NO SMOKING: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN A.D…PART 1
It’s nineteenth December…My pre set mobile alarm goes off at 6.30 am…no idea since when it has been yelling at me to get my ass off the bed…I look at the watch…it’s gleefully announces 6.35…just a thought of crosses my mind …can I catch another ten minutes …NO…fear creeps in…what if that ten minutes turn out be an hour…NO…Boy we are shooting at DHARAVI, Asia’s biggest slums…can’t afford to be late…have to reach rather early…loads of thing that needs to be coordinated…just the thought of it…makes me jump… jump up from my bed.
7.25 AM I am auto rickshaw headed for seven bungalows, Andheri…it’s five minutes from where I stay…have to meet Prashant, another assistant director at 7.30…every shooting day I hitch a ride on his museum headed bike, he loves the bike, I love the ride…in that five minutes auto rickshaw ride to seven bungalows, thoughts cross my mind…what day is it…can’t remember …why do they call it seven bungalows…why do they call it Andheri…how will the shoot go today…will we be able to pull it off…with john…shooting in the heart of DHARAVI…We will…we did it in Black Friday…we shot at worse places than this for it…Behrampada,Navpada … places nobody has dared to shoot as far as Indian cinema is concerned…. And we pulled it off…can’t be worse than that…but then we had fairly unknown actors…this time we have John…a star…people will go mad…we have been warned by everybody…all and sundry… FUCK IT …I shouldn’t be thinking about it…we HAVE to do it!
7.35 I am still waiting for Prashant…I call him up…he doesn’t take my call…7.40 still he doesn’t show up…I am anxious and upset…I dial his number again…this time he picks up…I blast off ‘where the fuck are you man?’…Prashant ‘sorry sir…will be there in two minutes’…I go ‘who the fuck do you thing you are?’…I wait for his response…but the line is already dead from the other side.
7.55 we are on Andheri highway heading towards the location…Prashant is doing seventy on his bike…we are late, we should have been there anyhow by eight…but we are late…I call Gautam, the casting director and the first AD on his cell…he doesn’t pick up…Now I am anxious…I call up Nitin the second AD, he picks up…he has already reached the location…I inform him that I will get late and ask him to sent the cool cab that we had arranged for John’s to his house and his costumes as well…the one that he needs to wear in the scene…we had requested John to not get his SUV on this location and he had graciously agreed…I had assured john’s manager that the cool cab will reach his house on time… I cannot afford to send it late…Nitin does the needful…Gautam calls back…informs that he is on his way and reach the location in about ten minutes…I guess may be he is late too!
8.15 I am on the location…all the AD’s are there…most of the crew is there…I am informed that all the equipment that we require for the day’s shoot has arrived except the stead cam…I call up Anurag to find out about the first shot he wants to take…He responds ‘Mount the camera on the stead cam…high mount…we will follow John in the narrow alleys of the slums…first frontal, the he turns and we follow him from behind’… where the fuck is the stead cam…it’s late…it’s frustrating!
8.45. I get a call from Anshul, another AD…John is ready…he can reach the location in ten minutes…should they leave…I ask them to wait…8.50 Anurag walks on the set…gives me a questioning look ‘Where is the stead cam?’… It’s late sir!
9.15 Anurag decides to take some ambience shots…by the time we start shooting, word has already spread in the area about some shoot in progress…few minutes and we are surrounded by some hundred people staring straight into the camera…Anurag takes me aside ‘ no body speaks to the crowd except me…I will request them’…he does…shoot starts…few shots and the crowd strength has increased…we need more people to handle them…now all the AD’s are on their toes…to handle the crowd…we call security to help us. …to handle the crowd…suddenly lots of voices start calling out ‘CAMARE MEIN MAT DEKHIYE…JO KAR RAHE HAIN KARTE RAHIYYE’…some of them listen some don’t….but we manage to get most of the shots that Anurag wanted.
9:30 I am informed stead cam will be ready to roll in ten minutes…Anurag asks me to get John on the set…9.40, I spot the blue cool cab making it’s way through the narrow stretch of road that leads to the shooting spot…the crowd has thickened…but nobody has an idea about John…The cool cab stops…John emerges…the moment crowd spots him …there is almost an uproar…they start calling for him…they start pushing and shoving to reach to him…John waves at them …another roar…then he heads straight to the shooting spot…Anurag tells him about the shot…then asks us ‘are we ready?’…yes we are… stead cam is ready…John is ready…we are ready… everybody is ready…WAIT…NO NO we are not ready…the crowd is again looking into the camera…AD’s and security emerge and spring into action from various corners of the alley begging and pleading to the crowd not look into the camera…the crowd smiles as if we have cracked a joke, but agrees to not look into the camera…I inform AK we are ready …10.00 am AK calls action… stead cam moves with John…AK yells ‘CUT ‘… somebody is still looking into the camera…FUCK why don’t they listen…again we do the round of requests…TAKE TAKE TAKE…I call…ACTION I hear…John moves…the stead cam moves with him…thankfully I don’t hear CUT before the actual CUT…AK checks the shot…announces…OK…We move to the next alley…John stops me and asks ‘how many days are you planning to shoot here?’ ‘One and a half days John’ I reply…John ‘it is going to be tough buddy; we should do our best to wrap it today’. I just nod. ..
