Category: Behind the Scenes

It’s been more than two years since we started production on Josef – Born in Grace. It wasn’t the first film production I was involved in¹, but it was the first professional one.

During the lockdown, many filmmakers experimented with procedures to allow film production to continue during a pandemic. Malcolm & Marie was produced during the height of the pandemic, in a complete bubble. Drishyam 2 was produced during a break in filming of another film because the filmmakers couldn’t travel overseas. DOTS, which screened in the ICAF Indian Panorama with Josef – Born in Grace, is a computer screen film that was shot, filmed and edited remotely.

Film production was an expensive and complicated thing when there isn’t a pandemic. Now that there is, the necessity of cast and crew safety, combined with the reality of releasing a movie without a theatrical run complicates production even further. Large studios have experimented with different release strategies from “in theatres only” for Tenet, ticketed within a paid subscription service for Mulan, and direct to streaming on their own paid subscription service platform, HBO Max, for no extra charge for everything from Warner Bros.

Reading all of this made me think about the film we made, what I learned during the production process, and the kinds of films that we could make in the future.

I joined the team late in preproduction. I had a job that prevented me from joining the crew as soon as the project began. My fiancée (now wife²), who was the costume designer on the film, pointed out that this was a chance that I wouldn’t get again, and it would be a great learning experience, if nothing else. I joined the team, and started immediately helping out with logistics. Being a novice, I had to learn quickly. Two years on, here’s what I can remember learning:

Preproduction is critical to the success or failure of a project. Recces are important for getting a lay of the land and figuring out where to shoot, whom to contact for permissions, and who are the people who can get things.

Not everything gets done or planned on the recce. Things are always fluid, and you’re always looking for ways to make the final film better. It took quite some time during production to find the locations that were finally used in the film.³ I’ve written about securing pivotal location in the film, the beautiful dak bangla, in another post.

Don’t shoot during the festival season if you can help it. Really. Don’t. It’s easy to forget that a lot of the country takes festivals very seriously, and no one wants to work during one. Most people will try to work around it, but expect regular questions about whether they will be home in time for the festivities.

Getting people to and from a location shoot is interesting and complicated. There are different modes of transport, number of people to be transported, and making sure that everyone is where they need to be when they need to be. The costs – time and money – can spiral quickly if you’re not careful.

We shot in Ranikhet, and the way to get there was to find a way to Kathgodam (the closest railway station), and then catch a cab or a bus up the mountain. Since most of our crew were staying with us for the entire shoot, we had a few Tempo Travellers (also known as a minibus) to get us from Delhi to Ranikhet, and then shuttled us around from location to location. We still had a few cast and crew members who joined or left midway. Unless you have cars and drivers on standby for trips like this, hiring taxis is the way to do pickup and drop off runs. It took me too long to realise that a spreadsheet is invaluable in coordinating travel (hat tip to Vaidehi, once again).

The Production Manager is pivotal in making sure that many of the things that we take for granted – food, travel, sundry purchases – are handled without inconveniencing the production. They’re the ones who get cursed out when something isn’t working like it should.⁴

Finally, given the amount of expenses that making a film generates, it’s important to have a good relationship with a bank, especially one that’s local to where your production is. Nothing will grind things to a halt as quickly as waiting for a bank to make the arrangements for cash that’s vital to keeping the production ticking over. A trick that I learned is to open an account in the local bank. That way, there’s always a representative who can help sort out any issues arising from moving money between accounts, and ensuring that there’s enough cash in the branch for you to withdraw.

Josef – Born in Grace was the first film on which I worked in a professional capacity. So, fancy title notwithstanding, I was on the crew to pick up any slack that couldn’t be covered by anyone else. I approached this as an opportunity to learn about a job and industry that I only really knew about from TV shows and movies.

Something I learned quickly was that my job involved a lot of “hurry up and wait.” The other thing that really stood out to me was just how much was up in the air when we began shooting. Vaidehi has a great story about the Josef’s signature coat, and the adventure of finding this signature piece of clothing after filming began. There were several roles which hadn’t been cast. And a few of the locations were also up in the air.

