The Forest, my film and save our jungles
My next one is a feature film – its called The Forest. This film is about our inadequacies when confronted by the forces of nature and our frightening ignorance as to the effects of its disruption.
Instead of preaching to the converted I thought that perhaps if I was able to spread the word about the wildlife crisis that is staring us in the face, it would be my way of contributing to the larger environmental crisies. Killing animals for skins and bones, to satisfy some ancient quirk of distant Chinese and Tibetan patrons is one of the most devastating and heartbreaking fallouts of our increasing disconnect with our environment. Our national parks have become sanctuaries not for animals but private hunting grounds for foreign sponsored poachers.
If they who have the vote, the money and the voice can come to my movie to be entertained, thrilled and horrified and by tickling those senses I can saliently highlight the spendour of our jungles and their imminent destruction then the endevour would be sucessful.
I had set some pretty unusual goals for the screenplay of The Forest – it had to be a thriller with a dramatic core that explores a psychological relationship, and the consequences of man’s destruction of the environment. These are pretty disparate themes to weave into a single narrative, and I tried to push the envelope a bit.
I imagined the Kumaon of Jim Corbett and tried to recreate his spirit; those curled up nights reading his man-eater tales and the spell that his storytelling cast on me. The stalking of a man-eater alone, on foot and the deep respect for his adversary came with the chilling awareness that on such a mission, the line between the hunter and the hunted would always be in his disfavor. Only someone who has stepped into the silky darkness of an Indian jungle on a moonless night can place into context what those exploits meant.
Like him, I am at pains to point out that the great predators of the world become man-eating not by choice but by compulsion. There is human intervention 99% of the time. That too in the most cruel manner devised. Modern day poachers are not hunters. They are assembly line killers. They prefer to electrocute, poison, bait and trap often letting the animal writhe and thrash around for hours rather than kill an animal with a bullet. If more than a hundred leopards are killed by poachers each year in India, how many escape with fatal wounds? For an animal that depends upon stealth and speed to hunt its natural prey, such wounds compel it to look for weaker and easier kills – the animal is forced out of the jungle and closer to man. Every now and then he will take a swipe at one of us and discover the taste for human flesh. Such animals become man-eaters. And man is the weakest animal in the jungle.
We had to film our leopard sequences in Thailand. Animal rights groups and protection laws in India have recently prohibited the filming of captive
animals. This is ironic even for a film that attempts to bring awareness of the problems of wildlife conservation to a cinema going audience. Thierry le Portier (Gladiator, Two Brothers) was our animal wrangler. Leopards are one of the hardest of the big cats to train. Kali and Joy, the leopards seen in The Forest wereflown from Paris to Bangkok, while the rest of the film crew, fresh off the Indian set, joined them there. Our Thai team found forests that resembled those filmed in India. We rebuilt the roof of the forest-rest-house to match the roof sequences shot in India. A digital visual effects element that had not been planned originally came into The Forest, we used split screens and blue screens to merge the actors with the leopard sequences.
Guillaume Castagne (Special effects and makeup) created human limbs and bodies which had suffered attacks by the leopard that were part of the special effects used to give frighteningly realistic special effects. Some of the actors were cast in silicon so he could sculpt entire mutilated bodies. Tarun Kumar’s prosthetic and make up took six hours each day as layers of complicated makeup was applied and taken off. He spent nights in sub-zero temperatures drenched in fake blood. Although only a fleeting glimpse in the final film, Gulliame’s hand crafted dummy Leopard was created hair-by-hair should the film ever require it.
The original music of the film was written by composer Matt Robertson and performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. The Indian instruments were recorded in New Delhi. Matt sent his compositions over the internet and we would disscuss the score by video-conference each night. This cost effective way of working between two continents allowed us to make the recording at Abbey Road a reality.
From my experience of going to the jungles since I was a kid I know that it is hard enough to see a tiger, let alone be in the right position to film it, that too for the big screen. But this is something that I was not willing to compromise on. I wanted the audience to share the thrill that I had experienced seeing these magnificent creatures for the first time in the wild.
Naresh and Rajesh Bedi (Green Oscar winning filmmakers) have spent their lives making defining documentaries of wild India but even for them the
task of filming tigers in one short week within the tight budget allocated, was a tall order. Adding to that was the complexity of shooting with our
bulky S-35mm cameras which they had to haul onto elephant back to get deep into the jungles where the tigers were. There was tension about
whether they would get to shoot the tigers and what if they returned empty handed. When the call came finally that they had been successful, we were
greatly relieved. But nothing could have prepared us for the wonderful gift of four tigers – one tigress and her three cubs. Their footage came in at the nick of time. It was our last shooting day. I watched what they had done, re-designed all my shots, even re-wrote the script. We shot the actors sitting on an elephant in Corbett National Park reacting to tigers filmed in Bandavgarh National Park. They were, in fact, many miles apart. This is one of the very few times that the Royal Bengal Tiger has been captured on cinemascope. Most wildlife filming is done on 16mm.
