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MAHINDRA INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL (MIAAC) FILM FESTIVAL
NOVEMBER 5-9, 2008 |
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MIAAC PANEL
Saturday, November 8, 2008.
10 am - 12 noon.
Recording Studio, Fifth Floor, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center
Attendance is Free. However, registration is essential. Please register at shivika@iaac.us |
SHOOTING IN INDIA
India is home to the world's largest film industry as well as one of the fastest growing economies in
the world. Non-Indian filmmakers across the globe are flocking to take advantage of India's hospitality,
its "cheap" sets and its varied locations. However, filming in India can be a challenge. How, when, where,
who can help, what are the rules? Some of the most successful producers from both the US and India will address questions that US filmmakers have about shooting and producing in India, including financing structures, rules and regulations, artistic talent, technical facilities and crew. Producer Lydia Dean Pilcher (The Darjeeling Express, The Namesake), founder of Cine Mosaic; Tracey Jackson, producer (Lucky Ducks) and screenwriter (The Guru, The Ivy Chronicles); Aanand Mahendroo, producer of Colours of Passion and Managing Director of Infinity Film Completion Services; and Apoorva Lakhia, director of Shootout at Lokhandwala will be on a panel moderated by Parvez Sharma, producer-director of A Jihad for Love.
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Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival
Shooting in India Panel
Jazz at Lincoln Center
New York, NY
November 8, 2008
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Synopsis:
India is home to the world's largest film industry as well as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Non-Indian filmmakers across the globe are flocking to take advantage of India's hospitality, its "cheap" sets and its varied locations. However, filming in India can be a challenge. How, when, where, who can help, what are the rules? Some of the most successful producers from both the US and India will address questions that US filmmakers have about shooting and producing in India, including financing structures, rules and regulations, artistic talent, technical facilities and crew. Producer Lydia Dean Pilcher (The Darjeeling Limited, The Namesake), founder of Cine Mosaic; Tracey Jackson, producer (Lucky Ducks) and screenwriter (The Guru, The Ivy Chronicles); Aanand Mahendroo, producer of Colours of Passion and Managing Director of Infinity Film Completion Services; and Apoorva Lakhia, director of Shootout at Lokhandwala will be on a panel moderated by Parvez Sharma, producer-director of A Jihad for Love.
Sharma: What is the first thing you would recommend to people NOT to do when they have an idea to make a film in India?
Pilcher: That you not think that you can go in and do it alone. I think that the most important thing to do first if you're someone who isn't already based in India…is do a scout. Get s sense of the areas and places where you want to film and start to meet some of the production service companies and get a sense of who you would like to team up with. Finding the right partner is going to be important for any producer of filmmaker whose coming in from outside of India.
Lakhia: As you know in India, we make almost an average of three movies a day, so it's very important to know the crew you're working with, because there are hundreds of line producers. There's a misconception that shooting in India is cheap. It's really not. To get good services, you have to pay top dollar. Top actors and directors can range from $3 million to $10 million. I think the crew is the most important…film production is changing. You get the best assistant directors and cinematographers…do a lot of research before you go.
Jackson: I made a couple of different kinds of films in India. I've gone in with big production companies like MGM and Universal. I went in and made my own film with my own crew. I think a lot of people think…that you can just go into India and shoot. And I thought that, too, with my last film. If you're coming from the States, getting the proper permits from the Indian government…a lot of peple bystep that process, thinking they don't have to. They think they can just go in and shoot…I know many people who have gone in and shot and they had their film confiscated, their cameras confiscated. There's a lot of police. If you're shooting a film and you can hand over a document that's stamped by the government that you're permitted to shoot in India, it's a little extra ground work and paper work…it makes a huge difference when you get tapped on the shoulder by a policeman or an official when you're in a crowd or a train station trying to get shots.
Mehendroo: Location permissions is the most important thing. It's not only the ministry permissions, but you have local permissions. If your permissions are in place, and there are many professionals there who can get you these permissions. The second thing would be the right crew. Who to hire, who not to hire. Mostly what I notice is that people go to pretty standard cliché places in India to shoot…but there are many much cheaper, similar looking locations and fairly accessible with good infrastucture in terms of hotels and roads and stuff like that.
