A film with Ashley Judd

A large part of my time over the last few months was given over to the making of a film with Ashley Judd on the face of HIV and AIDS in India. I filmed with her and with Shahrukh, Sushmita Sen and Akshay Kumar as well as a range of different people who have been touched by this deadly virus. I've worked in filming people like much them for a decade now. Yet every time it takes an effort to remind myself that my job is to tell their stories and through my film, hope that things change. If not for them, then for others like them and future generations. It always is tough to be able to meet disempowered people and deal of feelings of being unable to do anything to directly change any of their circumstances. And stay strong to be able to go on filming and telling their stories effectively. I did learn a lot about that from Ashley.

I knew straight off the bat when I went for the first channel meeting on this film that it wasn’t going to be easy. Apart from the channel, there was the other major stakeholder in the project, PSI and their people and their issues. Then the celebrities and their issues! I was already in the thick of another documentary so I was fairly sure that this film was going to be made by someone else.

Then – and here is the real inside bit – several senior people in Miditech fought over who was going to do this big film with Ashley Judd! I felt that I went and initiated this project with Pria and that was that. I can go back to focusing on my other film. And given that no one would let anyone else do the film, it landed right back on my plate!

My first con-call with PSI and Geoff from NGCI was from the location of my other film! Thankfully, I had a clear enough picture of how to do this one as I’d had a chance to mull it over a bit. So I think I took a fairly clear position about how I saw the project unfolding. Geoff told me what he thought and I think it was a fairly good tie in to my ideas then.

I went for the recce and met up with people who had been shortlisted as characters in the film. And was moved all over by their stories and situations that they were in. The challenge as I saw it was to be able to predict Ashley’s reactions to them and fix the meetings in a manner that there is a clear emotional path in the film.

Strong conversations followed laying out requirements to all concerned. This is the way we wanted it for the filming – but this isn’t the way we’ve don’t it before – no this is the way it has to be to make for an interesting film that was more than a celeb meeting a series of people in unfortunate situations. The discussions went on and on.

Then straight off another shoot I landed into Mumbai and day 1 of the shoot even before I’d had a chance to meet Ashley and for us get comfortable with each other’s working styles.

When I first met her, I had the cameras rolling already. And we stayed at a distance. Trying hard not to get in anyone’s face right at the outset. Polite introductions followed, but there was no time for anything more as we moved to the next location. I realized how much Ashley was on the ball and how deeply she knew and understood the issues. I developed a healthy respect for the real empathy (I know to recognize the fakers. I’ve worked with those too!)

I thought I had taken the team through the drill and we were fairly ready for how things were going. But nothing really prepared us for the raw emotions that started pouring out as we went along. Day 3 and by now we were pretty much in tune for the filming. I didn’t need to cue Ashley with too many words. Sometimes a gesture or a quick whispered phrase and she would work her interactions sensitively to the bits we had missed.

The biggest challenge was to handle the chaos that Mumbai is while filming with a celebrity and the security risks that were a part of such a gig. On day 3, we were filming with a Sushmita Sen an A list film star in India and Ashley in the congested brothels in Kamathipura in Mumbai. We went up the stairs and followed the actions as they unfolded. Then we came down as they came down. They got into the convoy of vehicles and zoomed away. We looked for our crew vehicles, but realized that the cops had removed them from this road and there was no one we could connect on our wirelesses at short notice. So there we were, with all the hot shot crew, equipment on our backs and sprinting through the notorious red light district in Mumbai to the next location. I have no doubt that residents and visitors to these places have seen enough strange things, but we must have been a really out there sight!

About ten days into filming and we were in Delhi after having filmed in Mumbai and Jaipur. The filming with Ashley was done and I had a got to know her and others in PSI pretty well by then.

A post prod process at record speed and we had a film that I hope tells the stories of those that Ashley met to the world in a way that moves them.

Going by the reactions that I got after the World Premier Screening that was organized by the National Geographic Society, I’d like to believe that it will go down well with audiences. Well, I was asked at a panel discussion whether I was proud of the work that we had done together and I have no hesitation in an emphatic “Yes, absolutely!” answer.

A bright sidelight was meeting Bono! A lot of people tried to get close to him and were disappointed. But I edged in close to Ashley and she called him over and introduced us. When I told him what a huge fan of his I was, he reciprocated by saying "I saw your film and you hit all the right notes!"

I had N & N along for a very quick and short getaway while we went for the screening. Our first holiday in almost two years. I had really connected well with Geoff and others in the channel. I had met up with Ashley, who I had a genuine admiration for (and she praised me at the panel discussion too). And had a mutual admiration society going with Bono. Life couldn't be better!