“I was confident that I could count on my painting skills,” says Pravalya Duddupudi, while discussing a rough patch in her professional sphere when she looked for freelance work as an artist to supplement her income. The Hyderabad-based multi-disciplinary artist, skilled in calligraphy, painting, sculpture and interior design, made the audience and the Telugu film industry take note of her production design for the film Gaami. Her work did not end with designing nearly a dozen sets. The film’s title logo, symbolic of the yin and yang of the circle of life, and the calligraphy of text inserts such as ‘14 days to malapatra (magic mushrooms)’, accompanied by imagery, were her handiwork.
In a freewheeling conversation at a cafe in Hyderabad, Pravalya talks about handling multiple responsibilities fuelled by the creative urge. “For a year, I barely slept a few hours. I had a day job (at an interior design firm) and worked on the film late evenings and nights. The dopamine rush kept me going. I don’t know if I can pull off something like that again, unless a script interests me.”
The 28-year-old is among the handful of female production designers in Telugu cinema. Gaami was the first film she signed, and since it had been in the making for a few years, the films she took on later, Ashoka Vanamlo Arjuna Kalyanam and Ustaad, were released earlier.
