The web series Sin, streaming on Addatimes, has been receiving positive feedback. “The response has been overwhelming. It’s been a long journey of 1.5 years from conceptualising to the completion of the series,” says director Arunava Khasnobis.

The Telegraph chats with Arunava...

Why make it into a series and not a film?

Our nostalgia is related to episodic structures, from Nukkad, Hum Log days. I have always felt it to be a challenge to make the audience wanting to wait for the next episode. Besides, the story needed to be told in episodes as it has a very large spectrum to cover. Cinema is becoming an intimate experience now as compared to the mass media nature it had even a decade ago. With digital platforms gaining a lot of popularity, the audience can now have cinematic experience through mobile devices, computers and smart TV. However, this digital platform trend demands overhauling of the nature of filmmaking and script structure and that’s what inspired me to explore web as a media. Moreover, since the story demanded an expanse of characters and plots, it was inevitable to make it into a web series only, rather than a web film.

You have mentioned that this is not just a thriller. Why?

Thrillers, traditionally, is about a detective or a ‘super cop’ getting into the maze of mysteries and solving it at the end. Every story traditionally has a ‘hero’ and a ‘villain’. Although this model works in cinema, web being an intimate experience, needs more realistic portrayal of characters. In real life, we all have grey shades and that’s what I’ve tried to portray in the series. All the characters are sketched as close to reality as possible. Besides, there is a strong parallel story of lifestyle and relationship crisis of the millennial generation. Hence, it does not remain a thriller only. Even the protagonist Samar, the investigating officer, has his own flaws. His troubled past chases him continuously.

Tell us about the principal characters.

The story revolves around three primary characters. Samar the cop, and Faizan and Parveen, the millennial couple. Samar is played by Aryan D. Roy. Parveen is played by Sweta Mishra. This is her debut web series. Faizan is played by Lakshya Punjabi, who has also acted in Bengali TV for some years apart from acting in a few web series in Mumbai. We wanted a fresh pair of faces to play Faizan and Parveen. The challenge was to cast actors with spontaneity, willingness to learn and having good language skills. They needed to be good in Hindi. There is a lot of untapped potential in our industry, and I love to identify those and explore them. The casting process was a very tedious process which lasted two months with over 2,000 auditions being held.

Tell us about the plot of Sin.

A mysterious death of a young girl in the hills leads to a world of high-profile organised crime in Calcutta, involving drugs, sex-trafficking and murders. While a reluctant police officer meanders through the maze of missing clues and a troubled past, a young couple gets entangled in a journey to explore their carnal fantasies. The exploration reveals a dark secret leaving both the couple and the police officer disoriented and at the brink of collapse.

Why make the series in Hindi?

We felt that the nature of the story had more national relevance. This is not a story of a conventional Bengali household. And we wanted to show nationally what the Bengal film/web industry can achieve with our limited resources.

We have seen many crime thrillers. How is this different?

The primary difference lies in its story and script structure. We have built a fast-paced narrative with more than 30 principal characters. The uniqueness of the series lies in how each of the characters are important in taking the story forward. As a writer and a maker, it is very challenging to keep the audience engaged in web shows, since they have so many choices. Besides, the genre of films for theatres is already going through a sea change, where people expect a larger-than-life experience. Web is an intimate medium where a filmmaker can interact more intimately with the audience. I love that aspect of web films and series.