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Haven’t you been intrigued by location changes in film after film, especially once the hero and heroine break into a song and dance routine? The scene preceding the song may have been canned in the backyard of an under-construction building or on the set of the streets of Chandni Chowk in Delhi, but the following song must be on the snow-clad Alps or in the Genting Highland Resorts of Malaysia or in the green seas of Mauritius. Till this happens, the film is not ‘happening’ enough!
In fact, today’s audiences are so used to such ‘geographical glitches’ that they may think that something is amiss if the camera doesn’t follow the imagination of the hero/heroine and transport them to some awesome foreign locale for the song sequence. Producers with lower budget outlays have to remain content with shooting their songs on scenic locations in India, the most done-to-death among them being Ooty.
Not just song-and-dance routines, but also chunks of scenes these days are shot on locations either abroad or in home territory. One of the biggest advantages of shooting on eye-filling locations is that it breaks the monotony of sets and/or indoor shooting. Fifty years ago, outdoor shooting was restricted to locations in India, like Kashmir, Mahabaleshwar, Lonavala, Mussoorie etc.
But as film budgets grew bigger and bigger, producers and directors became more and more lavish and began to cross frontiers to give their viewers (and their stars, of course!) free foreign trips, so to say. Today, it’s not just films but television serials too which are heading overseas.
Shooting abroad really came into its own a little over a decade ago, but the film that got filmmakers thinking of heading Westwards was Raj Kapoor’s Sangam in the early sixties. Among the other old films which brought plenty of foreign locales alive on the silver screen were Pachhi’s International Crook, Shakti Samanta’s An Evening In Paris and Great Gambler, Manoj Kumar’s Purab Aur Pachhim, Brij Sadanah’s Night In London, the Sameer-Simi starrer Pasand Apni Apni and the Rajesh Khanna starrer, Aashiq Hoon Baharon Ka. Much later, in the mid-nineties, Rishi Kapoor debuted into direction with Aa Ab Laut Chalen which was shot about 70 per cent abroad.
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