Shooting ‘Avijatrik’! The exotic and breathtaking journey rich in emotions

Filmmaker Subhrajit Mitra speaks to ETimes on their extraordinary journey while shooting ‘Avijatrik’ (The wanderlust of Apu) as the entire team was keen to make this Satyajit Ray tribute film exotic and breathtaking to show the real India, to portray the wanderlust of Apu. Subhrajit decodes the journey rich in emotions in his own words.

Avijatrik (the wanderlust of Apu) was a huge technical and production design challenge for me and my team. We had to recreate 40s India authentically. Everything has changed in last 80 years, so me and my senior technician team had to plan everything from the recce stage itself. We shot in 68 different locations, broadly divided into 7 schedules. Varanasi, Taki, Bolpur, Gorubathan / Chalsa, Kolkata outdoors, Kolkata indoors and Studio sets. This film was planned and shot in black and white , so production designing team comprising of me, cinematographer, art director and visual effects designer had to back calculate the colour, rather grey scales of each and every locations and props from the recce stage itself. It was a three stage process for each and every locations - scouting and recce, technical recce and shooting.

In Avijatrik , the location Varanasi itself is an important and pivotal character in the film. My Cinematographer Supratim Bhol and VFX designer Krishnendu Ghosh were very familiar with the locations of Varanasi because of their previous shooting and personal experiences. I was also moderately familiar, as I have shot one documentary there previously. During the scripting stage I had a fairly good idea about the look and the feel of the locations I would like to portray in the scenes. During the scouting and recce stage we zeroed in on such locations with the help of our local coordinator. But the challenge lied elsewhere. The Ghats, River banks, narrow alleys , all are now modern. With electric poles and lines, modern building and structures, renovations, condition of the road, everything has changed. When we were shooting we had to cordoned off large part of the adjoining areas so that onlookers and bystanders with modern clothes could not enter the zone and the frames. During the post production , all modern elements were painstakingly deleted from every frame and periodic structures and prop elements were incorporated through visual effects. I had done all the research works and procured the visual references for the team, which took me 7/8 months during the pre production stage. The varying degree of water level of Ganges was a concern. During our recce and tech recce stages, the water level was normal, so we planned our shots on the ghats accordingly. But during the shooting we found out the water levels were extremely high because of the sudden outpour in the upper Himalayan region. So I had to adjust my framing and compositions on the spot , without hampering the essence and aesthetics and convey that to my cinematographer. Crowd management was nightmare to our production team as our shooting was coincided with Chhat puja celebration and the banks of Ganges were thronged by thousands of pilgrims all across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Apart from many other exotic vintage locations in Varanasi , we also shot on those very places where Aparajito and Joy Baba Felunath were shot as was Chokher Bali.

I decided to recreate Nishchindipur merging two different locations. Taki and Bolpur. As I could not get all my requirements in one places. Apart from recreating a part of Apu’s ancestral village , we have used Taki to recreate the excavation site of Sarnath also. It was logistically much more easier to build such huge set somewhere nearer to Kolkata rather than the actual location in Uttar Pradesh. We have found a brick yard beside the river during our tech recce which is geographically and flora wise similar to Sarnath actual excavation site, and my Art Director Gautam Basu built an awe inspiring set there with the help of real stills, footages and expert advice from Indian Museum. Bolpur was mainly used for the Nischindipur outdoors for it’s scenic beauty, authentic 40s era village in Bengal. Taki was used for old houses and structures that we see in Nischindipur episode. Shooting in these places were more or less hassle free as the people of these places are quite shooting friendly. Though we have used many virgin locations for our scenes which are specific to our requirements.

To recreate Khasia hills, I decided to shoot in Gorubathan, Chalsa belt in the North Bengal because of the same topography and vegetation in more logistic friendly location. Shooting in Gorubathan was physically challenging to the team . They had to carry all the equipment and trek to reach the locations. We even had a horse in the scenes who was carried to the locations in a special truck. During the shooting of one scene on the river bank, we have encountered a flash flood. We had to take little Ayushman who played Kajol, to safety immediately . We then resumed the shoot when the water level was not alarming enough and back to the continuity of the master shot. Shooting in the Jungles were challenging to the team because of the leeches and local coordinators were constantly on the vigil to watch out for any wild animals , specifically Elephants, Leopards, Bisons , Bears and Snakes. Those jungles are full of King Cobras and Pythons.

We had 3 schedules in Kolkata. Kolkata outdoors, where we shot in Indian Museum, banks of Ganges, old tram routes around maidan and Victoria, South Park street cemetery to name a few. Kolkata indoors, where we shot in different old houses in North Kolkata, one of them was pretty infamous about being a haunted house . In the Studio set we recreated a complete actual size wooden train compartment of that era, a remote train station somewhere in erstwhile United province and a part of Howrah station platform. These schedules were more or less smooth other than the occasional thunderstorms which made the production and camera and lighting team to panic at times. The most difficult part of these schedules was to shoot a showdown scene between British Police and Indian freedom fighters, which comprises of many junior artists, vintage vehicles, Police dogs, live vintage ammunitions, and to shoot that in the streets of modern day Bagbajar. As usual during post production all the modern elements were eliminated painstakingly from each frame.