Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (34 page)

The emphasis on face-to-face interaction, collaboration, and fluid workspaces results in a highly oral and aural work culture, with a tremendous reliance on memory. Pitching ideas for a film—as Debojit Das did in the chapter four sketch—is one of the many examples of this working style. Whether it was a film being conceptualized, music being composed, a script being discussed, or production logistics being planned, I rarely saw anyone writing anything down. The pre-production process is mostly comprised of brainstorming sessions—referred to as “sittings”— attended by the director and key members of the production team, during which the script and music are finalized.
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Sometimes these sessions, especially those involving the film’s narrative in the early stages, were so casual and meandering—appearing to be a conversation between a few people—that it took me some time to realize that work was taking place. One afternoon, in November 1996, I was waiting in a producer’s office while a writer and director were talking about how to represent most accurately the behavior of college students in their screenplay. The conversation began with a discussion of some young film stars and their sartorial preoccupations, then detoured through the writer and director’s own college years, continued with the conservatism of contemporary Indian teenagers, followed by the problem with priests, and ended with the British suffragette movement, before returning to the topic of characterization and setting for their screenplay. During such story sittings, which are what scripting sessions are called, no one ever took notes. Even at the music sittings I attended, the music director composed melodies on his harmonium and recorded them directly onto a tape recorder, rather than writing down the music.

While screenplays are written, they are rarely read in solitude; instead, the key members of the production team gather to hear the writer or director relay the film’s story or read the script aloud. These sessions, referred to as “narrations,” are undertaken throughout the pre-production process as a way of bringing cast and crew on board a particular film; these can last anywhere from half an hour to several hours, depending on the completeness of the script. Narrating a film is in itself considered a performative skill, and certain directors and writers are renowned in the industry for their narrating prowess. The significance of narrations has to do with the fact that the script is often incomplete prior to casting. Even if a script is finished, writers usually read it aloud to small groups of cast and crew. It is very common to hear actors state in television interviews
that they decided to do a particular film after “hearing the script,” rather than reading it.

This sort of orality is devalued within the industry, however, which is demonstrated by the tremendous discursive emphasis on the “bound script.” As the chapter’s opening anecdote and the point in chapter four where Vijay Khanna appears reluctant to star in Lakhani’s film demonstrated, the bound script—by which is meant a completed screenplay— is a highly fetishized object within the Hindi film industry. Although I interviewed many active and employed screenwriters, the dominant stereotype within the industry was that
scripts
were a rare commodity, as noted in Punkej Kharabanda’s comment: “A script in a Hindi film is probably written at the time of its release, the only thing written ever” (Kharabanda, interview, 17 April 1996). The complaint about a lack of scripts had less to do with the actual absence of a screenplay than with the sequence of how a screenplay evolves. Since scripts are conceived with particular stars in mind, it does not benefit an actively employed screenwriter to write a complete screenplay prior to a go-ahead from either a producer or a star, as it could be rejected. However, the idea of a completed script is touted as a badge of distinction and professionalism by filmmakers, and stars especially, who profess to do roles only after consulting the script. Additionally, the phrase “bound script” is deployed as a marker of modernization and progress within filmmakers’ and journalists’ narratives about changes besetting the industry’s work culture.

The paucity of documentation extends to a film’s production as well, where typically the only written materials on a set are the continuity sheets, necessary for processing and editing the film, and the sheets of dialogues that actors have to memorize for a scene. Most Bombay directors do not storyboard their films, so decisions about lighting, blocking, and camera placement and movement are made in collaboration with the cinematographer once sets are constructed and shooting commences. During a post-screening question and answer session with producer/director Karan Johar, at nyu in February 2007, a member of the audience asked him about storyboards and decisions regarding camera placement. “We write the scene and I don’t storyboard, contrary to popular belief,” Johar responded. “Everybody thinks that we storyboard and it’s all ready. It’s far from it. It’s confused and it’s always chaotic. It’s always through conversations with my Director of Photography that I work out my scene . . . There is really never any storyboarding. If we started to storyboard we would be doing that for a year.” All of the directors I met asserted that they had their films “running in their heads,” discussing them in very
visual terms, commonly describing onscreen action in relation to camera angles and movements.

This oral style of working had a significant impact upon how I conducted fieldwork. Unless I was attending a large gathering or function where my presence went unnoticed, I was unable to take notes on-site because it was awkward to be the only person writing. In fact, in the early days of my fieldwork, whenever I wrote notes in public it was noticed and commented upon. One of the assistant directors of the film—for which Sandeep was the executive producer—was continuously curious about what I was writing in my notebook. At the end of the shoot everyday he would ask me in a teasing manner, “So how many pages did you fill today?” On another occasion, my note-taking was a cause for alarm: I had just witnessed my first music recording session and was sitting in the hallway of the recording studio, writing in my notebook, when the music director walked out of the recording booth—he sat down next to me and asked me what I was doing. When I said I was writing my notes, he asked anxiously, “What kind of notes?” Realizing that composers were ever fearful about their melodies being copied or stolen, I quickly explained my project, after which he relaxed considerably, readily answering my questions.

