted to know why people are obsessed with these things and what’s the motivator that pushes them to surrender their entire lives, individuality, self-worth and authenticity to the dopamine release stemming from a like and the validation that’s externally coming from a platform that doesn’t really exist in a sense.
I wanted to understand how one’s self-worth gets lost with validation becoming more important, and Logout gave me the chance.".
