'Apna Bombay Talkies took four months to create'

The song Apna Bombay Talkies from upcoming film, Bombay Talkies, pays homage to all the stars who have ruled Bollywood over the course of 100 years of Indian cinema. The entire song is eight minutes long...

The song Apna Bombay Talkies from upcoming film, Bombay Talkies, pays homage to all the stars who have ruled Bollywood over the course of 100 years of Indian cinema. The entire song is eight minutes long, and only four minutes have been aired on TV so far.





"The eight-minute version will be seen only in theatres. It pays tribute to Kishore Kumar, KL Saigal and the musical journey of the film industry. It also features every superstar over the past decade," says producer Ashi Dua.



From Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Manoj Kumar, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan to Rishi Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha, Ashok Kumar, Zeenat Aman and Sunil Dutt, everyone has been incorporated in the song. "For the first four minutes, we have taken their video clips to pay tribute; the next four minutes are what you see on the TV promo, which includes stars like Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan," says Ashi.



Elaborating on the video clips used in the song, she adds, "We have captured Madhubala from Mughal-E-Azam (1960) and Naya Daur (1957), Bachchan from Yaarana (1981) and Sholay (1975), Vinod Khanna from Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Feroz Khan from Qurbaani (1980), Dimple Kapadia from Saagar (1985), Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna from Daag (1973) and Kishore Kumar and Sunil Dutt from Padosan (1968). When you see the song, we have tried to match the clips to the song in a way that

they look like they are lip-syncing to it. It looks beautiful."

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The song took composer Amit Trivedi and choreographer Vaibhavi Merchant four months to complete. However it wasn’t an easy job for Amit and Vaibhavi to pull through the video. "It was very difficult to do the song because we were capturing every actor over the decades. It took four months to compile the whole song," says Ashi.



A sweet gesture

Celebrating 100 years of cinema, Bombay Talkies (BT) is a compilation of four short films that pay ode to the film industry. Close to 500 people, including artistes and crew, have worked on the project. Now, as a token of appreciation, the four directors — Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Zoya Akhtar — want to do something special for the entire cast and crew. A source says, "BT was made on a tiny budget, but had one of the highest number of people working on it.



So, as a goodwill gesture, all four directors are sending individual cakes to everyone to say thank you."



- Shalvi Mangaokar

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