Another consequence of this highly oral work culture is that verbal commitments become the equivalent of contracts. If a producer discusses a film project with a star, the assumption is that unless the star states otherwise, he or she is in the film; therefore, producers approach stars one at a time, rather than several at once, in order to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding. Additionally, negotiations about money and salaries are also based on conversations rather than formal written contracts. Pamela Chopra characterized the negotiations between a producer and stars regarding payment: “When you’re starting a film, you have, you know, formal conversations and decide, ‘Okay, you’re going to work in my film, and this is the film, and I’ll pay you so much, and okay fine,’ or, ‘No, I’m sorry I want x amount more’ or whatever, and that’s fixed. And then the star keeps drawing money as and when he wants. And it’s all sort of registered in some mental computer somewhere that this much has gone and this amount is still owed. . . and it works!” (Pamela Chopra, interview, 28 February 1996). During the late 1990s, written contracts did not play a significant role in the business dealings of the industry. Filmmakers emphasized the value of people’s “word” or verbal commitments. Chopra described how all financial dealings were based on trust: “You’re dependent upon that person staying true to his word. It’s very strange
that 90 percent of the time it works. You know that a lot of times contracts are never written” (Pamela Chopra, interview, 28 February 1996). Producer/director Rakesh Roshan described how a written contract could be easily altered and hence was not trustworthy, whereas a verbal assurance was immutable. He characterized the importance of one’s word by asserting, “In this industry, only the tongue has a value” (Roshan, interview, May 1996).

The highly oral nature
of
contracts and financial dealings also has to be understood with respect to the centrality of the “black” economy in India as the main way of raising and disseminating capital for filmmaking, at least until industry status and the advent of corporatization. This point was amply demonstrated to me one afternoon in 1996, when I went to visit Sandeep in his production office. He was busy at the computer, working on an Excel spreadsheet to enter the salaries for all of the principal people involved in the film, both on the creative and the production side. Sandeep’s entries of payments were part of his continuous effort to organize what he felt was a very lackadaisical way of operating: he would frequently make schedules, spreadsheets, and charts on his computer and post them around the office. I sat down next to him and read the computer screen: it was a schedule of payments that had been disbursed along with the amounts that were still outstanding. There were two columns under each payment date labeled “cheque” and “cash.” In his zeal to be organized and efficient, Sandeep had assiduously recorded all of the “black” money or under-the-table cash payments in the spreadsheet. Ajay, the accountant for the company, walked into the room, and when Sandeep proudly pointed out his handiwork, he rolled his eyes in disbelief. Ajay said to him, in a tone of patient incredulity, “Sandeep, what are you trying to do to us, get us into trouble with the income tax-
wallahs
? We can’t have all this on the computer.” When Sandeep indicated that he was saving the figures on a floppy disk rather than on the hard drive, and that he would keep the disk at home, Ajay shook his head, telling him it was too risky and that he should erase all records of the cash payments.

In the chapter four sketch, not having the crane on the first day of the shoot, or an actress who could speak Hindi properly, did not pose any insurmountable obstacle to the production at hand. Being able to quickly come up with solutions, in the way that Chadda had in order to solve the problem of the heroine’s inability to lip-synch, is a common feature of
Hindi filmmaking. Filmmakers are also quite adaptable to sudden changes in plan or setbacks. For example, in the case of the above-mentioned
Awara, Paagal, Deewana
, the cast and crew did not receive their visas for Spain in a timely fashion, so they decided to shoot the portions planned for Spain in the United States as well. A few different factors contribute to Hindi filmmakers’ ability to be flexible: the visual style of popular cinema, the practice of dubbing, and the fragmented temporality of production.

Popular Indian cinema is very open and comfortable with the artifice that is at the heart of feature filmmaking. The visual style of popular Hindi films departs from the continuity editing, naturalistic lighting, and realist mise-en-scène conventions typical of Hollywood. Hindi filmmakers are not overly concerned with mimetic realism, even though a realist aesthetic is valued as a higher form of filmmaking by the state, media, and many filmmakers.
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Unlike Hollywood films, which go to a great deal of effort to hide the fact that they are films—through their production design, editing, lighting, and camera practices—a Hindi film does not pretend that it is presenting an unmediated view of reality. The editing, lighting, art direction, and cinematography in popular Hindi films highlight the constructed, artificial nature of filmmaking, which is most apparent in the song sequences.

