All-male lead cast in film with all-female crew in Barah Aana
All-male lead cast in film with all-female crew
Writer-director Raja Menon's Barah Aana, which releases today, revolves around threeu00a0 pals a driver (Naseeruddin Shah), a watchman (Vijay Raaz) and a waiter (Arjun Mathur).
Making this slice-of-life film a reality were a group of enthusiastic women. Barah Aana is one of those films that has an all female crew.
Giulia Achilli is the producer, Priya Seth the cinematographer, Anuradha Shetty the production designer, Hemanthi Sarkar has done the editing while the casting director is Nandini Shrikent.
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Alexandra Eaton has filmed the Making of
, a docu. Additionally, most of the crew is based in the Bandra-Khar area.
Says Giulia, "That is why my production house is called Bandra West Productions. It's a mere coincidence that only women got on board, who also happened to be staying in the same area!
After casting director Nandini, we realised that the cinematographer, editor... it turned out be all-female unit except for the director."
Giulia met Raja during a conference where they got talking about the project. "When he told me the story outline, I was interested immediately."
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Getting a feel
Los Angeles-based photographer Alexandra landed in Mumbai and the only person she was acquainted with was director Shashank Ghosh who put her on to Giulia.
"I met her just days before the filming was to start. She said the best way to get a feel is to be on the sets as it was being shot all over Mumbai.
I don't understand Hindi, so I landed on the sets with my video camera. Initially, it was just plain curiosity of capturing everything on camera. Soon the idea of doing a docu of Making of... cropped up."
Casting director Nandini says, "What's important is not whether you are working with a male or female, but the right kind of people. Barah Aana is one such a film that had such people working together. We had a lot of discussions before every step we took.
When Raja was penning the script, he had Naseer in mind. For the rest of the cast, we approached several actors, some did not do it due to date and money issues. With Vijay Raaz, it was a breakfast meeting something unheard of with B-Town stars!
Nandini has been the casting director for projects like Lakshya (for which she was also one of the ADs) as well as for Don and assisted Sooni Taraporewalla for the casting of Little Zizou. Her forthcoming projects include Wake Up Sid and Karthik Calling Karthik.
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Behind The Scenes: Nandini Shrikent, Anuradha Shetty, Giulia Achilli, Alexandra Eaton and Priya Seth |
Says editor Hemanthi, "It was an unique experience for me. It is a performance-based film and it has the flavours of Mumbai from Colaba to Dharavi."
According to production designer Anuradha, "It was interesting that there was an all women crew. When we were at it, we did not even notice it or thought about it. I had worked with Bandra West earlier for their ad films as well."
While cinematographer Priya states, "We shot a major chunk in Dharavi and as we were all girls we were told don't do this and that as we shot late nights. But everything went off well; it was a fabulous experience being with an all-woman team."
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