We should feel it at every stage - on paper, during narration, while shooting, and finally, on screen. Whenever I go to shoot or work on a film, the excitement the team and I feel about a project is crucial. But more than a genre or an idea, it is about what excites you. Q: You have shared that you are an admirer of ‘intense’ films. When I discussed it with a few more people, I heard them going, ‘Nalla irukku la?’ That egged me to work on it. But by the end of the day, the story had become just a little bigger. I had seen the report and was just talking about it with my assistants. While one may come across several stories and ideas, what makes an idea worth expanding into a film? Q: You have mentioned that the spark for Kaithi came from a newspaper clip. Imagine how precise we need to be about continuity. We shoot for 60-61 days to tell a story that happens in six hours. It might sound easy to write a story that unravels over a small duration, but in reality, it is tough. I guess the writing and execution comes more naturally to me in such stories. Q: Perhaps we can call it your comfort zone? And we settled on Kaithi, a complete action film. I wanted to make a film that is in the same zone as Maanagaram, but in a different genre. But I chose this because this was right up my alley, while those scripts needed more work. I had earlier worked on two other scripts. I can’t exactly say that it is what the story demands. Do you like writing stories that happen in restricted periods? Kaithi is a story that happens in the span of a single night. Q: Maanagaram, your first film, was a story that happened over 48 hours.