Locales, especially for song sequences, are chosen for their spectacle value rather than for their ability to blend in to the mise-en-scène of the dialogue portions of the film; therefore, for the producer and director of
Awara, Paagal, Deewana
(apd), who decided to shoot an additional song in the United States, since they could not go to Spain, it mattered less whether the song was shot in Spain or the United States than it did that it was shot against aesthetically pleasing backgrounds and landscapes. This point became very clear to me when, in the process of observing the shoot of apd in New York and New Jersey, I was recruited— by virtue of my friendship with the director, Vikram Bhatt—to help find suitable locations for the additional song they needed to film. As I was residing in Pennsylvania at the time, I took the film’s director, producer, and cinematographer on a brief tour of southeastern Pennsylvania: Lancaster County, better known as Amish Country; Valley Forge National Park; downtown Philadelphia; and the campuses of Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges, where I was teaching at the time. While lukewarm about Lancaster County and Valley Forge, Bhatt and his producer, Firoz Nadiadwala, were thrilled with the college campuses and downtown Philadel
phia. They kept comparing Bryn Mawr’s campus to Oxford’s and Philadelphia to an Eastern European city like Prague or Budapest, deciding to shoot on both college campuses and in parts of Philadelphia, such as its city hall and art museum (Figures
12
–
13
). What excited Bhatt and Nadiadwala the most was that, to their knowledge, no one from Bombay had ever filmed there. They could not fathom how a city so close to New York was not yet “discovered” by their colleagues in Bombay.

Not only can the visual style of Hindi cinema accommodate changes
in
filmmakers’ plans, the verbal and sound techniques are somewhat forgiving of mistakes and oversights in the production process. The majority of Hindi films are not shot with sync-sound cameras, and all of the sound in a film—from dialogues to music to sound effects—is added in the post-production phase. While actors’ speech is recorded separately on the sets, for reference and editing purposes, due to camera noise, actors must dub their own speech after a film has been shot and edited. Dubbing is carried out in special studios where actors watch their performance and repeat the dialogues to match their lip movements onscreen, re-enacting the film without the interaction of co-stars, as dubbing is done individually rather than in groups.
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Orality is apparent during the dubbing process as well. Instead of working from a script, actors use their aural and memory skills: they listen to the lines that they had uttered and repeat them verbatim.
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Since an assistant director is responsible for overseeing the process and making sure that pronunciation, grammar, and syntax are correct, dubbing offers a chance to correct errors that occurred while shooting. Another advantage of dubbing is that filmmakers can cast actors who do not speak Hindi, as in the case of Sulekha in the chapter four sketch, having a professional dubbing artist or a well-known Hindi-speaking actor dub for them; the reverse happens when Hindi film actors appear in films made in other Indian languages.
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There are also instances where, even if the actors speak Hindi, filmmakers have used someone else’s voice in the film, because the actor’s own voice was not deemed suitable.
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The practices of playback singing and dubbing mean that in popular Indian films, the speaking voice, singing voice, and actor’s onscreen body can be a conglomeration of three different individuals into a single apparent entity.

Although synchronous sound is not the norm, it is definitely valorized within the film industry as a more modern and higher quality filmmaking practice. When films have been shot in sync sound, that fact is highlighted in trade and media discussions about the film. For example, Aamir Khan attracted a fair amount of media attention when he decided that
Lagaan
, the first film that he produced, should be shot with synchronous sound. In interviews with the press, Khan explained his preference for sync sound in terms of his commitment to cinematic quality, representing his decision as a practice of distinction: “Everybody I knew, including Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra, advised me against using live sound. It has never been used in a film from Mumbai. But it worked for us in
Lagaan
. I think sync sound makes a vast difference to the scenes, performances, everything” (“Aamir Khan denies re-shooting
Lagaan
” 2001). In the book
The Spirit of Lagaan
, which assiduously detailed the making of the film,
¹⁷
the author, Satyajit Bhatkal, characterized the system of dubbing as “much more than the technique of recording sound. It is part of a work culture” (2002: 51). As a result of dubbing, “actors have got used to being casual about their dialogue delivery on set, directors pumping up the emotional levels while dubbing, and the unit members to functioning in a noisy fashion during the shoot” (2002: 51). By this token, the decision to use synchronous sound in
Lagaan
is represented as a radical action, challenging the prevailing work culture of the film industry.

FIGURE 12
Preeti Jhangiani and Aftab Shivdasani at the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the shoot of
Awara, Paagal, Deewana
, 2001. Photo by the author.

FIGURE 13
Awara, Paagal, Deewana
shoot at Bryn Mawr College, 2001. Photo by the author.