The Forest was made for an international audience, and now with the changing tastes of our Indian audiences, we’re looking to give it a good outing in India as well. When the ‘west’ thinks wildlife or safari they think of the African bush. Hopefully after seeing The Forest they would want to come and see the tiger. See the destruction of our forests. See that this beast that has proliferated in our sub-continent for thousands of years has come close to extinction. See that if the tiger becomes extinct, then the entire ecosystem that is constructed around it will also fail and rapidly decline. And maybe that would be a small contribution to the valiant efforts of Belinda Wright of the WPSI (Wildlife Protection Society of India), Vallmik Thapar, Fateh Singh Rathore, Ullas Karant, Ashok Kumar and the small band of conservationists, NGOs and dedicated forest officials around the country who have given their lives in the face of daunting odds to the project of saving the tiger, though even the most optimistic of them give the tiger not more than four or five years more in the wild.
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
Ashvin,
Sounds like a great project and you are a talented filmmaker from what I have seen of your short and previews for this film. Eagerly awaiting the release of this film. Do you have distribution? Or are you going to the film market at major festivals?
Ashvin bhai, who are the producers? Like dabba, want to know how the film got funded and where all is it going to release? From the trailer, it looked like a complete “Bollywood” pot-boiler so how are you going to market it to an international audience?
I produced it myself and raised the funds from ten-twelve investors all over the world. It was a co-production with Richard Dreyfuss company in LA. I use the word producer as its used internationally i.e. where producers are not financiers, they put everything together.
Its a genre film made for international audiences. Didn’t know they did that in Bollywood but would be happy to be corrected.
Awesome! I guess that’s the way to make movies that you believe in. So going to festivals? Let us know if it will be in any of the EAST COAST circuit. Will try to catch it there.
different subject..congrats for the selection..
ashvin…
i had heard u were doing a movie with manoj bajpai and rahul bose…is it true? if yes is “The Forest” the same movie with other actors…?
Hi Ashvin
from the trailer…it’s a nice treatment of the subject. hope the film lives up to it.
also, i wanted to ask you a couple of things,
1. what/who are your influences in your writing?
2. for the forest, how did your story/characters develop? could you write a little about the pre-prodn of the film?
as for the comment about the trailer looking like a ‘bollywood pot-boiler’, i know you wanna scream out and say it’s not ;-)
really, it doesn’t look like one.
Hi RJ Thanks for the suggestions. Will write about development, prep and writing of the movie as soon as I have some time and energy.
and thanks RJ for reading my mind, I did scream…
@RJ
ru the RJ i know?
(personal comment, sorry)
We would like to organise a private screening of this film for wildlife conservationinst, wildlife tour operator and similar in Delhi.
Would you make yourself available during this.
manish
Hi Manish. Sure. WE can do something closer to the release date of the film.
good post….when are you getting the film released?? did you finally come up with the release date in india as you were not sure of it yourself the last time/ Awaiting the movie.
I’ll look forward to meeting you this Sunday, Ashwin. At the Habitat Center.
HI..I AM AN ACTOR OF REPUTE FROM KOLKATA.FROM TELEVISON AND THEATRE.PLZ GO THRU MY ALBUM AT ORKUT TO SEE THE PRESS ARTICLES AND FAN’S REACTION ON MY WORK if you want to.waiting eagerly to work with you
REGARDS,
BOBBY CHAKRABORTY(bobbymobil2001@yahoo.com)
Hi,
Looking forward to see your new film and I appreciated your short film a lot. After reading about your concern I thought I might inform you of the single biggest threat to the jungles, animals and tribals of India – MINING!
Yes, the beautiful forests and hills of Chattisgarh, Orissa, and Jharkhand which are home to innumerable species are being blasted day in and day out to make metal for the world market.
Unfortunately NGOs, conservationists, etc. are not doing much to highlight these issues. Is it because many of these companies (like TATAs) are being donors of these agencies?
I don’t know how you look at the Forest Department but as far as I am concerned most of these ‘brave’ forest guards are scoundrels of the first order who harass forest dwellers, support timber mafia and even poachers.
As far as I can see it the problem is very political in nature and most of our esteemed Tiger lovers are just doing the fancy thing to do. It is great you have made a film on the forests but I hope it does not not just make a token attempt to save them while hundreds and hundreds of hectares of forests are felled for the TATAs, BIRLAs, etc.