Top

I knew Neerja is looking at us: Ram Madhvani

Director Ram Madhvani talks about his latest cinematic offering, Neerja.

What are the trials and triumphs filmmakers face when working on their labours of love? Here, director Ram Madhvani talks about his latest cinematic offering, Neerja, a biopic on the braveheart Pan Am purser Neerja Bhanot.

The biggest challenge while shooting Neerja was to capture the essence or soul of the incident — it is more important than capturing the actual event. That is important of course, but it is crucial that the audience gets a sense of what people felt in a certain situation. It involved never-ending research because I wanted to convey the sentiments on the doomed flight.

The shoot though, was wrapped up in 32 days. Everybody told me that a film like this would need at least two months, but I assured them that it’d be done in 32 days and it did. We were able to wrap up in a stipulated time because I believe in detailed planning. I plan in a way such that I am free during the shoot. My execution though, is more organic. We had a shamiana put up on the set with Neerja’s photograph and we would light a diya in front of it every day. It also encouraged actors to understand the responsibility at hand. I wanted them to know that we’re not just shooting a film, we’re retelling a very important story. That we would go home after the shoot, but not many people on Neerja’s flight did, and that needed to come through.

Working with a big crew means there is always an imminent threat of people dropping out. We had 250 passengers on the set and I thought that there’ll be a 10 per cent dropout every day. But there was none. I had kids with a 103 degree C fever coming to shoot not because I forced them to, but because they wanted to. I can get aggressive with my team, but never with my cast. I want them to keep coming back on the sets. We worked with all the possible shifts — 12 hour shifts — 6 am to 6 pm, 9 am to 9 pm and so on because I wanted the passengers to look sleep-deprived. If you’ve been on a flight for 42 hours, you can’t look fresh. I wanted the cast to convey a sense of being washed-out.

One of my biggest fears was that there was a film industry strike looming over our heads during the shoot. We had a crew of about 500 people and it was a mammoth task to organise the shoot each day. There was a threat of the rains as well. We wanted to finish before the monsoons. Strike would mean a delay, so I had already started thinking about dismantling the plane and making alternate arrangements.

But somewhere I knew that Neerja (and then her mother Rama Bhanot) were looking at us; that the film is blessed because her spirit was with us. I think that is why the strike got called off a day before it was to happen and we finished shooting without having to worry about the rains — or anything else.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
Next Story