Sharma: Slumdog Millionaire which has got a lot of acclaim and showing at this festival…it’s a foreign/non-Indian filmmaker who’s gone into India and created a remarkable film, but there’s a difference in lens and perspective. Everybody’s talking about going to India. Bollywood being the next big thing. What is going to be the next big crossover film? With Monsoon Wedding, people realized a film shot entirely in India and a film that had no reason to succeed as much as it did with audiences here, but there was some kind of crossover happening with a very Indian theme. I think Slumdog Millionaire is going to do the same thing. What's the difference between the Ferengi (sp?) filmmaker, which is a filmmaker that comes from the West, and a filmmaker who's already working in India within the system. With the whole discussion of permissions, how does that change the complexity of shooting?
Lakhia: I make commercial films in India. I’ll be very honest with you, we make films for the Indian audience. An Indian filmmaker making a crossover film is going to be very difficult. It has to be from an Indian coming from the outside to make a crossover film, because we make movies for an Indian audience. It has to be two hours long. It has to have the full songs. It has to have crying and there has to be an underdog, which eventually takes over the world. That’s what all our films are about…And we make films for the Indian audience that’s living abroad. You will not see our films go to a lot of festivals, because our distributors and our producers make it a point to…not to premiere it in festivals. It’s just the way it works…I made a film called Shootout at Lokhandwala, which was based on a true story and I didn’t have any songs. After I edited my first cut, the producer…made me shoot three songs in six days and he put them in the film. So that’s what I’m talking about…As far as crossover, I think a lot of people are coming to India to make films with a perspective which is theirs. They’re coming in with where they’ve grown up and what they remember of India. I think that’s really important because it’s a whole amalgamation of different people making a film in India.
Sharma: The Guru is about the studio system. Some kind of discipline entering Bollywood. What was the process like making the film?
Jackson: The Guru was a film that started in 1995, so it was really long before this crossover…Americans weren’t really making films about India in 1995. I was approached by Shakur Kapoor who was just on the scene. He was in pre-production on Elizabeth, so he had to become a part of the American dialogue. He had done Bandit Queen, which was a big hit in India, but hadn’t really done that much here. Shakur’s India perspective and my love of India and then my knowledge of Anerican structure that we were hoping would be one of the first crossover films, which meant it had American structure, and then it had dancing, it had the underdog, it had all the moments of an Bollywood film, but with the structure of a typical American romantic comedy. It played really well in the UK…and it did horribly in America…So the crossover, it’s interesting…I have another film out now called The Other End of the Line, which is doing horribly here, but you look at it and the South Asians were laughing, the three Americans were sitting in the audience dumbfounded, why was this movie ever made…The way I actually understood it a bit, and keep trying to make it work, until there’s an Indian star who becomes a big star here…it’s going to be very hard to get the American audience into the film to make it a huge hit….you need to come and make an Ocean’s 11…you need to be a part of those films to get that audience base to come here and make the next step. It’s a very fine line. It’s hard to get small American films seen. It’s a struggle. I think it’s gotten better since we did The Guru.
Sharma: For The Namesake, you did get Tabu. She's not a superstar in India, but really well recognized and to do a part in a film like that. I think her (Mira Nair's) big success was Monsoon Wedding. Do you think that there is this crossover that's increasingly going to happen, considering many big studios are investing in India? How is the landscape going to change?
Pilcher: I think it's all a new fronteir. I'll watch and see how it plays out. I have a (literary) agent at ICM who called me yesterday…he's interested in selling books in the Indian market now…he wanted me to talk with him about it. That was a very interesting phone call because he is one of the most literary agents in Hollywood. The fact that he really wanted to explore that was indicative with what I think is happening. I also feel that…it seems like there's a generation of younger directors coming up in India who are more influenced by Western media and movies and some of the style of the Bollywood film is shifting. I know that New York City has been a major part of their campaign, attracting the Bollywood films into the city…and (Kalum Maloo???) is one of the trailers that the Mayor's Film Office puts out. I think that there is some sort of cross-fertilization happening. To me, it's one of the interesting things that's happening globally in cinema, because more and more cultures are developing their own cinema. Mira and I have been working hard on cinema in East Africa…at the same time, Tracey and I were talking about the situation in America where there's a glut of films in the marketplace for a number of reasons, which also makes it very difficult for small films to get a platform here in a theatrical market. Then we start looking at all the ancillary markets that are coming forward and how we can parlay the success of our films connecting them to these audiences, they can get a core audience and figure out how to cross over.
