Behind the Scenes of a Bollywood Blockbuster - part two
Apologies on the delay for those who have been waiting for part two of this story. I've been busy getting drunk in Mexico. We left off with star of the show Salman Khan flooring a room full of starstruck extras, before heading off to film a scene, while the rest of us patiently waited in the makeup room. If you haven't read the first part of the story, click here.
Tiger Zinda Hai trailer. Make sure to turn on the captions!
Finally, at 3:30pm, after 6 hours of sitting around doing fuck all, an attractive young lady comes to collect me and the Russians to head onto the set. My heart begins to race excitedly. I know that I'm only going to be used as a prop, nothing more, but the tragic perfectionist in me still wants to do a great job and impress these high-flying Bollywood types.
We are led downstairs into a huge, darkened room full of dozens of workers. In the middle of the room, a set has been constructed with scaffolding and plywood – a room within a room. For now, I will have to wait to go inside, although I can see what's happening on a monitor. It's a set of an office. I note that Salman Khan is nowhere to be seen - already done for the day.
I take a seat, and a man in his 50s approaches me and pulls out some brown foundation, rubbing it all over my face and hands, trying desperately to make me look dark enough to pass off as an Iraqi. I assure you, having makeup on your hands and trying not to smudge it is quite frustrating.
It turns out that the sitting marathon isn't done yet – far from it in fact. Now we're all just sitting in a different room, waiting until we can be useful. Before leaving the makeup room, a costume designer brought us a suitcase full of shoes to choose from. Problem is, I have monster feet. Somewhere around US size 13-14, depending on brand and material. The largest shoes I could find in the suitcase were a size 10, so now I'm sitting here with my feet jammed into them so hard that my toes feel like they're about to fall off.
Obviously a big-budget action movie is a huge project with a huge crew required, and there are staff rushing about everywhere behind the scenes. The crew's inner circle – director Ali Abbas Zafar, producers, the cameraman, the actors and the likes – all speak in perfect English. Better than most native speakers, in fact. The lower-ranking support crew speak amongst themselves in an indigenous Indian language, possibly Marathi given our location in Mumbai, although it could be Hindi. I really don't know.
I mentioned in part one of this story that the film industry is full of highly strung people. Whenever a take is about to happen, the director or one of his inner circle will bellow out “Silence!” Usually it takes two or three attempts to shut everyone up. The fans and airconditioners are turned off before the camera rolls, and everyone holds their breath until the director tersely shouts “Cut!” Long takes are brutal; trying to remain as stiff and silent as possible for 3 or 4 minutes simply adds to the ever-increasing tension in the room. At least there's plenty of chai.
Finally, after 2 hours of spectating, myself and all of the Russian extras are called upon. Once again, I feel the excitement and nerves surge up inside me, although at first all I'm required to do is stand up straight and stare directly down the lens of the camera, mugshot style, and then twist my feet 45 degrees to the right and then 45 degrees to the left, without breaking my gaze. Easy-peasy.
Once that's done, I stay on the set for another super complicated task. Myself and a few other extras need to walk across the set, entering from the left, holding some files in my hand with the word “classified” stamped on them, look up at a bulletin on the wall, and then turn around and walk back off the set. The purpose is to simulate a busy office, heaving with activity, while the actors deliver a few lines. As simple as that sounds, it requires 3 takes to get the timing right. Once this is done, I disappear outside for a cigarette and yet another meal break.
After several more hours of sitting around observing the happenings here, we shift yet again, down another flight of stairs and into the parking lot underneath the building. A set has been constructed in the stairwell. This one is the security office for the oil refinery.
My first order of business is to have one of the costume designers give me a different outfit – office attire – and tell me to put it on. So I strip down to my underwear in the parking lot in front of 40 film crew and put on the new costume, only to be immediately told to switch back to my original costume. In the process, I manage to take a few big chunks out of the brown makeup on my hands.