The third factor that has contributed to filmmakers’ flexibility is the fragmented nature of the production process. A characteristic feature of the production phase of a Hindi film, until the early 2000s, has been that films were not completed on a continuous schedule, because often producers did not have all of the required finance at the outset. Thus, rather than being shot from start to finish over several weeks or a couple of months, most Hindi films were shot in a series of “schedules,” ranging from two days to two weeks, over the span of months or even years as producers tried to raise finance throughout the production process. Even if the requisite finance was fully available, another impediment to a condensed production schedule was the unavailability of stars, who worked on multiple projects simultaneously and frequently did not have a large block of time to devote to one film.
¹⁸

A consequence of such fragmentation was that a mishap or a delay in the production of one film could have a domino effect, affecting the production of other films. For example, in 1996, a number of films in which Shah Rukh Khan was acting had their production schedules thrown into disarray because his co-star’s mother, who had accompanied the cast and crew of
Duplicate
to their on-location shoot in Prague, died in a road
accident. Since the
Duplicate
shoot was waylaid by such unfortunate circumstances, the other films that Khan had to act in also got delayed. Filmmakers have to be capable of dealing with unforeseen circumstances during the production process.

The fragmented temporality of the production process was heavily criticized by Hindi filmmakers; it was often posited as the reason for the poor quality of films and thus the high rates of commercial failure. The practice of actors shooting for a number of films simultaneously, rather than sequentially, was especially criticized, including by actors themselves.
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When I asked Sanjay Dutt how actors managed to work in a number of films simultaneously, he responded instantly: “I have stopped doing that.” Although my interactions with Dutt took place at the sets of the two films that he was shooting for simultaneously, in his answers to my question he was critical of the practice, asserting that it led to a lack of effort. “I don’t think you justify your work,” he said. “There’s no input from an actor nor a director. It’s just that, ’Yes, I have to go there at that time, finish that scene by that time, because the other guy is waiting for me at that time, and you’re running” (Dutt, interview, May 1996). He recalled a time when he was shooting at Filmistan Studios, and Shashi Kapoor—a popular actor from the late 1960s till the mid-1980s—was shooting for three different films on three different sets on the same day. Dutt humorously described the scenario: “He was doing a fight, a song, and a couple of scenes. So what he used to do was shake his ass out there, remove his shirt, by the time that lighting is going on he used to come and fight out here, remove that shirt, and come here and do a scene and go back! [laughs] Really crazy you know! But that had to stop, because there’s no quality” (Dutt, interview, May 1996). He asserted that times were changing in the industry, and that actors who were concerned with the quality of their performance only worked one shift a day or devoted blocks of time to particular films, so that they could work serially, rather than simultaneously, in multiple films.

Pronouncing one’s desire to work in one film at a time, reducing one’s assignments, or appearing selective about one’s projects are all ways for actors to assert their discerning taste and commitment to quality. Aamir Khan was (and continues to be) well known in the industry for his policy of working on one film at a time and being very choosy about the films he acts in—attributes that contribute to his widely media-disseminated public image as a highly conscientious and discerning actor. For producers, being able to shoot the entire film in one schedule, or finishing a film in a short amount of time, becomes a way to demonstrate one’s ex
ceptionalism as a filmmaker, revealing how temporality can be another mode to assert distinction.

In addition to flexibility, Hindi filmmaking has an improvisational quality, which I noted throughout my research. I experienced it firsthand in February 1996, my second month of fieldwork, while I was observing the production of the film
Sar Aankhon Par
(Your Wish Is My Command). One afternoon when I arrived at the bungalow, which was serving as set for the film, some of the crew commented that I appeared more formally dressed than usual. They seemed suitably impressed that I had just attended the
mahurat
—a ceremony undertaken by a producer to mark the start of a new film project—of
Mrityudaata
(Angel of Death)—being touted at the time by the press as superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s comeback film. While waiting for others in the cast and crew to arrive before we headed off to a preview theater to view the first rushes of the film, one of the production assistants looked at me and then turned to the director and said, “Why don’t we cast her as Bubbly’s friend?” I was a little taken aback by his question, and even more so when the director turned to me and asked if I would play a small role in the film, that of the heroine’s friend.
²⁰
This acting offer made me realize that casting for minor parts was not necessarily a matter of great concern in the pre-production stage and could occur while a film’s production was already underway.
²¹
If an actor was required for only one or two scenes, casting could be done as late as a day or two prior to the shoot. In addition to on-the-spot casting, dialogues are sometimes composed on the set or written just prior to shoot. Even if all of the dialogues have been written prior to the start of production, actors still learn their lines directly on the set, while waiting for the lighting and camera to be set up, rather than memorizing them prior to a shoot.
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