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For all intents and purposes, it is fair to say that Devdas was director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s first magnum opus. And throughout this creative endeavour, he had the support of noted cinematographer Binod Pradhan. In an interaction with Friday Talkies, Binod opened up about his first and only collaboration with Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Devdas, which turned 25 this year.
“Honestly, I didn’t realise the sets were going to be so big,” said Binod, who felt that the scale of the film allowed him to have fun with the shots, and lighting. “In fact, we weren’t in a hurry to shoot either. That is, in other films, we used to can 15-20 shots a day, sometimes even 40, and here in Devdas, we were only doing 3-4.”
The film was shot over a period of almost two years, and had the tag of being the most-expensive Indian film to be made at that time. “One of the main reasons for the delay was in getting the lighting right. For instance, Paro’s house was filled with glass. It isn’t easy to light such a set. Also, I don’t work very fast, and I need to take the time it takes to light a scene well. We had to devise techniques to achieve the right lighting, and it was the same in Chandramukhi’s place too. It was a kilometre-long set, and when I first saw it with my team, I was shocked. We took a whole round of this set wondering how we were going to film the scenes here.”
Praising Sanjay’s uncompromising approach to filmmaking, Binod said, “There was a time when it was said that marriages in Mumbai had to be stopped or rescheduled because we had used up all the generators in the city. It was a huge area, and I had to use a lot of generators to light the place up. If there is a director who backs you, you can give your best.”
Reminiscing on the line uttered by Sanjay that still rings loud in his heart, Binod said, “Sanjay once asked me to not compromise, and just do good work. In fact, there was a time when Devdas faced financial issues, and even then, Sanjay asked me to not compromise on anything. I was taken aback because I thought he’d ask me to finish shoot early, or not take too long to fix the shots, etc… But I like him for what he said, and it is unfortunate that we haven’t worked on any other film after Devdas.”
The 2002 film, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Madhuri Dixit-Nene, was backed by Bharat Shah, and was based on the 1917 novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.
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