Having a bit more of a role to play on this set, as well as having a clearer view of everything that is going on, I come to understand just how finicky and painstaking filming a movie really is. I also develop a hell of a lot of respect for the cameraman. He's a huge hulk of a bloke with arms the size of my legs (and I'm not small), wearing chino shorts, a tight fitting t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap on his bald head. The shorts are a surprise; no-one wears shorts in India! This absolute trooper has been hauling around a fuck-heavy camera on his left shoulder all day and continues to do so all night.
As the day wears into evening and the filming continues, the stress and frustration levels of everyone continue to increase, and the time has now come for myself and one of the other Russian technicians to be heavily involved in a scene. I pull my insanely small shoes up over my heels and limp onto the set.
A tall, bearded, high-ranking member of the crew gives us instructions on what to do. We are sitting at our desk, disinterestedly viewing the CCTV footage (probably the most overdone action movie trope of all time), when we look at the clock, and then stand up and walk out of the room. Seems easy enough. We do our first take.
It doesn't go quite right. We walk out of the room too slowly and our posture at the desk isn't disinterested enough. We take more instructions, which leads to what is, for me, the funniest moment of the day. The Russian guy, whose name is Dzmitri, is sitting to my left, and the crew member giving the instructions is standing to his left, which means the conversation is mostly directed towards Dzmitri. Dzmitri speaks functional English, but it's not very good, so it's taking him a while to absorb the instructions. And neither of us are actually saying anything, just nodding and grunting along. The bearded crew member tersely asks “You both speak English, right?” Dzmitri says “Yeah” and I simply raise a solitary eyebrow.
“Do you speak English?”
I keep a straight face, but internally I'm cracking up at the irony of the situation. After spending 3 weeks in India asking the locals if they speak English, I'm now being asked by an Indian man if I speak English.
Before thinking, I reflexively blurt out “Yeah, I'm Australian” in an unintentionally condescending, and perhaps slightly indignant, tone-of-voice.
“Okay!”, he says, with a facial expression and a hand gesture indicating that he doesn't have time for my shit.
How embarrassing.
We shoot the same take another 3 or 4 times, working on getting our walking pace just right. Like I said, it is incredibly finicky. After this, we wait just off camera while the other half of the scene is shot. As we leave the security office for our lunch break, 2 spies sneak in, dressed in the same uniforms as myself and Dzmitri, and begin furiously hacking the computer system. These are actual actors, with dialogue in a mixture of Hindi and English, and it's quite fascinating watching them work.
It's also kind of hilarious, because the computer screens are all blank, and they are just mashing random buttons on the keyboard, on a prop computer that isn't even turned on. Obviously the content of the screens will be added in post production, but if you didn't know you were shooting a film, you would just see two grown men pressing random buttons on a keyboard while stage whispering to each other in two languages and looking incredibly nervous.
This takes 3 or 4 takes to get perfect, and then we move on to the next part of the scene. Dzmitri and I take centre stage again, but first, all of the sound, camera and lighting gear has to be shifted up a narrow staircase, which is no small task. In this take, we will walk up the staircase to go on our lunch break, with the spies running down the staircase and into the security control room as soon as Dzmitri and I are off camera.
My feet are absolutely fucking killing me; my big toes both feel like they're about to fall off for being stuffed inside these tiny shoes, and I've gotta deal with the fact that the director of one of Bollywood's biggest-ever films wants me to walk up the stairs more quickly. It takes us 4 takes. The first take, we walk too slowly. The second take, I accidentally make eye contact with the camera as I walk up the stairs. The bearded crew member gets some black duct tape and creates an X on the door frame where he wants me to look. The actors make a mistake on the third take, and we finally get it right on the fourth.
My job for the day is done, and it's... midnight?! Once I've finished my final take, I go and slump at a table, take off the shoes from hell, and drift in and out of consciousness as the actors and the crew do their finishing touches.
