First schedule

Wish you all very happy New Year friends. Hmm… yes… it’s been some time since I didn’t post anything over here… lot of things happened between. We finished our last schedule, the editing of first cut was done and the dubbing is almost done now. So since I was held up with all these, my tale of making of Shikari had to wait for some time now. I am sorry about that.

The first schedule, when I think back was long back. It started by end of May 2010. We were to shoot in a flat near Mysore road in Bangalore. First schedule was just a week long schedule where we would shoot talkie portions for four days and shoot the dream song in three days. When we started, the work seemed like never ending. We had around 70 scenes to be shot and a mega story to be told. A big project with a big star, big producer and so much of responsibilities! But anyway, we started our journey.

Day one was actually the night shoot. We had several scenes in balcony of a flat in the night. After the start was made, it was smooth sail. We completed the four days of talkie shoot. But when we came to shoot the dream song, the set was not complete up to our expectations. Our producer, K. Manju and my self took the decision not to shoot in that set as it would bring down the production quality. So we decided to wrap our shoot then and continue it later. So the first schedule which was planned for seven days, ended in four days. What ever we had shot, we edited quickly to see how we were progressing. When finished, we were happy that we were in the right path.

Between this shooting schedule, we organized the first press conference for our film, it was held in Atria Hotel in Bangalore. The press meet was well attended by the press of Karnataka. It was in a way also a welcome party to the legendary actor, Mammootty in to Kannada film industry. The film team proudly presented its dear star, to the press and they welcomed him and enquirer about the film fondly. It was a memorable experience to all of us. In the following days, the members of the press gave us quality publicity through their medium.

Now the film had officially begun. We had about a month long gap before we could start our next schedule. Mammootty sir was busy shooting for some other film for which he had already shot a schedule. We now had to plan our dream song in Cochin. Since the film is being made in two languages, it was but natural to shoot few portions in Cochin too.