Innovative set designers are breathing new life into film scripts.
People think we create fancy interiors for films. We don’t. We actually create space for characters in a movie, and we try to narrate the script of a film in our own way.” Shashank Tere’s thoughts on set design in Bollywood could well run into a book. One of the busiest set designers in the country, Tere also runs a full-fledged company called Dreamz Kraft, which designs sets for feature films, television commercials and weddings. His thought process, as far as film sets go, is very simple: “Treat the set as part of the script, and don’t feel bad when it’s dismantled after all the months of hard work that you have put into creating it.”
When we speak to Tere, the 42-year-old designer is on the sets of the film Crooked, which stars husband-wife duo Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. “There’s always some wear and tear on the sets in action sequences, and that’s why I’m required to be here,” he clarifies. He began his innings in films with Abhishek Kapoor’s Rock On! and is currently working on some important projects, including Aamir Khan’s Delhi Belly, Ritesh Sidhwani’s Crooked, Farhan Akhtar’s Don 2 and another untitled film under Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Considering that he takes three months to work on the sets of one film, Tere, by that count, has already been booked for a year.
It’s not Tere alone who is busy in the set design department, though. Most producers and directors are signing up a clutch of these talented people to make sets that look real yet different and appealing. “Designing a ‘camera friendly set’ creates breathing space,” says veteran Samir Chanda who has worked with topnotch directors like Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mrinal Sen, Mani Ratnam, Vishal Bharadwaj. Chanda has done some fascinating work, recreating 1950s Mumbai in Chennai for Guru, replicating Chandni Chowk in the town of Sambhar for Delhi 6. He recently completed the sets for Mani Ratnam’s Raavan too. “The challenge,” he adds, “is in creating design with precision, without compromising on quality.”
Perhaps that’s why Sukant Panigrahy’s sets in Chak De! India looked so real that one would think they were scenes shot in a real-life dormitory. “No, no,” laughs Sukant when I ask him if the scenes were shot in some government hostel. “Those sets were created within the premises of Yash Raj Studio. We created the long bathroom where the girls gossip, fight, laugh and cry. So, instead of shooting in a hostel room, we created the hostel,” he confirms.
Sukant’s own story could be a Bollywood script. Born and brought up in Orissa, he “made pandals for various pooja functions at home, when I was in school and college”. His fascination with sets really began after he closely observed veteran set designer Ajit Pattnaik’s (also from Orissa) mammoth creations for Feroze Khan’s epic serial The Sword of Tipu Sultan. “I fell in love with the art and by the age of 14, I knew that my career would revolve around designing sets for films,” he says. He abandoned studies midway and came to Mumbai in 1994 where he “slept on pavements, cleaned cars, worked in tea stalls and dhabas, before I finally found work”. Sukant assisted Pattnaik and worked on almost every aspect of set design, including carpentry, casting and moulding iron, creating sculptures, slapping paint on the walls and working with fibre glass. “Initially, I would get Rs 15 a day. Later, I graduated to Rs 65,” he remarks. Today, depending on the budget of the film, his charges range from Rs 5 to 15 lakh for one film. Having worked with ace production designer Sharmishta Roy (who designed the sets for My Name Is Khan) for seven years, Sukant believes that Dil Toh Pagal Hai was, in a way, a turning point for Bollywood in terms of set design. “The film was high on set details,” he says.
Ayesha Punvani, a young production designer, with an “obsessive creative disorder”, however, feels that the thrill of set design really began with the wave of indie films and multiplex cinema. Punvani is now working on her own scripts but says that her work for films like Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair), Earth (Deepa Mehta) and Khosla Ka Ghosla (Dibakar Banerjee), have reflected the “glocal” approach to films. Her latest work Teen Patti, which she calls a “design roller coaster”, may have flopped at the box-office, but Punvani’s kitschy sets for the film, including gambling joints, did create a flutter.
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The job of a set designer/production designer is anything but easy. “You barely sleep or eat,” laughs Punvani, talking about her Teen Patti experience, where she had to create no less than 40 sets and use “18 chandeliers, 345 metres of drapes, 60 ft of painted walls, hundreds of playing cards and plenty of fake currency” to recreate a gambling adda in the film. Punvani had to find dilapidated furniture, “age” it further, paint gruesome graffiti for a dramatic effect. “Eventually, it’s a race against time… and doing last-minute damage control,” she admits.
So what gives these set designers such an adrenaline rush, then? “The sheer challenge,” says Sukant, while Punvani says, “The joy of seeing actors and the crew appreciating the sets when they walk in makes everything worth it.”