It was around 7:30pm when we came down into the carpark. So to simply film a scene where two guys walk out of a room and up some stairs, and then two other guys run down those same stairs and into the room, and type a couple of things on a keyboard and run back up the stairs, has taken us nearly 5 hours. I have spent 15 hours at the studio to be on screen for maybe 20 seconds. The moment the final take is shot, the cameraman is gone, and who could blame him? I don't envy his job at all. The poor guy hasn't put that camera down since probably 10am. And he'll do it all again tomorrow while I'll be on a train north.
The Russians and I head back up to the makeup room to change back into our own clothes and collect our stuff, and then head down to the loading bay where they have even more food for us. Imran comes to meet us, thanks me for my efforts, and pays me 5000 rupees cash, which I'm pretty pleased with. I then see him give the Russians 10,000 each. I don't really mind, because they live here and this is their job, while I'm just here to do something interesting. But I keep that in mind; 10,000 rupees is a considerable sum of money, somewhere around €120. In an economy like India's, that's a very, very nice day's pay. Even if it only works out to €8 an hour for a 15 hour day, it's your accommodation covered for 1-2 weeks, plus you get stuffed full of food. A viable employment option if I ever decide to live in Mumbai!
This story happened in June. The film Tiger Zinda Hai released on December 22 in India, and is already the 6th highest grossing Bollywood film of all time. So far it has grossed around US$75 million, with US$60 million of that coming from India where ticket prices can be as low as $2. After only 2 weeks in cinemas, it has already grossed half as much as the 2nd highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, which makes eventually reaching that 2nd position a pretty reasonable target. On the way to 2nd, it will overtake two other films that were shot in Yash Raj Studios, two other films starring Salman Khan, and one other film directed by Ali Abbas Zafar.
Promo songs are a huge deal for Bollywood films. Check out this cheesy number with stars Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif shaking their shit. Over 185 million views on YouTube!
I haven't seen the film yet, so I have no idea if my scenes made the final cut, and I probably won't know until the film is available for purchase on YouTube. But regardless of whether my face made it into the film or not, to have an opportunity to see inside not just any Bollywood film, but the biggest and the best in Bollywood, was a fascinating and very fortunate privilege to have had! Big thanks to Frankie and Hannah for helping to tee it up!
Great post, as always!
It was really fascinating to get a look behind the scenes. Wow, 15 hours, that's a long day. The people working behind the scenes on movies really seem to earn their pay.
Looking at the movie trailer, it has a very big-budget Hollywood feel to it. For better or worse, Bollywood seems to be getting more and more westernized. From what I understand they already produce more movies per year than Hollywood. And as India's GDP increases, I guess the budgets will get larger and larger until they may eventually surpass Hollywood there too.
Definitely a tough job. As I said in the post, very highly strung, a lot of big egos, and a lot of hours.
I believe that Bollywood has been the king of quantity for a few decades, and there's 10 or so other film industries in India, each producing films in a different language. So India's output is truly huge. Definitely as India opens up to the world, western culture is infiltrating India's diverse cultural fabric. I experienced this with not just the movies, but the music and nightlife as well.
A great example I can think of is Coke Studio. Originating in Brazil, but now most famous in Pakistan, it's a YouTube based TV programme showcasing the best national music talent. It features reworks of traditional songs, fused with modern styles and instrumentation. Here's an example of how that works out in Pakistan:
After its wild success in Pakistan, which many people in the subcontinent credit with reviving sufi music and bringing traditional Pakistani music to a new generation, naturally India had to outdo Pakistan by making their own Coke Studio. India's version is done in conjunction with MTV, because India is bigger and "better", and they put out some amazing fusions as well, but a lot of it is heavily infiltrated with western styles of music, like this for example:
I personally don't think it works very well. It's two good individual pieces of music that simply don't gel with each other whatsoever.
Interesting. I agree, the Indian one doesn't work. Really a jarring juxtaposition. (Btw, the video doesn't play here. Apparently the owner has disabled it from playing outside of Youtube).
Once I've reached the Pakistan part of my journey, I'm actually gonna do a Pakistani music showcase in tandem with my usual travel stories.
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