West to East

He was the supervising art director of this year’s multiple Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker,but David Bryan is ready to move on and is already looking forward to his first ever Bollywood production,filmmaker Abbas Tyrewala’s upcoming romantic comedy,1-800-Love,featuring John Abraham,which is now in the post-production. “Working with a Bollywood crew was a great experience,much more than on a similar British film,” says Bryan in an e-mail interview. Curiously,the art director,who was critically acclaimed for his life-like replication of the battle-scarred streets of Iraq in The Hurt Locker,was the one who got in touch with Tyrewala. He showed him footages of his work from the film to convince Tyrewala to take him on as production director.

His experience came handy,since Tyrewala was looking for someone who would help capture the essence of London,where much of the movie is based. “For Abbas’s film,we wanted to portray the real London. It’s an amazing city with very diverse locations. In particular,we were looking for a really iconic studio apartment for the lead actor. Later,in autumn last year,we shot the climax of the film. It turned out to be an epic four nights of filming on Tower Bridge with John insisting on doing his own stunts,” he reminisces. The movie,which has music by AR Rahman,is expected to release in the latter half of the year.