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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Shuttling between lives
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Shuttling between lives

Shuttling between lives

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For his debut film, 32-year-old Hemant Gaba decided to blend two memorable aspects of his life: badminton games played late into the night in the lanes of his colony in west Delhi, and the despondency that plagued him during his first few years at work.

So Shuttlecock Boys is the story of four boys looking for a way out of dreary jobs through a venture of their own. Call it Gaba’s take on the conservative attitude towards entrepreneurial aspirations, with secure, cushy jobs preferred over those involving any element of risk and self-initiative. Gaba funded almost three-fourths of the film himself, with friends, parents and relatives pitching in the rest.

The film will be released commercially under PVR’s Director’s Rare banner on Friday.

In a phone conversation, Gaba tells us more about Shuttlecock Boys. Edited excerpts:

It’s a story of four boys who play badminton in their neighbourhood at night. The location is west Delhi, although the place can even be mistaken for east or north Delhi. Now these four guys belong to different professional backgrounds. They want to do something on their own. The whole film is about their efforts to do something in the catering business.

What about the actors?

We auditioned around 200 guys for the main roles. I put up some notices at Mandi House, India Habitat Centre, Mandy.com, etc., and people responded. I even visited Barry John’s acting school to look for actors. The guys I found had had acting training or attended vocational programmes. But they were amateurs.

When did you first conceive of the idea for the film?

2007; I was attending a screenwriting workshop in the evenings while working in New York. The objective of the workshop was to finish a first draft of a script. I melded a couple of different aspects of my life in the script. You see, when I was a teenager. I used to play badminton in my colony at night. Also, as I grew older and started working, I felt the need to let go of my job and do something on my own. These came together in the script.

Initially, during the filming process, they were very apprehensive. But they relaxed later. My mother cooked food for the crew for 25 days. They even supported me financially after I’d left my job and was all on my own, working on the film, and when the film was lying in the cans with no takers. Last year, we had this screening during the Jagran Film Festival (New Delhi), and they attended it. And although my mother still thinks that I should have made a family film, my father quite liked it.

When did you begin shooting?

We shot between November and December of 2008. It was a 25-day shoot conducted with a crew of 25 people. I had camera attendants, light men, a boom guy, etc.…. I gathered them on a trip to Mumbai where one meeting led to another and I ended up talking to a lot of people. Yet most of these people were first-timers whose hunger to work on that first film drove them on. Also I didn’t really pay them a lot. Peanuts, really, that’s all I could afford. Anyway, we shot everything in Delhi itself: Janakpuri, Uttam Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Sector 63 in Noida, etc…

And an unfortunate accident seems to have taken place during the post-production process.

Yes, we had shot the movie on film—Super 16 mm—and then given it to the lab for post-production. During the cutting of negatives, the attendants at the lab didn’t handle the film well and the final product had scratches all over. It looked like a ruined 1930s film. I fought over this with the lab for months on end. A six-page complaint written to the owners of the lab finally yielded results. They agreed to restore the film. But it took three more months.

What are you doing now?

I quit my job in February 2008 after having worked for seven years in the US. I now have a company of my own, one that I run with a few other people. It’s called Pennywise Films (in New Delhi). Currently, I am also working on a couple of films, one of which, called Defiance, is about a girl who accuses her father of raping her.

Shuttlecock Boys, a PVR Director’s Rare release, opened in PVR theatres in Mumbai and Delhi on 3 August.

anupam1.v@livemint.com

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Published: 03 Aug 2012, 01:15 AM IST
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