Press
- ANDPERSAND MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 2007
- HINDUSTAN TIMES, OCTOBER 2006
- INDIAN EXPRESS, JANUARY 29 2006
- HINDUSTAN TIMES, DECEMBER 2005
- ARRI NEWS, APRIL 2004
Lakshya – Filming in India
ARRI NEWS, APRIL 2004
The typical mainstream Bollywood film has vibrant and saturated colors, night exteriors have a blue key light and a yellow fill light. The character’s are usually way over the top super heroes, back-up dancers suddenly materialize and start singing, and every film has a happy end.
DIL CHAHTA HAI, director Farhan Akthar’s first film, was a milestone in India because it had its roots in traditional Bollywood Cinema but was more reality based, which he wanted to continue in his second film LAKSHYA. This film’s fictitious story follows the experiences and the coming of age of the main character Karan Shergill (played by Hritik Roshan) and has the Kargil war of 1999 between India and Pakistan as backdrop. The three-hours narrative feature was shot in Hindi with a budget of US$ 7,000,000 in 146 shooting days and is now going through the Digital Intermediate Process at Prasad Labs in Mumbai, India.
LAKSHYA was shot entirely on location in India – in the Himalayas in and around Leh,
Ladakh at 11,500 ft to 18,000 ft (where the highest crane shot ever done for a narrative feature film at 17,796ft above sea level was carried out), New Delhi, at the IMA (Indian Military Academy) in Deradhun and on sets
in Film City in Bombay. Los Angeles based cinematorapher Christopher Popp remembers
the challenges of this partially extreme shooting quite well:
LAKSHYA is done in the 35 mm anamorphic (2.40:1 aspect ratio) format, which is the
standard aspect ratio for all Bollywood films. I love this aspect ratio since it allows you to
do complex compositions and capture intimate moments with two characters in a tight
close-up in one frame. You can also control layers of focus on different planes, and it
allows you to spread the action across the frame and have wide vistas. Our main camera,
which for 85 % of the film was a single camera which I operated myself, was an
ARRIFLEX 535B with Hawk anamorphic prime lenses, 35 mm to 135 mm, and an
Angenieux Zoom 50 mm – 500 mm which we got from Prasad Labs in Mumbai. Whenever
we needed matching coverage, we brought in additional cameras – usually 35IIIs
and 435s with Hawk lenses from Ravi Prasad Unit in Chennai.
A good portion of the film is supposed to happen in Kargil and the Drass area in Jammu-
Kashmir close to the Line of Control (LoC), a 450 mile line that is supposed to indicate
the boundary between the part of Kashmir controlled by India and the part controlled
by Pakistan. Since there were still shelling and terrorist attacks going on in that region,
the production decided to shoot that part of the film in and around Leh at 11,500 ft at the
eastern side of Jammu-Kashmir close to China. The only way to get equipment in was by roads
and passes that lead through the Himalaya.
We spent 4 month up there and had to shoot major night exterior battle scenes as well as a lot of day exterior and interior scenes. Detailed pre-planning was essential to shoot in a place like this, especially when trucks with equipment and generators needed two weeks to arrive from Bombay.
I was trying to shoot the day exteriors in backlight, 3/4 backlight or sidelight, to give
the mountains some texture. I used SunPATH sun-tracking software, a compass and clinometer
in order to calculate where the sun would be at a certain time and we then broke
down sequences to shoot specific angles at certain times of day. The idea of wide shots
and vistas was not only to show how beautiful Ladakh was, but to also make it a character
in the film and to put our characters into the environment with a sense of scale.
During shooting we had everything that you can imagine, ranging from temperatures of 115° F with extreme humidity and dust storms back in Delhi to living and working at high altitudes with thunderstorms, snow and hail – sometimes all in one day. Most of our locations in Ladakh were all windy and extremely dusty. One of the bigger challenges though, was to set up a 24’ Giraffe crane, 12 812 muslins, and several cameras to shoot one of the most important scenes above the Tanglangla Pass at 17,796 ft above sea level at 10° F. Of course, just getting the equipment up there was a challenge. Then sudden gusts of wind came in and threatened to topple the crane. We also had to be done by a certain time, since we were losing the light. An interesting fact about this shoot is that we beat our own record which we had set up in Warila by doing the possibly highest crane shot ever done for a narrative feature film at approx. 17,300 ft. With this shot, we broke our own record a week later by almost 500 feet.
Another important scene takes place at a sheer cliff that our heroes have to climb to
surprise the intruders on the peak. The scene was broken down into segments. One, where
our heroes arrive at the bottom of the cliff and look up in awe, which we shot in Ladakh,
and some dramatic climbing action where we had to see our heroes clearly on the wall.
It would have been impossible to shoot that segment for real in Ladakh. A cliff face that
measured approximately 100’ 8 55’ was built on scaffolding and dressed with painted
fiberglass panels in Film City in Mumbai. The cliff face had two side panels and a front
panel on the ground. All the panels were painted blue to work as blue screens. The
cliff and a mountain range were added in
the CG realm.
Before shooting commenced, it was important for me to find out what the different labs’ results looked like.We decided to have the negative, dailies and the release prints done by Prasad Labs in Mumbai. During production, an ARRILASER was installed at Prasad Labs in Mumbai and the decision then was made to do a DI (digital intermediate) for the color correction and release prints in April 2004 – a very important decision for the look of the film.
For LAKSHYA, I used 4 different Kodak film stocks: 5277, 5284, 5246 and 5218. Each
emulsion has a different inherent look, which I used in combination with different lighting
styles to visually represent our hero’s journey. The low contrast and desaturated look stands
for our hero’s indecisiveness. Once he made up his mind about life, I switched to 5284
which has a little bit more contrast and saturation. When war breaks out, I switched
to 5246 rated at 250 ASA for day exteriors and interiors and 5218 rated at 500 ASA
for night interiors and exteriors. The overall quality of the imagery in the film goes from
a soft appearance to a little sharper, to really sharp and snappy and then back to a softer
tone. So does the lighting, which progresses from an extremely soft diffused lighting, over
a more directional lighting to a really contrasty, harsh lighting style and then back.
The three-hours narrative feature film will be released in India, Asia, Europe and in selected theaters in the US on June 18th.
Christopher Popp
A native of West Germany, became interested
in photography at the age of eight
when he observed his father developing
a black and white picture in the lab of
the family photo store. After studying photography,
he trained as a camera operator
and 1st AC at German TV’s (ZDF)
Department of Education. Christopher then
worked as an additional cinematographer
and operator on documentaries in Egypt,
Libya, Kenya, the Soviet Union, Great
Britain, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, France,
Canada and the United States. He has
also worked on features, TV features, and
TV series in Germany. He shot the Time
Lapse sequence for the Canadian-German
co-production THE MUSIC OF KURT WEILL:
SEPTEMBER SONGS, which won an International
Emmy award for Best Performing
Arts Picture in 1996 and a Gemini award
for Best Photography in 1997. He was
also the additional cinematographer on
WAR SYMPHONIES: SHOSTAKOVICH‚
another Canadian-German co-production
which won an International Emmy award
for Best Arts Documentary in 1999 and
a Golden Prague for Best Photography
in 1998.
In 1996 came to Los Angeles to study
cinematography at UCLA. The following
year he was accepted into the cinematography
program at the renowned Center
for Advanced Film and Television Studies
at the American Film Institute (AFI).
For the cinematography of his thesis film Shadows‚ he received the Gregg Toland Heritage Award from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in February 2000.
More studios on the same lines, to attract international ventures, are being worked upon.