Sharma: What was your experience with Colours of Passion? What's the next frontier?
Mehendroo: There's quite a lot of fusion happening right now…Colours of Passion is a story of a late 19th Century Romantic painter who painted for the first time the Hindu gods in the human form…and he painted them in the face of a. So even today, one billion Hindus bow their heads in front of this man's creation. He got into a lot of trouble because he… He wanted to tell certain stories…Flesh and spirit interested him a lot. Plus he was a great womanizer…he did certain stories of nymphs…the Hindu heretics took him to British court. He fought and won. That is a certain kind of film that you cannot design as a crossover film, but which crosses over…We had a wonderful reaction at the London Film Festival and Sri Lanka Film Festival. It has a universal language. So it all depends on the subject matter…I'm sure (Mira) was very clear when she made Monsoon Wedding…Am I right?
Pilcher: I think Mira sees herself as an international filmmaker.
Jackson: It maybe change the landscape…a lot of trouble is the equity markets and where Hollywood is getting its money is shrinking. A lot of the Indian companies…Reliance…and bailed out Steven Spielberg…There's a lot of Indian capital and money coming into this country bailing out studios who can't get financing elsewhere in the world…I think they're going to have to change their perspective…When they know their bread is being buttered by Indian money, I think they're going to have to change a little bit…and try to make a couple of films that appeal to their financiers. I think that, aside from the whole star thing, might make that market shift a little bit quicker than it would have happened otherwise.
Audience Question: We're talking a lot about marketing. I hope we get back to shooting in India, too, but isn't one of the basic pieces of the forumla what language people will go to see a film in? Does that become a barrier to crossover?
Sharma: I keep going back to Slumdog Millionaire. Most of the film is in English. That's why a lot of people now think it will be nominated for an Academy Award. The language question is a very important one…For The Namesake, a lot of it is in Hindi…and there's a lot of English happening. How do you progress that?
Lakhia: I think I pretty much answered it from my perspective as a filmmaker who makes commercial films in India. We make them in Hindi because primarily I make films for the Indian audience. Even if I have a lot of English…for example, I shot a film in Istanbul called Mission: Istanbul…We tried to make (the main actor) speak in Turkish…The Indian audience which is the masses…they would not be able to understand what he says…so we had to write two scenes on how he learned Hindi and he was working for the embassy in India and that's how he learned Hindi…It's difficult…In India there's two kinds of films and two kinds of filmmakers. The basic revenue comes from the masses and the classes. The classes means the metroplexes where the opening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday decide if the film is doing well or not. And then there's the masses which are the cinemas that has 2,000 seats…in smaller towns where the place is very moderate. You have two kinds of balancing acts.
Sharma: If it's a multiplex, I guess you can make a film in English?
Lakhia: There's a new film coming out which is called Devdi, which is a spoof, not exactly a spoof, on Devdas, which is one of the most romantic novels in India. In this spoof, there's a coke addict…and he's stipping all the time and he's in love with this girl. That is so alien…taking cocaine and having group sex….makes films for both audiences.
Audience Question: Does a $300,000 budget work in India in terms of crew…basic locations?
Pilcher: I think in any scenario, it's a hard question to answer.
Mehendroo: If not too many production demands, you should be able to.
Lakhia: For that, you'll have to shoot in Bombay or nearby areas, because what happens is that Bombay (Mumbai) is the capital of cinema in India. There are beautiful locations all over India where you can shoot. There is always South India and there's Calcutta. When you shoot in places that have an infrastructure…has all of the equipment…the crew…we have great equipment in the major parts which make movies.
Sharma: With a $300,000 budget, which is really low on any standard, would you shoot on film or on HD? Would you rent your equipment in India, obviously than bringing it with you to India?
Lakhia: When you come to India, you should definitely check out the equipment there…We have great services and studios.
Mehendroo: (If $300,000 is the budget of the film) I think HD is much better.
Pilcher: You can shoot a film on HD. It's not cheap, but it is cheaper than here…To rent a steadycam in India with four people is a certain price…From six in the morning till nine at night with four guys is $800. Now that's cheap by American standard…You can get a good sound person for much less than hear.
