Meet the past masters

When Dibakar Banerjee was scouting all of tinsel town to find the ideal cast for his period drama Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, his production designer Vandana Kataria was busy looking around hawk-eyed for those perfectly aged walls that would fit 1940s Calcutta. And then she tried every trick in the book and out of it too, to shape her vision in brick and mortar. Right from putting tissue paper and heating the walls to get the flakes out to getting dust blown on the sets for two days, to even organically growing moss on them, Vandana wouldn’t stop until the walls time travelled to the 1940s Calcutta. She’s not the only one. The Hindi film industry has seen more such period films in the last few months, such as Hawaizaada or Bombay Velvet that drew more attention than the films themselves.

Not very often in the past, have the set designers in Bollywood got a chance to bask in the spotlight. But courtesy their relentless efforts and zero compromises, Vandana Kataria (DBB), Sonal Sawant (Bombay Velvet) and Amit Ray (Hawaizaada) have become names to reckon with, within the industry. And while they raised the bar in Bollywood, Aparna Raina bagged the National Award for her work in Konkani period drama Nachom-ia Kumpasar.

In the films these sets maybe mere backgrounds but the stories behind them could well have more drama and intrigue than those we get to see on the big screen.

One of the members of Sonal Sawant’s team in Bombay Velvet got chappals flung at her when she visited Kamathipura (Mumbai’s oldest red light district) for her research. Falkland Road (as Kamathipura was known as in the 60s) is one of Sonal’s proudest creations in the film. “Since the place stands today, it was important to get a close glimpse of it. But people there got suspicious of these camera-wielding girls turning up at their doorstep everyday. And one day this girl from my team had a chappal flung at her,” says Sonal.

The milieu in India is hostile to research, feels Sonal. “The archives charge you Rs 100 for every piece of paper you scan. And if you visit a place, there’ll be a minimum of 200 pages of data and the whole affair turns out to be very expensive. Besides, not everyone is very willing to help. Some are suspicious, some are indifferent and some just don’t have a clue. I took seven trips to meet a certain gentleman of the postal services to get information about a certain stamp, only to find out during the last visit that he couldn’t help,” she adds.

But there’s one place that seems to have the answer on most days --- Chor Bazaar in Mumbai. “I have been in the industry for 17 years, and have gone to Chor Bazaar to source material for every film,” says Amit Ray. And for Sonal it was a weekly trip. “I would go there every Friday, to catch the morning market to source the best stuff possible,” she says.

While in research, there may be roadblocks, as one cannot contest facts, when it comes to execution, there is room for alternatives, or “cheating” as they call it, points out Vandana Kataria who created the sets of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy. “In the olden days, the enamel technique of painting was very popular. But unfortunately that technique is obsolete. So I try and heat treat it in a way such that nobody knows the difference,” she says.

However, there are times when nothing but the real deal works. When Sonal recreated Mumbai in Sri Lanka, there was no scope for sourcing last minute artifacts from there. “Since Sri Lanka has a Dutch influence (due to the Dutch rule) as opposed to a British influence that we were looking for, we couldn’t use anything local. Besides, they barely have antique shops, which meant shipping everything from furniture to props from India.”

There is no room for inaccuracy when one is trying to recreate the past, “The basics include the right kind of clock, calendar, radio etc.,” says Vandana, who was recreating 40s Calcutta. “The thing with Calcutta is that it is a very old city. So when the team tried to create a Calcutta of the 1940s, the buildings had to look old — like they’ve been standing there for 100 years already. The challenge here was to create a new ‘old’ structure,” she says. Hence the tricks to age the walls. “I wasn’t too worried about the streets because vehicles, people, dirt and dust would camouflage them. But I wanted the walls to look real, since I didn’t want the audience to get bored looking at them,” she adds.

Aparna Raina, who won the National Award, Best Production Design for Konkani film Nachom - IA Kumpasar this year, believes recreating a milieu is as much about showing certain things as it is about hiding them. The film is based on Goan jazz musicians in Bombay of the 1960s. “The only soft drinks available at the time were Campa Cola and the sorts. So if a plastic bottle of a soft drink were to appear in the scene, it would be lethal. Even plastic tables for that matter. We had to make sure that all the stuff sourced had a Portuguese influence since it wasn’t entirely free of the Portuguese rule then.”

