Six hours. Two films. And a lot of wonderful memories.
2019 was a year when we partnered a few brands to make their first-ever film.
A brand’s first film - no pressure at all.
A brand’s first film and it stars none other than the Thala incarnate of cricket himself and the darlings of Chennai - okay, then!!
When Ogilvy Chennai reached out to us with not one but two scripts for SNJ Breweries, we were, to speak in understatements, a little starstruck and massively excited (still speaking in understatements). This was our fist-ever IPL opportunity and this was really huge for us. Chennai Super Kings and all! Then came the part that mutual fund advertisements like to rush over, the conditions apply part. We had exactly six hours to finish shooting. And this included hair & make up and set up and styling and lunch and whatever-have-you time. This made Boris’ hair do a curious impersonation of fidgety meerkats - he knows that Sahit loves his multiple takes.
The six hours were non-negotiable and at when the clock struck 5, we would have a Cinderella situation where everything would turn into mice and pumpkins. Not literally, but you get the picture and the metaphor. Also since the Chennai Super Kings had shoot after shoot, we would get our location a few, extremely uncomfortable hours before shoot and we had a lot of art setup. Quite the norm for an IPL shoot but far from anything we had done before. As exciting as things we, we were still working with extremely busy people who could get pulled out by a million tricks of circumstance - including waking up on the wrong side of the bed. We were depending on a carefully-synced domino-style sequence for things to fall just about right into place. And things could go just as wrong, in the same devastating sequence-by-sequence fashion.
Those were the challenges. Now for the good stuff. We had an amazing client who refused to get in the way and in fact, trusted us and went out of her way to make things happen. The creative team and the servicing team worked together to make the whole process as smooth as possible. They penned a song that Prasad, effortlessly made an astounding track, which eventually became quite the favourite of the IPL season. Nirupama the stylist and the makeup artist had everybody ready like clockwork - in fact, the entire room was buzzing and whirring as if pulled by the strings and springs of a singular purpose. Om, in his usual smiling but still won’t tolerate any nonsense, commanded his team so well that camera and lighting set-up took a fraction of the time we normally take.
As for the stars themselves - Dhoni, Raina and Harbhajan delivered their performances so effortlessly and knocked it right out of the park that we had a comfortable chunk of time left for the second film. The on-set camaraderie was just beautiful and kept the whole crew motivated. Crowne Plaza has the most supportive staff and they helped us in every way they could. The second film also fell beautifully into place with Karthik Vijay and Deepak Chahaar joining in with their charm and good looks. Every single person on the entourage was supportive and friendly and totally #goodvibesonly But the absolute heroes of this shoot was the art team lead by Edward who worked like elves - 100% magic, 100% effort. They put together two sets in record time, with such finesse and thought. When we look back on this shoot, we’re just going to remember this “Semma Strong” team!
Check out the BTS video put together by Rejin Chammandy. .