Sharma: What about for editing? How much is post-production?
Lakhia: I think people coming to India should consider doing post-production in India, because it's the cheapest in the world. That is a major cost. I won't say you can make huge special effects in India, because we're not equipped for that. We are not as well-trained, but we are getting there…For example, doing Telecine or sound dubbing or editing, it is extremely cheap.
Sharma: Increasingly, even with my own experiences, a lot of filmmakers in the West, we are increasingly going into theatrical distribution not being able to afford transferring onto film, because it costs up to $25,000 to $45,000 to make a print. I think increasingly theaters are projecting on HD, so that's a very good point.
Audience Comment: I'm from Guyana in South America. Bollywood is big in our culture and we watch subtitles.
Sharma: For films like The Guru when it was released in theaters in India, were they released with subtitles or were they only releases in very select areas?
Jackson: The Guru was shot in English…I think it's been dubbed in Hindi and also shown sometimes with subtitles. It was a much bigger success in India than it ever was in this country. I don't think in terms for marketing…once again, we're not the ones doing marketing unfortunately. It's a bunch of guys in suits figuring out where it's going to play…It has a lot less to do with their decision of it's in English or Hindi…because there's been films that have made tons of money that reached a very large audience. It's more a question of the audience it's going to reach. People go sit through subtitles in a martial arts film made in China that will make a lot of money…A small film sounds wonderful. It's very specific…It's a harder audience to reach. Is the marketing going to put any money behind you? Are they going to put ads in the paper? Is it going to be worth their while? Money shrinks. We were talking about this earlier, it's harder to get those guys in suits to give the smaller films the break.
Mehendroo : In the small towns, you can't subtitle in English.
Lakhia: I'll give you an example, Quantum of Solace. It's been released in 16 languages with 3,100 prints. James Bond movies in India are making more money per print than anywhere else on the planet…Jurrasic Park was dubbed in 16 languages and it did really well, so this is how it happens in India.
Audience Comment: Tracey was talking about Reliance and all these companies coming into the States. The bottom line is when they're making $150 million, if Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis sells, then I'm going to say, forget Tom Cruise and put Sharu Kahn (sp?) because obviously Tom Cruise is making more money than Sharu Kahn and more people know Tom Cruise, it's just the way the market works.
Jackson: I hear what you're saying…what I was actually thinking was a different point. Yes, of course, they're not going to stop making the Tom Cruise/Bruce Willis movies, but in the allocation of those funds, they're bailing a company out with $2 billion, however much they are. Are they going to say all of a sudden, here's $30 million to go make a crossover film…It's not eliminating the other films, but adding onto that slate for a much smaller budget. They're not going to put $150 million into a film with Indian actors, but they will maybe put $20M…They can't turn their back on the South Asian audience in the way that they have historically in the West.
Mehendroo: In Ocean's 11, you have these characters, probably one of them could have been an Indian star.
Sharma: If there is someone in this audience who has their screenplay set in India, who do they go to for money first?
Pilcher: Financing is an international question. We have only used Indian money on our films…on The Namesake. UTV came in as 1/3 equity partner on the movie. Mira was very proud that we were financing the film with Indian money. It was a major thing for us. Mostly we have financed her movies out of foreign sales and pre-sales. Taking those pre-sale deals to the bank and getting a loan and a bond. It's a very successful model because you can raise your budget with pre-sales and with whole territories, because they're basically a profit before you start shooting. In terms of financing, that's a bigger question. I know there are more sources for funding in India now…Mahindra has a company. Studio 18 is looking to branch out…UTV was a financier on the Chris Rock movie I Think I Love My Wife…Disney bought a huge stake in UTV. Newscorp and Fox make offices in India. Sony has opened their offices in India. I think in terms of financing, there are a lot of new opportunities.
Sharma: Who are the gatekeepers in India? How does a new filmmaker with an idea actually get into the door in India?
Lakhia: I can only talk from an angle of making a commercial film in India. The financing structure in India is very different from the West. We don't have studio financing. Even the majority of the financing is anonymous, private…What I've experienced is…my films are also depending on the actors being able to get into the project…As far as my experience is concerned, I am never, after my post, never really gone with the project to look for my next work. It's the producers who approach you and say, do you have an interesting subject, we'd like to work with you. That's how it works in India.
