The Process

I wanted a beautiful place, and at the same time, I wanted it to be dramatic enough to inspire an action sequence. Also, there’s a love song between husband and wife… It’s a very picturesque small town—Innsbruck. So all these reasons were a driving force to go to Europe and look for a location, which...

Locations are like characters in a film. In the original script of Queen, the journey was from Delhi to Amsterdam, then to Paris. Then they realised that Paris is a much livelier city, so they changed the sequence from what they saw as a slower city to a faster city. This transformed the emotional graph,...

Switzerland has a statue of Yash Chopra. Your bus halts, and there’s literally Yash Chopra standing in the middle of some village in Switzerland. There’s a lake named after him because, daily, 5000 people used to go there to see YRF shooting. There are Bollywood balls where they take you to the locations where the...

I wanted to work in Hindi films. But working on a variety of European and American projects had taught me a lot about work culture. Das Vidanya took me to Russia to do a lot of reconnaissance, but we ended up shooting in Bangkok. I think it was the 1st of May, and that was...

In Salaam Namaste, the whole idea was to do a film about live in relationships. Now the understanding was to see a live-in relationship in a space that was outside of India because the exotic nature of the relationship would be organic to the exotic nature of the space. People wouldn’t be able to digest...

For Rockstar, there was a lot of integration. There were folk stories, folk music, and folk artists that the film borrowed from. There were also other artists, like dancers and singers, from other parts of the European Union, like France and Bosnia, which are not members of the European Union. They came to Prague, and...

Aditya Chopra had planned a film in Paris and described the situation and context to both me and Vishal Shekhar. Shekhar brought together Algerian and European influences in the music. Once the musical tone for the spatial context was set, it was easy for me to write the lyrics to go with it. Knowing a...

Europe is a very mature market because the government in each and every country in Europe treats the film industry with pride and supports it with public funds. So you don’t have to raise funds privately. They are hungry for Indian productions. They get lucrative incentives for productions. So they subsidise your costs. They have...

(For) Jai Ho, we were just looking for some new locations. The director was trying to push me to go to Tokyo, Japan, which is horrendously expensive. And when he (Sohail Khan) saw photographs of Italy. I said you’re looking at Italy; you’ll get that in Romania, almost. You won’t get the Colosseum, but… They...

Being a student of cinema, I knew that Poland is a hub for cinematographers in Europe. So I knew they would have great infrastructure. Then I put together the fact that, as an East European country and not a part of the first world, the country wasn’t as rich as, say, Germany or Switzerland. Switzerland...

Most of the EU countries have something called a tax credit. They invite you to their countries and give you various offerings. And you go there, and you decide whether they fit the various scripts that you have in front of you. You can decide whether you can film there, how you can make the...

Overseas marketing is of no consequence to us anymore, unless you’re a big star like Shahrukh Khan. The desire for overseas locations is also changing, thanks to the films that are being made by Ayushman, etc. All these filmmakers who are coming in now, writers like Gaurav Solanki and Nitesh Verma, the makers of Stree,...

In South India, the actors are the aspirational level for the viewers. So they see the locations through the actors’ eyes. There’s a huge fan base. Mr. Nagarjuna and his heroine are dancing in the snow in Switzerland, and they feel as if they are there. That’s the aspiration level it used to be. From...

We shot for about a week in Paris for our film Dil Bechara. We shot in Paris because the story demanded it. It’s a remake of Fault in Our Stars. But we had to shoot in Paris because the girl in the film—our lead character—wants to go to Paris to meet a singer who’s there....

For the film Bharat, we chose Malta over Spain and Greece because Malta offered more rebates. Sometimes there are other concerns, like the demands of the story. For Fan, London had to be included because the story demanded that. Croatia was chosen because, after London, it needed to be a European location, and it was...

The director informs the executive and line producers about the vision of the film. The locations and their management are then their task. They must combine the director’s vision with the producers’ budget. There is usually a standard operating procedure for accessing global cities. The executive producer’s job is to combine what is relevant to...

There is a shift from song to action sequences. What was required for big songs is today required for big action scenes. I think there are about five big action films being made in a year… The music scene has changed… The way song and music are approached is not by having an album. They...

Because the UK government was giving massive subsidies, that’s the reason Scotland got selected for Baar Baar Dekho. Banksy, the England based street artist whose real name is not known to people has a tunnel dedicated to him. Anyone can go and paint graffiti and come away. So we took that and converted it into...

Lunchbox is a case study on how it’s been structured. That was an Indo-American-French-German official co-production. Qissa was the first Indo-French-German co-production. So the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) actually had the mandate of investing in films. Either they would be first-time filmmakers from India, which would show a lot of support for regional cinema....

In Italy, till date, I think people go back to see that song, Khuda Jaane in Bachna Ae Haseeno. Various places—Puglia or Venice, that beach with the white rocks. I think it’s hugely benefited (tourism). The idea was to showcase a location that’s not been exploited or overexploited on screen. So Greece… a couple of...

There have been other countries in Eastern Europe that have opened up quite a bit. So, Serbia, Georgia, etc., have laid out quite the red carpet for Indian producers. And then you have places like Spain and Italy, which I feel only the more wealthy producers can afford. They don’t have very extensive rebates in...

In the last decade or so, all these countries have been inviting India and Bollywood. There are certain rebates and subsidies that have made places like Serbia accessible for films like Uri and Rocketry. And in Serbia, they give a fixed incentive, a percentage of the total expenses that you make in that country is...

It’s essential to have a local crew for language, sourcing, costumes, and art, specifically, local gaffers. I just zeroed in on two or three locations that have what we need. Then seeing the terrain, the plains, all of that, because that’s one of the reasons we were going there. Because otherwise we could’ve shot in...

In any film, location is mostly a script-centric decision. If a script demands a location, we definitely go to that location, whether or not we’ll be able to shoot there in terms of logistics and other kinds of support. Then comes the question of the feasibility of conducting shoots at that location. Even if the...

Some of the interiors for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara were sets and some were actual locations. Since it was a road trip, it became about how many different places one could go to. Each of the sports showcased in the film changes in colour. Zoya and I just got into a car and drove across...

I see the basis for any film as the script, and for Queen, the script was based in Europe. Queen is about a girl in Delhi who goes overseas. Paris was written into the script. Paris was part of the original selection, and we also scouted Prague for its visual vibe with the local line...

Along with film commissions, line producers play a major role in pushing for locations. We shot in Malta for Thugs of Hindostan. Vaibhavi Merchant was the choreographer, and the dancers were flown from Greece to India to rehearse, and then the shooting was done in Greece. We chose Greece because we wanted that visual effect,...

Europe became the de facto location because of Kashmir. At one point, every film was shot in Kashmir. However, due to the insurgency, Kashmir was closed down. And then we did not have those locations anymore. Unfortunately, there was a problem even in Darjeeling. So there wasn’t really anywhere for us to go. And Yash...

Tourism to two countries from India where films are shot, has grown tremendously. I can give you examples of what Queen did to Amsterdam or Paris or what Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did to Spain. You can’t even imagine how the numbers have changed. Because the spending power of the common man in India has...

I started writing Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD) thinking I’d go to Mexico. Reema and I started writing it. And then the minute we came upon the idea to use adventure sports, we started wondering where we could place them. And then there was something just gorgeous and mediaeval about running with the bulls. And Spain...