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About 2 months ago. It was around 2am in Orange County. We all were about to crash into our beds. While Nishikant was swinging between watching American TV, answering my questions on cinema and dozing off, while Anurag was busy on my computer checking his emails and loudly poking jokes at us from the other room. And as Nishikant was talking about how, what, where and why of his style of work on sets, I got to realize that here was guy who had such a completely different style of working than Anurag. Nishi likes to be left alone on sets. Nothing should come between his technicians and actors during a shoot. So if an actor is late or the grip is missing, it was upto the ADs to tackle the problem and leave Nishikant completely immersed in his shoot.

Which became a challenge for us… while on Anurag’s sets, he and his fabulous crew, treated PFC’s authors as if they were bosom buddies, with Nishikant… I just wasn’t sure. I knew if I were there in Bombay, I could handle the entire day on his sets, without any problems, since I now had some part of understanding his working structure. The problem was conveying this to the other PFC authors as best as I could. Tip toe. Tip toe. Tip toe. While on No Smoking, PFC authors were treated as the Rajas of Cine-blogging… on Nishikant’s sets we could get our asses kicked before the next blink… we have to handle this with kid gloves. And the instructions were sent to Bombay.

“Stay clear of Nishikant Kamat. Let him concentrate on his job. Let him focus on his shoot”

Then another problem arose. Most of PFC’s Bombay Gang disappeared. Some on vacation. Some caught up in work. While others were nowhere to be found. Fortunately the ever dependable Manjeet, shows up.

Because of strict instructions on the protocols to follow on Nishikant’s sets and the fact that we can’t talk much about the movie, the objective is to simply focus on experiencing a shooting which has Kay Kay, Irrfan, Madhavan on the sets…

I hope we are taking On-Set Movie Blogging to the next level with this…

This is Day One on the sets of Mumbai Meri Jaan

Over to Manjeet Singh:

Mumbai continues to fascinate and surprise me. Having grown up in the city I still think, I know very little about it. The number of new places I have seen in less than a year’s time after been associated with our filmdom are definitely more than what I have come across my entire life in our very own Mumbai. Director Nishikant Kamat’s, ‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ took me to one of these locations.. One of the oldest studio’s of the city in Trombay area, not too far from the famous RK studio.

Dressed in white T-Shirt, jeans n chappals (sleepers), sporting a curly beard, Nishikant was immersed in what he enjoys the most. This was the first time I was meeting him. PFC’s mention spread a wide smile on his face. It brought back the recent memories of the fun he and Anurag had with the US- PFC gang during the IFFLA. One of our favorite stars Kay Kay Menon was at the centre stage! It was a joy to see him in action. Kay Kay is wonderfully passionate about his work and a wonderful team person. Some of the things he did other than awesome acting were: properly arrange the stool on which the cinematographer Sanjay Jadhav was standing, helping the other character actor’s with their timing, actions, collaborating with Nishikant on directing actors, etc. It was indeed heartening to see such a team work function towards delivering the best possible results. The unit itself is a family. Nishikant has kept exactly the same team he had in his previous feature. When asked about it, he humbly replied, “the film has given me so much, why should I change anything”. The unit has its own unique way of enjoying the work, they play Cricket and even marbles on sets!

The game of cricket was too tempting for me to restrain. I too jumped on the bandwagon. First it was an innings of over-arm cricket, then its under-arm version, finally followed by team games in under-arm. Your’s truly wasn’t in bad form. Along with the team mates was able to win 4 out of 5 matches.

Now some techies: The film’s aspect ratio is super 35, which would be cropped to 16:9 in the released version, with the help of digital intermediate stage. A brand new Arri 435, with brand new Arri lenses are being used. Few advantages of spherical lenses are: a wider ‘T’ stop, as low as 1.9 with the ability to shoot closer to the actor/object.

One of the pleasant experiences was to see Nishikant experimenting, with the feel of the film. He wants a very candid feel. There were no tripods, jibs or trolleys on the sets. He was going all out with handheld shots! The dialogues were more of a conversation. A particular scene was rehearsed till all the movements, their timings, actions, words looked organic. One could see Nishikant’s theatre background’s strengths, while directing actors, making their actions more sensible, smooth and more convincing. The acting was not theatrical in any sense. It imitated life. The outcome was very impressive indeed. Nishikant as humble as always goes, “we are trying to achieve, let’s see what we get”. I did say to myself this indeed is the new wave in film making.

The discussion of ‘Dombivli fast’ was inevitable. Nishikant is correct, when he says Mumbai could be one of the most expensive places to shoot. The locations were the most expensive part of the film. I asked him why he opted to shoot in Marathi, was there a thought of shooting it in Hindi ever? The reply was honest. He goes,” to sell your film you need a star. I did not have any star of Hindi films. Sandeep Kulkarni was a star in Marathi films. He had his own fan following. If suppose the film was made in Hindi with Sandip, we would have lost that following too. The most important aspect was indeed that the story could only be truly justified in Marathi language”.

Today there were just day shots. All the scenes were completed on time. When the pack up was announced there was still enough day light for the unit to play an innings of cricket. Kay Kay could not resist the temptation. He grabbed the ball and started to bowl. To my surprise he was really good, with high arm action! His batting showed he knew his cricket and is good at it, playing some text book drives and hooks. Nishikant is a typical Mumbai cricketing smarty. A southpaw, who is a fierce hitter. Don’t remember him defending much. The first ball I bowled bounced off just short of good length hitting him in the rib cage. The second ball I bowled Nishikant used his feet, came forward and hit me over my head for a six. The cinematographer is also a good cricketer. He got lot of people out.. also a big hitter. Then my batting turn came. The first ball was pitched out of off stump, little short, just cut it gently, luckily it just fell short of the man at gully. The second delivery I faced was a beauty bowled by Yogesh (I think he is an ad) beating my defence and tumbling the chair, kept as a stump.

Cricket is indeed a culture in Mumbai. A true Mumbaikar has to love Cricket!

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