Mehendroo: To add to this…we are selectively taking stakes in films. If you have a 25% to 30% equity involvement in your film. If you have 20% to 30% in pre-sales, then we help you out with either with giving you GAP or if we like the project giving you an equity stake…We have about six projects going on right now in India and Brazil.
Audience Question: As an independent filmmaker, if I'm in New York and can get grants from the government, is there something similar in India?
Mehendroo: The kind of tax breaks, I think Brazil has the best ones in the world. No, we don't have any such (grants), but there are smaller incentives which state governments give, but they're not the way it works over here. The National Film Development Corporation was started 43 years back.
Sharma: It's in big trouble…A few years ago filmmaker living abroad used to get some seed money from the NFDC. All those types of pre-sales before they start shooting…it's increasingly hard to get any money from them these days.
Mehendroo: To be very clear, if you have a script if you can get…Apoo said it's not the studio system…I think a present source of financing, even commercial films in India, it's very much a studio model where you have the Reliances and UTV chasing successful directors…I think if you can get an Indian star attached to your script, India is the place to be…You need to find some kind of equity and some kind of pre-sales.
Audience Question: Being an actor myself…you were talking about talent from India crossing over to Hollywod like Aishwarya Rai but for someone who is not Indian, what's the best way to go about getting yourself into that Bollywood market?
Mehendroo: You shouldn't have any problem. You look very Indian…I think the North American market it's only Chinese actors who have consistently made commercial successes. It started with Bruce Lee.
Sharma: I was talking to Lydia earlier about a recent article in Harper's…that's been getting a lot of attention and came out a couple months ago…where this Caucasian actor goes to Bollywood in Kalaba(sp?). Can you talk a little bit about this?
Lakhia: It's very hard for roles for a non-Indian looking person in India. For example, I shot a film in Istanbul and I needed to do some patchwork. So I needed white people. Tell your coordinator you need foreigners. Now there are a lot of groups…they want to have the Bollywood experience. You can actually go to various groups and travel agencies and you can spend your day as an extra on a Bollywood set. You go there in the morning, you hang out and do nothing. You can't do anything specialized. Kolaba is one area because a lot of foreigners stay there. The accommodations are cheap…It's really important, and every actors goes through this before they become an actor, to take intensive dancing classes…intensive writing classes. You have to understand that competition is very severe. There are millions and millions of people coming to Bombay every day. What is the other thing you have that somebody else might not have?
Audience Question: If I'm living in the U.S. and I can't just pack up and move to India, what channels can I persue from the U.S.?
Lakhia: It's pretty similar in terms of a casting director. In India they're called secretaries.
Audience Question: If you want to shoot in restaurants or bars, would you approach your own locations or would you have to use a studio?
Mehendroo: Approach both things. You can approach location managers who can get you permissions. It depends where you want to shoot.
Sharma: Do you ever need to bribe people?
Lakhia: We kept 30,000 rupies a day as bribe money. 15,000 before lunch and 15,000 after. It just starts…You have to understand how many departments there are in India once you start filming on the road, especially in Bombay. I haven't really shot out of Bombay.
Sharma: What about shooting in Calcutta? With The Namesake, there were some exteriors I remember. Was there a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy?
Pilcher: There's always a lot of bureaucracy…I think it's essential if you're not familiar with India. It's an incredibly complicated culture with many religions. Even though the caste system is legally not supposed to be in existence, I think there's a myriad of classes that exist. Quite franly, there's quite clearly an intense mutual hatred amongst groups which makes for a lot of landmines when you're doing business. There's no way for a person who's outside the culture to even begin to fathom the understanding of that. I've done four movies in India over the past 13 years and every time I go back, I spend five or six months at a time…I learn more. I'm always fascinated how deeper I have to go with my understanding of the culture.
Sharma: To get the money, perhaps pre-sales, to start talking and then the next step perhaps would be to get an Indian line producer, who knows the nuts and bolts of the sytems to actually start getting the permissions, right?
Mehendroo: A good line producer is a must.
