E-Paper
Hunting for greener pastures
Indian filmmakers have graduated to shooting their entire films - and not just songs - on foreign soil.
Haven’t you been intrigued by location changes in film after film, especially once the hero and heroine break into a song and dance routine? The scene preceding the song may have been canned in the backyard of an under-construction building or on the set of the streets of Chandni Chowk in Delhi, but the following song must be on the snow-clad Alps or in the Genting Highland Resorts of Malaysia or in the green seas of Mauritius. Till this happens, the film is not ‘happening’ enough!
In fact, today’s audiences are so used to such 'geographical glitches' that they may think that something is amiss if the camera doesn’t follow the imagination of the hero/heroine and transport them to some awesome foreign locale for the song sequence. Producers with lower budget outlays have to remain content with shooting their songs on scenic locations in India, the most done-to-death among them being Ooty.
Not just song-and-dance routines, but also chunks of scenes these days are shot on locations either abroad or in home territory. One of the biggest advantages of shooting on eye-filling locations is that it breaks the monotony of sets and/or indoor shooting. Fifty years ago, outdoor shooting was restricted to locations in India, like Kashmir, Mahabaleshwar, Lonavala, Mussoorie etc.
But as film budgets grew bigger and bigger, producers and directors became more and more lavish and began to cross frontiers to give their viewers (and their stars, of course!) free foreign trips, so to say. Today, it’s not just films but television serials too which are heading overseas.
Shooting abroad really came into its own a little over a decade ago, but the film that got filmmakers thinking of heading Westwards was Raj Kapoor’s Sangam in the early sixties. Among the other old films which brought plenty of foreign locales alive on the silver screen were Pachhi’s International Crook, Shakti Samanta’s An Evening In Paris and Great Gambler, Manoj Kumar’s Purab Aur Paschim, Brij Sadanah’s Night In London, the Sameer-Simi starrer Pasand Apni Apni and the Rajesh Khanna starrer, Aashiq Hoon Baharon Ka. Much later, in the mid-nineties, Rishi Kapoor debuted into direction with Aa Ab Laut Chalen which was shot about 70 per cent abroad.
Tracing the history of outdoor shootings, filmmaker Subhash Ghai says: "Shooting on locations started in the fifties. Rural India was exposed majorly in our films for about 20 years. Then came the era of family dramas and the focus shifted to lower middle class and middle class families. Gradually, you had films being shot in towns of India. In the seventies and eighties, Bombay and Delhi were where many film stories had their base. That’s when 5-star hotels and helicopters were shown on screen. Then came the television and satellite boom of the nineties. That gave the audience world exposure. Filmmakers, therefore, began to cook up NRI characters to shoot their films abroad. That’s how the visuals have broadened over the years.”
Adds the corporate and forward-looking filmmaker: “Even as writers and directors struggled with NRI subjects shot on foreign locations, Aamir Khan picked up a rural subject (Lagaan) and shot it in the backward Bhuj region in India. We are once again returning to our roots. I foresee a lot of films being shot on Indian locations in the years to come. Foreign shootings happened on such a big scale in the nineties, also because profit margins of producers were big. With the margins having declined now, shooting on locales in India makes more sense."
In the nineties, when Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge was released, it was loved as much for its Indian sentiments as for the foreign locations it was shot on. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol’s EU Rail journey in the film became a major attraction for the audience who got double their money’s worth - the love story itself and a trip around Europe!
In fact, tourism in Europe picked up so much after the stupendous success of DDLJ that we had trade and travel ministries from different countries wooing Indian film producers to shoot their films on eye-filling locales of their countries. Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Britain, Malaysia, Mauritius, Seychelles and Nepal are some of the countries which have been sending delegations to India specially to target film producers and lure them with concessions and state assistance.
Recently, Rakesh Roshan shot chunks of his Koi…Mil Gaya in Canada and New Zealand - two destinations which have become popular amongst film producers after trade delegations from these countries visited India some time ago. The Malaysian government’s enthusiasm to host the IIFA awards function in Genting Highlands Resorts and more recently in Singapore was also to attract Indian producers to shoot there.
From shooting songs and important scenes, producers have now graduated to shooting their entire films on foreign lands. Sanjay Gupta’s Kaante was almost completely shot in Los Angeles in a start-to-finish schedule. In fact, one of the considerations for taking Raju Patel as the third partner in the film was that since he was LA-based, he could handle the production there.
Gupta had decided to shoot the entire film abroad much before he had actually put the entire project together with his close friend Sanjay Dutt who is also one of the leading men of his film. Claimed to have cost the producers a whopping Rs. 32 Crore (this, in spite of Amitabh Bachchan, Sunil Shetty and Sanjay Dutt not having charged a single naya paisa towards their remunerations), the film was said to have gone grossly over-budget when technicians in LA got a big jump in salaries just before the Indian film went on the sets.
