Bollywood

This past week, from about Tuesday to Saturday, Edinburgh was host to a major Bollywood film production. Using the picturesque setting of New College (University of Edinburgh) and the surrounding Grassmarket area, film crews went about the business of filming scenes and shots for the upcoming Mausam.

Bollywood, for those who aren't familiar, is the largest film producer in India. They are known for over the top productions with lots of colors and big song and dance numbers. They are actually kind of fun to watch, but very unlike movies you are used to seeing come out of Hollywood.

This photo (from The Guardian) isn't from this movie, but is a good
picture to give you an idea of the final Bollywood product.

Anyway, this particular production is apparently quite the major picture as it is being directed by the Indian star, Pankai Kapoor, and stars his son, Shahid Kapoor. Based on a brief BBC news post, the movie is about an air force pilot (Shahid) who falls in love with a young woman. Incidentally, the female lead is played by Sanom Kapoor, but is evidently of no relation to the other two.

On Saturday, the filming happened at New College, so Rebecca, Scotty and I thought we'd try to get a look. They kept the filming pretty tightly contained making it hard, if not impossible, to see much from the streets. They also forbade photographs (not that that really stopped anyone). Fortunately, Scotty thought of a super secret viewing area and so the three of us camped out and watched the filming from a second story window over looking the entire courtyard.


New College stood in as the Royal Dance Academy, complete with new signs. We were actually really impressed with the signs--they looked like they had always been there. They installed a fountain in the middle of the court yard which had £8-10000 worth of flowers! I heard they gave the flowers away after the filming ended on Friday--disappointed to have missed that!). There was even a horse drawn flower cart.

In any case, we didn't see much action while we watched. The filmed one scene of two girls running down the stairs, which took about 19 takes. They did a "shot" of the back of Shahid's head, which took about 6 takes; a shot of Sonam walking into the courtyard (again, taking several tries); and flower market scene that involved about 20 extras walking about (this took forever). We were disappointed that they did not do a song and dance number while we were there (I don't think they did one at all). But it was really interesting to watch--very tedious process, it seems. Definitely de-glamorized the whole film production thing.

Despite the disappointment of no dancing, our afternoon was not without excitement--Robert, the school's conservator, happened to see our heads peaking out of the windows and came to investigate. After finding us and chatting for awhile (telling us all about the morning's filming), he took us down to the main courtyard and let us out on the set. So fun! Rebecca got some pictures and we got a close up look before walking out right through the middle of the action.

It was a fun afternoon and I'm thinking we'll have to see this movie when it comes out--just so we can see the final product! I wasn't able to get many pictures (or very good ones), but Rebecca did. I would definitely recommend checking out her blog to see them: just click here!