Pilcher: Also, trust is really a major component to success because of the way that one must navigate when you're doing business. Depending on the budget of your film, the stakes are quite high, you need to surround yourself with a team based on trust and a relationship where your ability to communicate with each other, to understand each other is something fluid and can depend on.
Jackson: Having worked on big budget films and almost zero budget films, the bigger the budget the film, you find this especially in Bombay, the higher profile actors you have where you're causing a lot of ruckus in the streets…We shot in a school in a slum that I was connected with. We kind of got to know the cops. They kind of got to know us. So much depends on how you kind of drift into the neighborhood. You don't cause a lot of commotion. You can get by with less and won't have to pay off with as much. I've been in a situation where we paid the money, we got the permissions. In The Guru, we re-did an entire Kaveli (sp?) in Old Delhi. They spent a fortune the day we went to shoot. They said it's a national holiday…you have to pay more money. Depending if you're a small filmmaker with an HD camera and a small crew and you have a decent liaison, you can shoot a film for not a lot of money and a lot of hassle. The smaller the film I shot, the less hassle I had. You have Sharu Kahn in the middle of a marketplace in the middle of the day, you're going to have a crowd of 25,000 people…You create crowds that you can't even believe…just by showing up shooting a movie.
Audience Question: Is it easier to shoot on HD? I just read an interview with Danny Boyle about Slumdog Millionaire. That's what he was talking about.
Lakhia: The easiest thing to do is shoot in… because it's a controlled atmosphere…The problem is shooting on the road. If you have a controlled location for instance, Karabi…or a market…those places are easy. Doesn't matter. You have to know the right palm to grease…There are ways of doing it in India. It's not necessary thay every time you had to keep shedding your money…There are different ways of doing it. The problem happens when you have a big film and you are out on the streets…If you go to a smaller town, your stars are heroes. They're larger than life so people want to see them and want to touch them.
Mehendroo: It's very easy to shoot in India if you're not in an in-your-face situation. That you come to a neighborhood and you destruct it. If you're very discreet about it. If you show yourself over there a few days earlier and mingle around and explain to people what you are trying to do…Rita? is a taskmaster at that. She's done difficult shoots in India on very small budgets only because she becomes one of them. It's not, 'hey be quiet, I'm doing some work here,' but if you mingle with the community, then they.
Audience Question: What are some of the challenges of making a documentary in India?
Jackson: You have to go and get your locations. The saving of time and energy because things just take longer in India than they do here. They're more expansive here. The rules are clearer here I think, but they take much more time there in terms of setting things up. If you get your locations…and get someone who speaks the language…you don't need a lot people. One person who knows which police officers to go to, knows where to get permits, knows that you can't get a permit, because sometimes…I needed a railroad permit, they said it would take three weeks and it took four weeks…and it didn't come, so you went at stole footage, but we didn't get caught that day. You might, but you just take your chance. It's a different way of shooting. You can't go steal footage on an Amtrak in America. You just get in trouble…You just have to go an stake out what you want and find your locations and make as many friends with the people in the areas that you're shooting in as you possibly can…I went and shot a film with people I've known for five to six years…I was part of already the landscape, so I could fit in. If I had just shown up with my camera crew, I couldn't have done it…It would have been much harder to pull off…You have to go an ingratiate yourself with the community.
Sharma: We're talking a lot about chaos, bribery, greasing palms, knowing people, making the right contacts. What is the structure? There is a system that works increasingly more professional
Lakhia: That should also be included in your budget. It shouldn't be coming as a surprise to you…Be more flexible because you never know where it's going to hit you from…It depends where you're shooting. It depends what kind of crew you've got. Once again, if you're working with Indian actors…it's not that you're working with Brad Pitt.
Sharma: What about working with UTV for example? Do they provide services from beginning to end?