10.30 We are shooting in an adjacent alley…little controlled one…. One take and the shot is done…the entire crew comes out on the main shooting location…and guess what we witness…a mad crowd of about four to five thousand people waiting to get a glimpse of John…where ever I turn my head I find them…no vacant spot spared…not even tinned rooftop…and few hundred stand at the exact spot where we had to shoot…FUCK…Anurag orders to get the area cleared …AD’s and security get on to the job…by now we have also been joined by some local muscle man and few cops hired by our production…they help us clear the shooting area and control the crowd… Anurag calls me…i run to him…he asks me to take the stead cam and shoot the second unit POV shots…Gautam takes over the first unit from me as I run to the other part of slum along with the first assistant camera Kaplpesh and our stead cam operator Sunil Khandpur (he is one of the best stead cam operators we have worked with, AK refuses to shoot without him) to do the second unit…
11.30 We reach there…the crowd is still there…but few in number…we decide to shoot…I tells Sunil it’s OK even if people stare into the camera…It’s POV…Sunil rolls the camera…we finish two different shots in two different lanes in the span of half an hour… it looked great to me….but I have to get it approved by AK…I have to show it to him but…but there is a big fuck up…the camera people were not able to record the shot on the handy cam as the handy cam battery went off…FUCK…we were not able to record what we shot.
12.00…we come out to the main shooting location…see a mild lathi charge by the cops to spread the crowd…for few minutes the crowd is cut down in size…Jalwa, one of the spot boys walks up to me ‘sir nasta kiya aapne?’ I reply ‘bas paani de do yaar’ …I spot Gautam…he informs me that they are already done with the exterior shot…and lighting has began for the interior shoot… Anurag spots me and orders ‘show me the shots!’…HOW THE FUCK WILL I SHOW HIM THE SHOT…I tell him we were unable to record the shots on the handy cam…he right fully blasts me ‘How many times do I have to tell you to record the shot?’…I apologize…turn…Jalwa stands in front of me with a bottle of water ‘Paani sir’…..
( OZ,SANGEETA, OM and other cine fanatics…please excuse me as I will not be able to complete this post at a go because of lack of time as we start shooting tomorrow morning and a BIG problem that needs my immediate attention right now…but promise PART 2 of this post as soon as I get time)
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
RAJ its flowing like … am seeing an entire shoot in frnt of me
…
i wud be thnkful to if u give some info abt the last BHUJ shoot of No Smoking….
flowing like sound..so smooth
wow, man this is so stressful! i can’t imagine how you held your ground when AK wanted to see the shots, phew, nightmare indeed.
btw, what’s POV, anyone?
‘btw, what’s POV, anyone?’
POINT OF VIEW!
you can’t leave it there :o
okay well you can and you have – what a tease leaves us waiting for more ;)
Seems like a hectic shooting. How long was the actual scene in totality?
Big problem huh .. sounds interesting. Make sure you add it into tomorrow’s post.
Wow..Raajkumar what a trip…Thanks a ton bhai…you and AK both have this distinctiveness in writing where you hold the hands of the reader and carry them through your journey of writing. Now, i reaaaaly want to read the one script of your that AK says is Excellent…Amamzing Rajkumar…eagerly looking forward for your second part
what a post! :d
very visual,ekdum aankhon dekha haal reminded of the shoot scene from Rangeela with a annoyed-to-hell gulshan grover as the director :(
wonder how you recall every minutest detail from the shoot.
either you are a tantrik or not working properly on the sets ;)
just kiddin’
Great stuff, Rajkumar! You’re able to recall so many details of the day…
i felt like i am standing in dharavi and i was watching the entire post shot by shot.great writing rajkumar.
Please have look on my blog on AK…
http://anuragkashyap.blogspot.com/
After hearing the experience of the unit members in Dharavi, I feel the loss of not been present
:(
As we were discussing, job of an AD is indeed thankless.
rajkumar, seriously man.. how DO you remember every little detail? your response to jalwa’s “sir naasta kiya apne” was too good.. probably not the healthiest breakfast, but paani does have to substitute for meals in this industry sometimes.. i felt like i was watching this shoot happen from right behind your shoulder at each step.. awesome writeup!
yeah i agree, great writing!!
i felt like i was part of that crowd looking into the camera;)