American Cinematographer - April 2014 - 84

◗

5 Park City Standouts

Top: Ila (Nimrat Kaur) reads the latest correspondence from Saajan.
Bottom: Cinematographer Michael Simmonds at work on location.

decided this would make the great basis
for a story."
The interest in Mumbai's vibrant
textures remained, however, and this led
Batra to decide not only to include real
footage of the Dabbawallahs, but also to
shoot the rest of the movie on location.
The latter choice might elicit a shrug in
84

April 2014

the West, but in India, it's virtually
unheard of. "Shooting on location is a
relatively new concept, something that
started happening in the last 10 to 15
years," says Batra. Consequently, obtaining film permits can be an adventure, as
can securing locations.
Also, Indians aren't used to seeing
American Cinematographer

movie crews and actors on the street.
"You can attract a mob of 5,000 people
in 30 minutes," says Simmonds. A
sizable security force had to therefore be
added to the crew of 50 - a skeleton
crew by Indian standards. "Having a
population of a billion has some side
effects," Batra explains. "It's cheaper to
have a guy along with the equipment
than it is to get insurance." Simmonds
recalls, "We had two people just watching the camera, on top of the first and
second ACs and the loader."
Interior locations became
crowded very quickly. When filming in
Ila's apartment, a tiny Mumbai flat, "the
entire space had to be taken apart every
time we changed an angle," Simmonds
recalls. For scenes with bigger scope,
like in Saajan's workplace canteen,
production grew to 150 people, including 60 extras. The team did manage to
conduct its documentary outings with
just the director, cinematographer and
first AC.
Simmonds shot scenes featuring
actors with an Arri Alexa and Zeiss
Superspeed primes, recording ProRes
4:2:2 to SxS Pro+ cards and extracting
to 2.40:1. He shot footage of Ila's green
lunchbox, which was implanted in the



American Cinematographer - April 2014

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