My Visit to a Bollywood Movie Set

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On Thursday I had the great opportunity to visit the set of a Bollywood movie. One of the Indian girls that I met in Atlanta a few months ago is an actress here, so I was her foreign guest on set for an hour.

The movie was filming in Khar neighborhood, which is near where I stay in Bandra. Two interesting things that I observed from my time on the set of a real Hindi film:

• The huge portable air conditioning units had to be turned off while the cameras were rolling, presumably so that they would not interfere with the sound equipment.
• Each take was simultaneously recorded to a DVD disc, so the director could see immediate playback. It looked like Off-the-Shelf components were being used. A secondary camera with MiniDV output was probably mounted to the primary film camera. Then each take was recorded as a new chapter onto a Panasonic DVD recorder. This is a really cool use of technology. It seems much more efficient than the taped dailies that I saw being made on the American Pie 2 and American Wedding sets. But maybe they use DVDs in Hollywood now.

Other things were similar to the Hollywood sets I have visited, like special VIP trailers for the cast and free water and fruit snacks. And, of course, lots and lots of people pottering around :)

I met the Director, the Writer, the 1AD, and a few other people. Everybody was really nice to the farang (foreigner) on set.