The film is in the can, and other stories

I'm writing this sitting on my couch in my Los Angeles apartment. It's been three weeks since I finished the shoot and flew back to the United States. It has taken me this long to summon up the energy to do anything beyond the simple acts of eating and sleeping and talking with friends and family. My exhaustion - from the month of shooting and the two months of fast-paced, never-ending hustling that preceded that - has been total and its been devastating. Even two weeks after the end of shooting, my days were a blur of heaviness coupled with feelings of profound satisfaction. I had given birth, after years of long labor,and while I was pleased, I was simply too tired to comprehend all that had transpired.

Now as I am slowly regaining my full consciousness, what happened feels like a dream, or a story I made up. Could it be that this film that I had so painstakingly worked on for years, that I had conjured up from thin air as I sat in Los Angeles, and dreamt of Mumbai, these characters and stories that were for years just ideas in my head, had actually, finally been produced? That we had had actors and this huge crew and locations and that, collectively, we had breathed life into the words on the page? My entire time in India seems like something on the edge of reality and fiction. But it did happen. And I know this because for the first few days back, I'd plug in the hard drives to my computer and watch the footage just to confirm.

Independent filmmakers understand that the big accomplishment is simply completing a feature film from scratch without going over budget, without any lasting damage to people or property, and without experiencing disasters that leave a permanent impact on the film itself. That achievement alone is massive given all the things that can and do go wrong in the making of a full-length film, no matter what the film may be. But when you can sit back and say, as I can, that you have shot a film that is as good or better than what you had dreamed up, there's little else in the world as satisfying.

The true marvel of making this film for me was watching scores of people - most of whom I had hired based on one interview - come together and do their parts with incredible effort and skill all in the service of a dream of mine. Every single person on the crew and cast took a serious pay cut to be a part of a project they could believe in. It was humbling to see someone like Swanand Kirkire, the respected actor who played the role of the troubled Mr. Mishra, come into rehearsal and say the words I had written, and begin to add words and actions to the scene as he slowly made it his own. It was chilling to watch takes of Swanand in the assault scene - a scene I had never quite known would work - where he made it so real that people on the set felt tense and scared. During one of the takes, Shukti, the script supervisor, sitting next to me at the monitor, suddenly shuddered in shock/fear at one of Swanand's actions, and I knew we had a scene that felt real. That is a thing more elusive than it might seem from the outside. It was humbling to see a star like Shamita Shetty, who had worked on much bigger films in the past, to always want to do more takes of the same shot to get it right. She was always happy to listen to my notes after a take and want to do another incorporating them. Finally, it was humbling to see numerous guys and gals working in the lighting department carrying and setting up heavy equipment, or in the art department, making sure the kitchen looked like a real middle-class kitchen. They would quietly toil away and every now and then I'd stop in and say Hello and they'd be happy just to be acknowledged and then carry on, drenched in sweat.

We had a 48-person crew and about 30 speaking roles in the movie. And the film is not what it is without any one of them putting in their best efforts under demanding conditions. We shot the film in 26 shooting days, which must be a record of some kind for a feature-length film. We averaged slightly under four minutes of movie time per day, which is a fast clip but not unreasonable. We made our days as scheduled on every single day. This is to the credit of everyone on the crew and cast. Our coverage of the scenes was great, getting as many angles as we thought we needed, and I rarely felt rushed. I remember anxiously looking on as the light guys would rig up lights in corners of the room and ceiling under Pankaj or Nuthan's (the cinematographers) direction; then anxiously waiting as the actors came up from their trailers; worrying about the costumes and set design (Would the right lighter be here in time for the smoking scene? OR Would the duplicate t-shirt arrive in time?); and all the time reading the scene repeatedly to make sure that when we did start rolling, I would know exactly what I wanted from the actors. And doing all of this in the terrible heat of those apartments, just trying to stay on my feet. And I remember sitting in the break room gobbling down lunch or dinner at the end of a long day and hearing the murmurs of satisfaction from the cinematographer or the sound guy or someone else of how things were going very well. These days of our production will both forever be etched in my memory and always feel somewhat unreal or surreal.

Our wrap party was on the evening on which we had finished our last day of principal photography and I was to fly out to New Jersey for my niece's wedding the very next night. But it was a great party. I got to see our exhausted crew really let loose and have fun. They danced all night like crazy people and it was a delight to see their joy. I must have hugged 50 people that night. Several crew members came up to me to tell me that this had been the most fun shoot they had been on and that was gratifying to me. No matter where the film goes in the end, one thing was clear to me that night. We had done something and the feeling of a large group of human beings coming together to battle side by side to achieve the same goal, and to come out feeling victorious that is a rare and beautiful thing. And I am still feeling the euphoria three weeks later.