Page 10 - Seniors Today - April Issue
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the story forward, he would chop off the them, acting out each role meticulously. In
entire roll, not caring about how difficult those days, Xerox did not exist. There were
it had been to put it together. The film no computers or scanners or printers. So,
had to be compact and every scene had to the screenplay would first be handwritten,
take the story forward. There were other then copied and carbon-copied by different
things I learnt from him such as grammar members of the crew, including myself,
and technique. I started by being a still then given to the technical crew and the
photographer, and observing him helped acting cast. It was monumental but my
me a lot, from exposure to the composition father never looked either disturbed
of frames. When I got interested in the or tired or bored,” he says. “It was very
technicalities of moviemaking, Baba and painstaking but we did not know that
his unit members would patiently explain then. Baba would insist that no member of
every aspect that befuddled me.” the acting cast should memorise a single
“I was amazed at the way he kept his cool line of dialogue. He could change the
in every kind of situation. He never, ever dialogue at the last minute and if an actor
lost his temper and he said that he imbibed had memorised his lines, it could become
this from his training in Santiniketan problematic if there was a change at the last
under the painter Nandalal Bose. I knew minute.”
there were many things which might have “When the script was finalised, he would
irritated him, for film-making is full of hand the master copy, a foolscap-sheeted
built-in tensions, specially for a person as copy bound with red cloth famously
much a perfectionist as he was, but even if known as his kheror khata to my mother,
he might have been simmering inside, he with a pencil and eraser and she would
chose not to express it.” incorporate corrections which, if my
“I have not known of any other director father felt were right, would put them and
anywhere working as hard as my Baba then the script-reading sessions would
did,” says Sandip “After choosing the happen where actors could offer their own
subject, he would write the script. Actors suggestions as my father was never rigid,
and actresses would also be chosen by him. never,” Sandip informs.
He would then ask the main artistes to “Next, he would go out to buy dress
come to our home and read out the script to material for the men while my mother
and I would help him to buy saris for the
female artists. Make-up tests would be
held at our house. He would draw out each
character, how he wanted their hair and
make-up to be done. Both the art director
and the cameraman found it easy to work
with him,” he adds. “I was given the same
responsibility for Hirak Rajar Deshe.
The Father as a Writer
Sandip Ray pays tribute to his father on Satyajit Rays 98th “When my father was a student at Kala
birth anniversary, at his residence in Kolkata Bhavan in Santiniketan, he had written
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