Pilcher: We didn't work with UTV in that way. They were strictly a hands-off investor. I would imagine that they would. As would any production services agency that you meet and form a partnership with. The first thing you want to do is take a trip, they call it a "recky"(sp?), and you go to all the places that you even think about filmming in and meet some of the production services companies. It's a good time to just try out going around and seeing what your chemistry is like. One of the things you need to get early on is a permission from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting…It's an overall filming permission. You need that every step of the way. Basically, you send them a script. If you are a little nervous about some of the things they might flag, you might think about that before you send the script in. Maybe you think about a version that would be acceptable. There are certain things that can really draw flags in terms of sexual content or language. Animal rights protection is huge. On The Darjeeling Limited, I don't know if any of you have seen that, Wes Anderson directed it. We had a snake on a train…was one of the biggest deal that we dealt with the entire way and I couldn't believe that at the end of the day, it held up the release in Bombay. I think there were filmmakers who were arrested for working with tigers in Rajistan a couple of years ago, so animal rights is something that is taken extremely seriously. They really are opposed to films using any kind of animals that are considered wildlife.
Sharma: Can the rules be different for a production company based in the U.S. than for someone from India?
Lakhia: We don't have to go to the Ministry…The only thing is getting permission from the Army or shooting in areas that are near the border or on trains. In Bombay, there's a huge deposit and I don't know if the deposit comes back.
Pilcher: We never got ours back.
Lakhia: We don't need to get permission, but when you're coming in from abroad, I think when you want to shoot the most important thing is you should know the correct location manager and line producer. And definitely check out the equipment because they have everything in India…I feel that India has world-class cinematographers…You can do your background in India…your dubbing in India. You can do almost everything and come away with a film. I'll give you an example, I made a film called Mission: Istanbul which had a lot of special effects, a lot of DI (digital intermediate) and I made a deal with Futureworks…including my edit studio…dubbing, promo cutting, my background sound, final mix, Dolby digital (etc.)
Jackson: I also think in terms of the cross-cultural deals, deals can now be made because I think there are people working in India who want to have some kind of presence in America…I got an entire soundtrack out of working composers, because he wants to be in American films. I paid very little money to record just as good a quality than what's done here…You go and you meet people and you spend time and that's not always easy for everyone if you're making small budget films. You can make deals. People want to be a part of it…You can make a small film with really good talent, with really good crew…really good composters where you're not going to pay what you're going to pay here and you come away with a really extraordinary good looking piece of film, maybe shot in HD probably, but still something you can take to festivals, something you can be proud of, something you can attention. So the next time you go out there, you get more funding.
Audience Question: What are the possibilities of turning a profit for making a decent film really only for the classes and not the masses?
Lakhia: What happens is that there are about 500 multiplexes in India and those films are made with a certain amount of budget. If somehow they catch on with a big release with 300 or 400 prints…at the onset, they decide to make a film with a certain budget that are soon to be played at the metros in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta for example…Any films that are made for about 20 kilos really hasn't done very good business…It's not been a very good year for us…After that if they say the word of mouth is great and the people might go and see it, that's a risk you always take.
Sharma: Are you a one-stop shop for filmmakers to come to where you will guide them in finding these key elements or would they need to work through others in India as well?
Mehendroo: I wouldn't call it a one-stop shop for anybody. We do help out friends and filmmakers. Only films that we take a stake in are the ones we
Sharma: Are there any closing thoughts?
Pilcher: I love every experience that I've had in India. I shot in all different partts in the country. Calcutta was amazing because it had such a strong intellectual tradition. Fantastic theater, an amazing talent. Rajistan because these staggering gorgious locations, the palaces…Bombay is exciting because the energy that exists there. I think everywhere I go there's something very different. It's a country that has so much to offer. It's a very exciting place to work if you come in with the right approach.
Lakhia: Don't get scared to come to India and shoot…The most important thing is just be very patient. Obviously if you've grown up in the West, things are different. It takes longer. Not everything happens on time. That's the way they are. They're not going to change for you, so you might as well change for them because you are their guest for three months…Don't think that you can go tomorrow and start shooting a film. It's impossible…Do your research, find the right people…The trust factor is very important.
Jackson: Nothing is as much fun as making a film there. Part of it I think is what attracts me personally to India. It's the warmth of the people, the openness. It does take time…You do need patience. You have to go on a different clock and a different schedule…What you get back emotionally just in terms of your product, it's just so rewarding…Nothing looks as beautiful on film as India…Have a good time. At the end of the day, it's the entertainment business…You're there to make something entertaining. The headaches are different headaches from here. I think they're better headaches.
Mehendroo: Most people they they need the Ministry's permission to shoot in India, it's the only permission required. No sir. You require many more permissions.
Pilcher: And break a coconut on your first day. |
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