We had scouted multiple abandoned buildings in Talla Ramgarh and even shot scenes in and around them, but nothing was quite working out on film the way Lulu Kaka¹ or Sudheer² wanted it to. This ruin is where Josef often finds himself, and is the silent partner in many of his monologues. It also needed to look like people could believe it was haunted. This ruin would be a character in the film.

We found buildings that used to house refugees fleeing from oppression in Rajasthan, and we found dilapidated quarters that used to house government employees. Nothing looked like the kind of khandar³ – the ruin – that they wanted. Everything looked too clean, too solid. Nothing gave us the impression that it would crumble if you sneezed in it, but also that it would still be standing long after the world no longer had people in it. Eventually, we found a location that worked and when you see it on screen, you really can’t imagine any other location that would suffice.

Like the khandar, Josef and Maularam’s kitchen and room was very important to the film. We couldn’t have a location that didn’t feel true to the characters. We had searched for locations without any luck during the recce and the first half of our schedule. Our local contacts brought us suggestions, but nothing clicked. Unlike the khandar, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to test the scenes set in the kitchen at multiple locations. It would have to be dressed by the art department, and look like somewhere that people had lived and worked in for at least twenty years.

On a Friday, after we moved the crew from Ranikhet to Ramgarh, Lulu Kaka, Sudarshan⁴, Sudheer, and I took a day to search for a location that would work. It had to be something that looked the part, could be dressed quickly, and be suitable for interior and exterior shots. Most importantly, it had to be available.

We had to find something that day or the shoot would be delayed. We were shooting in October, during the festival season, and our crew was asking us when we thought they would be able to return to their families every day⁵. No one wanted to spend the festival away from them.

We left immediately after an early breakfast, and looked at three or four locations. It was slow going⁶. Then, as we were nearing lunch, we found a house that seemed to check off all our requirements – a wonderful, old dak bangla. It looked like it had been there for ages⁷. It matched how Father O’Hara’s house looked. There were great indoor and outdoor areas for shooting, and we would only need to dress one of the rooms.

This is where the importance of local contacts comes to the fore. The building was owned by the Uttarakhand Public Works Department, and the caretaker didn’t have a problem with use shooting there for a few days, as long as we got permission from the Executive Engineer. After making a few phone calls, we determined it would be possible to get permission. The only catch was that the Executive Engineer was the only person who could give us the necessary permissions and he was due to leave for Dehradun for ten days at 3 P.M.

We rushed back to the hotel where we were staying, wrote up an official letter (and made a mental note that we needed a letterhead), and checked it twice. Then, I grabbed the first vehicle that we had available with a driver and I was off in a mad rush to reach the PWD office in Nainital before the officer left for the week.

There’s really something to be said about speeding down a mountain road, trying to beat the clock. I wasn’t driving, and I’m really glad for the driver being incredibly good at his job. It still felt like we were driving through molasses. This was the opposite of time slowing down when adrenaline is coursing through your body. The hands on my watch seemed to spin as if they were turbocharged.

I would look away for a minute, and the hands had moved fifteen minutes. There was no way we were going to make it. I would have to figure out how to get to Dehradun and back, and find the Executive Engineer, or the whole shoot would stop, we would blow our schedule, and no one would spend any time with their family for the holidays.

We made it. Just barely. I arrived at the Executive Engineer’s office a few minutes before he was due to leave. After confirming a few of the details and reiterating that we couldn’t make any structural alterations to the building, he signed off on our request, and left for Dehradun. I sent a photo of the permission slip to the crew, and the driver and I went to finally eat some lunch.

By the time we got back, the art department had started work transforming the set into what the film needed. Working around the clock, they had it ready to shoot in two days later.

And that’s how we secured the location. This dak bangla on top of a mountain, built in the late 1800s is really a character in the film. And what a character it was even when we didn’t have it in the film yet.