Click to play videoMumbai: No love-story, no romantic songs, no chiffon sari clad leading ladies, and add to that Shah Rukh Khan sporting a scruffy beard – yes, Yashraj Films is clearly treading new ground with their new film Chak De India, which comes close on the heels of their formulaic films, the lukewarm Tara Rum Pum and the washout Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.
A sports film essentially, Chak De India is an underdog story, but one that the filmmakers say has many firsts to its credit.
"It is essentially underdogs becoming heroes. But there are so many layers. Hockey has never been filmed ever in the world and seeing that it’s India's National Sport it was quite a challenge to put it on film,” director of the film, Shimit Amin said.
While writer Jaideep Shahni had and even better explanation on how difficult it is to make a movie on hockey in India.
"If you want to have sports as a career, you are an underdog, then if you want to be a hockey player or anything other than cricket, then you are an underdog twice and if you are a woman then you are an underdog thrice,” Shahni said.
After actor Salman Khan turned down one of the film's most pivotal roles, Yashraj regular Shah Rukh Khan was roped in to play Kabir Khan, the coach who takes up the challenge of training the national women's hockey team.
But that wasn't the toughest bit of casting for the filmmakers. It was the job of finding hockey players who could act, or then actors who could play hockey that proved to be the real challenge.
“I realised that the task at hand was really big because if I had a cricket film I would pick it up and do it in a day,” Amin said.
But then Shahni narrates how the girls had a rigorous training session before the shooting began.
“The girls were put in a camp where for many months they would play hockey for hours and after lunch till evening they would have acting classes and after that till late they would have their dialect training,” he said.
So, it's all real hockey being played by the actors in the film. No special effects, no duplicates, only the real thing.
Of course, it took some 1,500 cans of raw stock to shoot good and bad takes, of which only the best takes were used in the film. Now considering any regular film is shot using about 400 cans of film stock, it's a record of sorts that the Chak De India team seems to have created. Hopefully this record is just one of the many they'll create with this film!
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest)
More on IBNLive Right Now
MOST SHARED
PHOTOGALLERY
