NO SMOKING coverage
A resort in the outskirts of a western suburb was selected for shooting a swimming pool, restaurant, bar and highway scenes. The call time was 2:00 pm and the shoot went on till 5:30 am in the morning. Some unit members have gathered around as early as 12:30 pm on the sets.
There were two European actresses in the scenes…Tall with great body and acting skills too… Tanya and Sarah visit Bombay…do acting/modeling …They just love Mumbai and its awesome energy. They still need to get use to our spicy food ?
It was a pleasure to see Vishal Bhardwaj and Piyush Mishra of legendary ‘Maqbool’ visiting the sets! They were overjoyed after watching the scenes shot earlier in the day. Even got a chance to talk to Piyush Mishra. The moment we started talking about Maqbool, Kartik just exploded with his analysis of Maqbool and importance of Kaka’s role. Piyush is not only a well known actor, he writes lyrics, has composed music for AK’s Gulal and has an undergraduate degree in fine arts n sculpting. Now that’s so many art forms coming together..No doubt the result is magnificient!
Guys living in India…Has anyone of you watched the ICICI prudential’s insurance Ad? The ‘jalebi’ guy if you remember is acting in No Smoking. He is Anuj Tikku, AK’s long time college friend, who left hefty pay package job in a bank to pursue his passion for acting. Tikku as he is popularly known would be playing the role, Rajkumar Santoshi was supposed to play. You can also see him in Sudhir Mishra’s forthcoming film ‘Khoya Khoya Chand’. He does visit PFC regularly.
The scene involving Gajraj Rao (AK calls him Gaju bhaiya) and John was about to start. Gaju asked AK about the dialogues. AK goes ‘jo bhi man mein aye bol do’. The scene came out so good that its time span was extended. Gaju made up his own dialogues and got so involved that he continud to act even after AK said,”cut”. The scene which was suppose to be done in one shot was now broken down into 2 shots. Both the shots from the same camera angle and same frame and in continuation one after the other in the film. I was wondering how it would fit in the edit. A dissolve will not work and both the scenes can not be joined together, as the cut would look like a jump. I asked Param, “how the shots would be joined in the film”. He goes,” Only Sir knows”. While John and AK were discussing the scenes, I got a chance to ask AK the same question. AK goes,” We will take Ranvir’s entry shot on a real highway”. That solved the puzzle. The 2nd shot had Ranvir Shorey, who is playing the 2nd lead role in the film entering in the frame. So a small shot would be taken on another location, which would be inserted between the shots. It would deceive the viewers that it’s actually a highway and also make up the improvised shot. Gaju’s acting was the highlight of the evening. Everyone was thrilled after the scene. John complimented Gaju saying,”Your performance is an item number of our film!” John received a compliment from his personal assistant Venky, who has been with him since long time. The compliment was,”This is your best performance I have seen so far!” Later AK explained the importance of giving actors the space to be free and improvise bringing a natural a natural touch in the film.
There was a moment where the scene involving John, Ranvir n Gaju was ready. The lights, sound, set.. were ready. AK realizes that Ranvir is missing he says,”where is Ranvir”. Suddenly he smiles, gives the headphone to Kunal who is the Audiographer and goes,”Ranvir is pissing”. Everyone starts laughing. Since this is a sync sound film the wireless sound gadgets are planted on the actors. Ranvir’s gadget was on, while he was in the restroom:) When Anurag said “pissing” I heard “kissing” on the first instant. I thought Ranvir is in the Vanity van with…….. :d :d :d
Anurag completed 7% of the film’s shoot in a day, when he was down with cold, soar throat and could also blog!
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
- “Anurag completed 7% of the film’s shoot in a day” ?? how do you calculate 7%??
By the number of pages. He completed more than 9 pages it seems on that particular day. So say if the film has 120 pages it roughly adds upto that figure. Normally 1 pages is considered equivalent to 1 min.
@Manjeet who is in the picture..not Sarah and Tanya..but the one in the first pic.?
Thats Anuj Tikku who has replaced RajKumar Santoshi in the film. His body structure is like Santoshi I guess and is very funny.
Any comments Mr Tikku if you r reading this?
hey manjeet thats anuj tikoo who’s playing the character of vikas, k’s friend & not the doctor. the doctors role which was to be played by mr.santoshi was eventually played by kiku sharda, another actor..
Thanks GK for the info! Anurag must be joking when he said that Anuj is replacing Mr. Santoshi:) Its funny how Anurag picks up on Anuj:d
Keep it up Manjeet