#23: The Making of Kuchh Manziley Aisy...

As I had promised earlier in post #15: KMA - Can never be criticized..., here comes The making of Kuchh Manziley Aisy... KMA here after, which is, logically third but our first film that was made especially for a film festival.

As in post #15: KMA - Can never be criticized..., I’ve already discussed many of the issues, we’ll move directly towards the shoot in this. The story of KMA, unlike I Might Did It, was much focused on two characters Erick and Ishita only and therefore, had freshness in spite of a heavy, serious and motivational subject for students. The only aim was to maintain that freshness on screen also and that’s why we had selected Mr. and Miss College for the main lead.

On the very first day, we had opted to shoot the broke up scene of Erick and Ishita at the parking area of our Engineering College, and the peon roaming nearby had started troubling us. He came, he saw and he conquered. Not precisely like that, but he asked us to meet the principal once. And being the Director and cinematographer of the film, Me and Mehul had went to Face Off and after a long convincing cabinet meeting, we succeeded to manage our remaining shoot in college campus (And off the track, recording of the title song of IMDI too at the auditorium.)

The next day shoot was of Church and Restaurant scenes. Kadir and Mansi, playing Erick and Ishita, gave their one take ok shot at the church and we moved to Gokul for restaurant scene. It was a garden restaurant (as we had to maintain the freshness), and we gardened the equipment there. The manager there was happy to see his restaurant being flashed in a movie and helped us a lot. We started the take but as the scene was long enough, just two of them were making a feel of monotonous. And we, with no other option, asked our writer Nildeep to serve the water at the table so that a movement can be seen in the frame. (Same we used at the Railway station scene too. Nildeep had passed there perhaps three to four times with different costumes…! Love you buddy.)

The next requirement wasn’t of a scene actually but making a scene more critical by background score. The moment when Erick realizes the collapsing market, we needed to play the breaking news overlapping in different voices. And our hunt for voice of a news reader led us to Mitali and Kunjal Ma’am. We rushed to her office and asked for some dialogues to give her voice. Ma’am being always caring to us left the other jobs and gave her voice to an important scene of the movie. Mitali being there did the voice-over at the same place also. Remaining job rather voices were performed by the crew including most of D’s.

The climax scenes at railway station were bit easier except few shots. The shot when Erick jumps in front of an upcoming train, Kadir had really jumped off the track. Just that Darshan and Nildeep were there to hold him. Another shot, when Ishita confronts Erick and pulls him back to home, had become headache. The people around had started gazing to the shoot and Mansi and Kadir weren’t comfortable. Yet after some takes it was convincing that Ishita is taking him back and, he is not himself coming back happily. The one that I can’t forget is when Ishita slaps Erick. And in every shot (perhaps four shots were been taken) Mansi had really slapped Kadir as bad as possible to make it sound real. It ought to, as it was real.

The remaining was song sequence of end rocking the ambience, which had some of the best ever cinematographic frames of the films by 13 CityStreets Productions. (Kudos to Mehul for that.) The postproduction went on, and though KMA was our third movie in line, it came to be considered as the second one as it was been edited and ready before IMDI. But in fact it was the first movie that we had made for a film festival, and being our most acclaimed movie ever, it remained on top of everyone’s heart for long too. - DJ.