And the details are often seeped in logic and tradition, she points out. “For a wedding scene in the film, we had a bunch of chairs — not more than two to four of a kind. The same applied to glasses as well. This is because there was no concept of a decorator or caterer at the time. If there is a celebration, things were sourced from different houses in the neighbourhood. So that should reflect in the film as well. Also, one can’t take the liberty of putting buntings at the scene, simply because nobody used them. So we had to cut up banana leaves, dry them, and use them as streamers instead — just like they used to at the time.”

While props are crucial, the first thing that Amit looks into while establishing a certain era is the architecture and colour palette. “The colours used at the time (1895, Hawaizaada) for paintings were all earth tones. Green was made out of leaf juice, brown was made out of soil and so on. The artists basically played only with basic colours in earthy tones, so to paint something pink would be totally out place,” he points out. Pillars and roofs are the other telling indication of an era he says — a certain way for the Mogul dynasty, more dome-shaped for the Lodhi dynasty, Mangalore tiles for Mumbai houses and so on.

Many a times, the details come to the fore not by external research, but by getting into the skin of a character. For Vandana, it is as much about the period’s influence as it is about the character’s life and choices. So apart from building a little city with real streetlights, tram lines, overhead tram cables etc. Vandana also added a personal touch to every wall and surface. Giving an example of Anguri Devi’s (who plays a femme fatale) home in Byomkesh, she says, “Her walls were adorned with paintings of mother and child. That’s because her character was such that she longed for a family, a husband, but didn’t have one. So it wasn’t Vandana picking up the paintings or choosing the colour of the walls, but Anguri herself. I try to get into the shoes of the character I am working on,” she says.

Nothing guarantees foolproof execution, however. Vandana admits that she goes back to her film to point out her own flaw. How many does she find? “Hundreds of them. But nobody I know has caught on to them. I am waiting for people to tell me that you went wrong “here” and “here”. But you learn from mistakes. Next time you work, you make newer mistakes, not the same old ones.”

Since a film runs on a tight schedule, there’s little or no scope for buying time or creating a buffer. Hence last minute tricks of the trade are part of every production designer’s hat. Amit admits he’s often referred to as “jugadu” for his knack of “pulling off” a scene with whatever’s at hand. He recalls this time when he was shooting Raavan with Mani Ratnam and a set that was built over a period of three months came crashing down in a night.

“It was a Vishnu statue built by a river. We had just finished work on it and were on our way to our rooms when the entire thing came down, thanks to the dam water let out that night. We all panicked of course, but Mani sir made no concessions. We’re shooting in 15 days as per schedule, he said. We somehow managed to pick up the broken pieces and put together something in 20 days — only this time Vishnu was much shorter and had nothing waist-below. We shot it in a way that the camera escaped the details,” he says. But the fixes are not necessarily so dramatic. This other time, he pulled a fast one with food, but something that did not leave behind a sweet aftertaste for those on the sets. “My director asked me for barfi at four in the morning. There was no way I could knock on a shop’s door at that time. So I took some leftover idli from the sets, put ketchup on it a passed it off as barfi. The actors weren’t too amused with the little surprise,” he says with the laugh.

Sonal recalls how she ditched a traditional procedure to create a desired look with what was available to her. “Craftsmen come at a premium price in Sri Lanka as opposed to India where they are readily available. So all the molding that would have been done with Plaster of Paris in India, was done with thermocol, which we never do. In a way, it taught me to appreciate the craftsmen back home because they have spoilt us by being so readily available for very reasonable costs.”

“ A production designer friend of mine lives in a very drab house with bare walls. He can’t get himself to decorate it. Since he tears down the sets that he so lovingly builds after every project, it has had a psychological effect on him, and he can never do up his own place,” says Vandana Kataria. Such is the effect that tearing down or dismantling a set has on its creators. “I have personally never witnessed a dismantling of my set. In fact, I make sure I am not even in the radius when it’s being done, because it’s simply too painful,” says Amit.

Sonal too, is of the idea that one must find a better ways to wrap up. “The kind of money that goes into building a huge set is enough to build an entire township. Besides, pulling it down creates so much waste! The Bombay Velvet set is made of concrete and painted with weatherproof paint. It also has a roof. So if maintained well, can go on for 5-7 years at least. It is production house’s prerogative of course, but I believe sets should stay.” As a tribute to the toil, perhaps.