Dev Anand’s Love At Times Square is yet another film, which had a major portion of it shot overseas. As its title suggests, the story was set abroad. The clothes corporate, Pantaloon, shot its second film, Chura Liyaa Hai Tumne, about 75 per cent in Bangkok and other cities of Thailand. The thriller, which marked the debut of Sanjay Khan’s son, Zayed Khan, opposite Esha Deol.
One of the few success stories in Bollywood, Awara Paagal Dewana, had all its stunts shot in Muscat, with stuntmen and action teams from four countries including the USA and the UK, coordinating with their counterparts in India to give the viewers an experience hitherto unknown to Hindi cinema. Another release, Kehtaa Hai Dil Baar Baar, was not just shot completely in the US but was also produced by an Indian settled abroad. Lal Dadlaney, a first-time producer, was not new to films though, having distributed a number of Hindi films in the overseas territory.
Not all producers are fond of crossing the country shores to shoot their films. One of the biggest production houses in India, Rajshri, had till recently never shot its films abroad. But Sooraj Barjatya broke the Rajshri tradition and shot his Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon in New Zealand. On the other end are filmmakers like Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Boney Kapoor and Vashu Bhagnani whose films are not complete without one, two or more foreign shooting stints.
While Chopra prefers Switzerland, London and other European countries, Ghai shoots anywhere from Chamba (in India) to Canada depending on the requirements of the script. Boney and Bhagnani, on the other hand, don’t even need an excuse to cart their units abroad.
Despite Chopra’s penchant for shooting on foreign locations, his Saathiya had hardly any foreign shooting. That is, perhaps, because the Alai Payuthe (Tamil) remake was a joint venture of Chopra, Bobby Bedi and Mani Ratnam, with the production having been handled completely by Bedi’s Kaleidoscope Films. Except for a stray song or two, the love story was shot in mera Bharat mahaan.
Closer home, Kashmir used to be the favourite shooting spot until terrorism tarnished the reputation of the valley. A couple of films, including Boney’s Pukar, were shot in Kashmir recently but the Indian heaven on earth will never be the old haven it used to be for producers.
It rained film units in Kashmir after the success of Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat which was one of the first films to have exposed the valley on celluloid, in black & white. The colourful splendour of the North Indian valley, however, was projected in Junglee.
After Kashmir became inaccessible and unsafe, Ooty became the favourite shooting joint of Bombay producers. So much so that it soon came to be nicknamed the Film City of the South. Like Switzerland and, much later, Mauritius became the most frequented shooting spots for big producers, Ooty and Mahabaleshwar became the Mecca for smaller-budget film producers. Locations also come to become popular or jinxed depending upon how films shot there fared at the box-office.
For a long time, America was almost untouched because the few films shot there did not do well. Boney Kapoor’s Judaai, to an extent, changed the position. Of course, as Boney says, "the permits to shoot in America take 6 weeks to get (earlier, it used to be 3 months) which is too long a time frame. Although the USA and Canada are very producer-friendly, an Indian unit needs to get the approval of as many as eight associations before it can embark on shooting in the countries." After Judaai, films like Lajja, and Ab Ke Baras were shot in the US and Canada.
Besides giving the audience the advantage of seeing foreign cities they may otherwise never get to see in their lives, foreign shootings offer advantages to the units too. For one, the producer can be assured of undivided attention of his cast and crew members.
This is because there’s not much disturbance on the sets/locations from visitors who could be the stars’ other producers, directors, writers etc. who often drop in on the sets when shooting takes place in Bombay or other places in India. Besides, if shooting abroad in summers, the producer could wrap up much more work due to long shooting hours.
The biggest disadvantage is the high expenditure involved in shooting abroad. Tickets, lodging and boarding could cost the producer a huge packet, which is why foreign shootings still remain the domain of big banners only. The director has to be very careful about what he shoots there because if there’s patch-work which remains to be done after the unit returns to India, matching the locations can sometimes be an uphill task. Till recently, the customs authorities used to charge duty on exposed negative brought by the producer to India from his foreign shooting stints. Thankfully, the duty has been waived now after representations by producers’ associations.
Whatever the advantages and disadvantages, the location - whether Indian or foreign - can only enhance the visual appeal of a film. For the film itself to appeal to the paying public, it must strike a chord in the audiences’ hearts. And to touch the viewer’s heart, the only infallible formula is to tell the story from one’s heart and to transport the viewers inside the hearts of the characters of the story. For an emotional audience then, the human heart is the best location.
Foreign shootings can be a costly affair. Shooting across the shores could increase a film’s budget by a couple of crores if only a few songs are to be shot abroad. But an entire film being wrapped up in a foreign country could entail the producer an additional cost of even up to Rs. 4 or 5 crores.
For long shooting schedules abroad, producers prefer taking a cook from India so that Indian food can be served to the unit members. It also turns out cheaper. With the look of the artistes becoming so important these days, the costume designer is also often carted along for foreign shooting stints. The still photgrapher is yet another permanent name in the travel list.
