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Curtain Call: When film-making resembled like theatre rehearsals...
Those rehearsals helped us further identify problem areas in the scripts. Scenes that were working on paper, but felt flat while performing. We got a chance to improve them there and then instead of wasting everyone’s time on set
The writing process of “Nautanki Saala” started sometime during the end of May 2012. Actually, the project did not have an official title then and we were going ahead with the literal Hindi translation of the original French movie (named ‘Après Vous’) “Pehle Aap”.
I shifted to Mumbai since I knew that this was now a concrete project in hand. Also, this was the first project wherein a rough shooting schedule was already drawn up. So, there was a deadline to meet. That was because the actors had been finalised on the basis of the original film and they were kind enough to place their trust in us — writers.
Rohan just told me to go with the flow and continue creating scenes without moving away from the story of the original film. Also, time was of the essence as the actors had already given their dates. My friends had planned a weeklong vacation long before I had signed this film. But I looked at it like a perfect writing getaway. They would go out during the day, I would stay in the room and write non-stop. By the time they returned, it would usually be late and even I would get a chance to take a break and unwind.
I managed to write the entire flow of events of the film during the week and sent it to Rohan. It was a mixed document. Some scenes had dialogues. Others only had a scene description. I did this as I wanted him to have an idea of the complete picture as soon as possible. Even he responded well and resent the document to me, breaking it down in sequences. I knew the basic theory of screenwriting, that it had three main parts – introduction, conflict and resolution. I also knew that as a rule of thumb these three were also divided in percentages and that the “conflict” part would take up most of the pages of a script. To be honest, while writing my previous scripts, I used to start well but lose my way somewhere in the middle, and then try to salvage the end hurriedly. I was still developing my craft. Since I had a ready film handy while writing this script, I did not face that issue. But the breakdown of the script in sequences just opened my eyes to a different way of writing scripts – one that I tend to follow now.
Rohan and my co-writer Charudutt Acharya, introduced me to the eight-sequence approach to writing. It follows the three-act structure, but it further divides the script into smaller, manageable sequences. Also, writing in a film writing software helped in leaps and bounds. I had read a few screenplays before so I knew the syntax. But, actually using a software instead of a normal word processor made me write faster. And I finished the entire script, complete with dialogues and song situations in the coming week.
Once the script was ready, I took a printout and felt happy that I was able to write nearly a hundred and twenty pages! There was a problem with that too though. It meant that the film was most likely longer than it should have been. Usually one page is about a minute or seventy-five seconds of screen-time. Plus, there were four songs in the film. So, this was already a hundred-and-fifty-minute-long film. So, one of the most important part of the next draft was to edit it.
To do this, Charu, Rohan and I sat in one room and connected the laptop to the projector. We could now read the script on a much larger screen and that helped in focusing more on each and every written word. Without taking out any scene or any line of dialogue, we just changed the language of the scene descriptions and made similar cosmetic changes. We managed to make the script a lot cleaner and reduced its size by nearly seven pages!
After multiple readings of the script in front of different department heads and actors, even we started realising which scenes, which dialogues were working and which were not. Newer versions with changes were being created every day. Sometimes more than one newer version was written in a day.
As we neared the commencement of principal photography, rehearsals were organised. It was a pleasant surprise for me as they resembled a lot like theatre rehearsals, that I was used to. I felt at home here. Those rehearsals helped us further identify problem areas in the scripts. Scenes that were working on paper, but felt flat while performing. We got a chance to improve them there and then instead of wasting everyone’s time on set.
Principal photography began in a few weeks. It was a surreal feeling. Not only because I had written something. The script was in the hands of almost every person on set. Every department was referring to it while working. I was part of the team that had created a document which was the base for the work of every other department. I had never looked at a script from that point of view before, and now I cannot unsee that!
