India Part Two

The view from my new room at the Sun and Sand

Well here I am back in India. There seem to always be days when the whole thing is about to fall apart but eventually that has all been worked out to everyone's satisfaction and I am back in Mumbai. Christmas at home was brilliant apart from the uncertainties of doing business in India. The weather was great and we treasured every moment together. Now I am back for another stint, which will mostly involve shooting on stages and locations in Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Ho! Ho! Ho?

The people on the floor at Pixion were really great in greeting me back. It's nice to know that I have made a positive impression with the artists in my time here. They even left up all the Christmas decorations to make sure that I got to see them! That was sweet. 

I'm in a different hotel, right next to the Novotel where I was, called the Sun and Sand. It's quite a famous hotel, hosting film festivals and Bollywood meetings, but not as big or modern as the Marriott or even the Novotel. Ironically, I can look out my window now and look right into the room I had at the Novotel, about 150m away across two swimming pools.  Still right on the beach with a view of the ocean. The restaurants are not as big but just as good and the service is really good, too. It's more of an Indian feel as opposed to the more international feel (isn't that a song?) of the Novotel. It's a favorite of the film's director and many Americans have lived here when they were doing work for Bollywood. So that's been fine.

The weather here has also been good. Still mostly the 85º F and sunny which is the mainstay of Mumbai weather, but a few days in the 70s have made everyone happy. There's even been a few really clear days where the ocean wind blew away all the dust and pollution. That has soon returned but it was nice to see to the horizon for a change!

I got to attend a Bollywood party last week as well. The daughter of the director celebrated her birthday and so we had drinking and dancing long into the night. There was a stand-up comic who (typically) based his material around insulting people from other parts of India. I guess that's OK here… or not, but apparently funny to those who understood all the references. I learned how to do "traditional Indian dancing" which was fun, although the music was all non-traditional to say the least. Mostly technobeat remixes of Bollywood hits, including ones from past films by our star who was in attendance and the new tracks for our movie which we will be shooting in the upcoming weeks. All night we were chased around the place by two guys with devices filled with alcohol of unknown origin, which they funneled into people mouths with hoses, sometimes through ice, fruit or melon husks. I tried not to get caught too many times and as such was still walking when I left the party. I was one of the first to leave: at 2am. One of the highlights was the director expertly dancing with a glass of water balanced on his head. Keeping those theatrical skills alive! He is a famous Bollywood actor himself in addition to his fame as a director.

Saturday I head for Hyderabad which will be a whole new experience. We'll be at Ramoji Film City on the outskirts of Hyderabad. It's supposed to be isolated, hot and complicated. OK. Sounds like we'll be focused on the work and trying to keep in touch with what's happening back in Mumbai, where the visual effects work on the movie is commencing. We'll be testing the Indian internet with all the things we need to do to stay involved with shots in progress.

India Republic Day Parade from Delhi

Today is India Republic Day. The anniversary of the adoption of the Indian Constitution. There were big military parades on TV all day. The hotel staff assembled for the raising of the Indian flag outside the hotel at 10am. Not nearly the action in the streets that I have seen for the Hindi religious festivals. The fireworks for those holidays went of for days. There's been nothing for this. Maybe tonight there will be some sponsored by the government. Like many things the government does here, it may be largely ignored by the majority, or like the parade in Delhi, it's a ticketed event that takes place under the highest security.

So it's another new adventure coming up this weekend in a new city with a different community around me. As always, every day is a learning experience. More from Hyderabad!

December was a blur!

Well, December was packed. My last post was just after Thanksgiving and then we went "onto the floors" as they say here. That means "into the studio" in American parlance. After that everything is kind of a blur. We shot 12-14 hour days every day for twenty straight days between 1 December and 20 December. I barely had time to sleep never mind blog. Overall things went very well. The sets were under constant construction as we shot the film, but they look great on film. We had all the major stars of our film at one time or another in attendance and usually shooting scenes. The Director is very good and his work is focused. He's editing the film together as we shoot it. It is really great to see it all come together so quickly.

One of the great stories of the month was the first few days where the son of the Director, who is also the star of the film showed up, not as the star, but as an Assistant Director. He worked like crazy making everything right which was really a testament to his dedication. The other thing about his work on those days was that it was clear he was doing it because he loved it and also because it was the first days of his Dad's new film and he was there for him and to make it right. How cool is that? You have to realize also how a big a star this guy is. Imagine Tom Cruise coming onto a set on a day that he didn't need to be there and working with the extras and secondary players to get them in the right places and dumping his hands into a bucket of green slime to make sure it is applied to the actors just right for the shot because it's his Dad's movie and he has been doing it since he was ten years old. Great stuff.

It's the latest rage!

So there wasn't a lot of "seeing India" during December. We did eat a lot of good Indian food every day and I got a chance to see how the Indian labor market works. In short, where we would rent a forklift and an operator if we needed to move a big stack of plywood from one end of the set to the other, here they just hire 50 people and they carry it. So there's a lot of "day players" as we call them. That creates some security problems and I lost a camera because of it. I get called all over at a moments notice and I have to carry everything with me or risk losing it. In the shuffle late in the shoot I somewhere set down my video camera and bang it was gone. This was after the ADs had already embarrassed me at least once by walking up and handing me my phone after I dropped it somewhere. Yikes. Sometimes it's hard to keep a grip. I'm pretty bummed about losing the camera, but it's not like I wasn't warned.

Near the end of the shoot I was gifted a terrific turban from the AD's. I had jokingly pretended to adore a specific billboard with this salesman (entertainer?) wearing this huge orange fan-adorned turban with a big tail on it, saying, "I love that hat!" So they got me one! It was so popular that all the Chinese stunt guys wanted turbans, too. Group photo!

I had time for one banzai run at the shops before heading home on the 22nd. Raksha, the 1st AD again was amazing, taking me to places I would never have managed without her, searching for Ganpati and uniquely Indian shirts and gifts. 

Cathay Pacific Comfort

I got on the plane late night at Mumbai and was on my way back to the USA for another dose of reverse culture shock. I again went through Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific. That was a sweet ride actually. I quite like that airline. All the business class seats are set in single rows like diagonal parking, so you have some privacy and it's easy to sleep. I saw some good movies, too, most notably Senna the documentary about the famous Brazilian F1 driver. That was very moving for me as I was always a big fan of Senna and seeing his career and death chronicled so well was quite affecting.

So Christmas was at home. I won't recount that here (coz it's not India!) but there will be pics on the bertonspero.com page soon.