In retrospect, I have done quite a lot of useful things with my rudderless self – most of which I don’t even care to remember now. Having said that, the couple of years I spent with stage lighting have remained firmly embedded in my head, as a sweet spot.
I still love the lights, and not just the limelight.
So when my well-wisher cinematographer Hemant Chaturvedi pointed me towards the undoubted pioneer of film lighting in India – the internationally coveted Gaffer ‘Mulchand Dedhia’ – I jumped at the opportunity.
But first let me tell you what the designation ‘Gaffer’ means. I have a nagging doubt that (like me) you might have never heard the term; or even if you have, might not know what it entails.
So here’s a definition I picked up from Masterclass.
“The gaffer is the chief lighting technician on a set and is head of the electrical department. The gaffer’s job is to run a team of lighting technicians to execute the lighting plan for a production.”
In India, the use of a proper gaffer still remains limited to a select few directors. It’s more common with better organized foreign crews, so most of Mulchand’s work has been with them. We will come back to that, but if you are in a hurry, you can always go to Mulchand’s IMDB page and check out his rather impressive list of films.
When he started in the eighties, the concept of a dedicated Gaffer was unheard of in our film industry. The fact that this has changed a bit is largely thanks to his dedication, and four decades of unwavering commitment. But yes, despite all his stellar achievements, Mulchand still comes across as a humble man and a habitual learner.
A doggedly self-trained professional, he learnt everything at his job, mostly by watching, and without any institutional training. Mulchand has picked up everything he knows from life.
And what a life it has been.
An incredible rags to riches story, laced with pure passion and love for cinema.
What he didn’t mention here is that his first key international project was not ‘Heat and Dust’ but a multi-starrer film called ‘Sea Wolves’ – featuring Hollywood biggies like Gregory Peck, David Niven and Roger Moore.
Its crew came to India in 1978 to check out equipments. While they ended up bringing almost all lights and gears from abroad, the generator was built in Rajkamal Studios – by the British Gaffer, his British Generator Operator and their Indian assistant – Mulchand.
That’s was India’s first ever home-made silent generator – and the British Gaffer John Fenner became Mulchand’s inspiration. As an (uncredited) Generator Operator to ‘Sea Wolves’, he observed Fenner closely. That was the first time he thought – yes, I could do this.
Heat and Dust followed soon.
Question remains – did all this experience in working with foreign crews give him a stronger foothold in the Mumbai Film Industry? They must have welcomed his new knowledge-base, professional and efficient style of working with open arms – right?
I somewhat feel you already know the answer to this rhetorical question.
Mulchand has had an awe-inspiring career with truckloads of work, with major foreign films – spanning across four decades. Writing one blog post on him is tough . Hence, primarily to make my own job easier, I asked him about his most challenging assignments.
He skirted the question. He says he had always taken up every project as a challenge, be it a one week or four weeks schedule.
Having said that, there are a few projects that have remained etched in his memory due to their precarious shooting conditions and tough deadlines. That includes projects like Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen (1994) –shot deep inside the ravines of Chambal.
“BANDIT QUEEN CAME BY WORD-OF-MOUTH”
You know in those early days, whoever was coming to India, was working with me. See there were no phone calls – it was all land-lines and getting trunk calls was difficult. Sometimes phones were not working properly. So it was all word-of-mouth, recommendations from one technical crew to another crew – that when you go there, work only with Mulchand.
Bandit Queen came to me similarly, since the producer Bobby Bedi knew that I liked to work in a different way than what was usual here, and since Channel Four people were the producer of Bandit Queen so they also heard about me. And then, the first DP of the film, Giles Nuttgens also knew me.
Giles came for Bandit Queen. He shot for some 30-35 days – but then left the film because Shekhar Kapoor was working in a different way, more like a Bollywood way and Giles had his own way of working – it didn’t match. He left and then Ashok Mehta joined that film, but I continued.
Many things in Bandit Queen were improvised by me. Like when Phoolan Devi and Man Singh are in the railway station and the train passes from there – suddenly I realized that something is missing and I just started blowing dust in the air. That blowing air made a huge impact on the scene – much like a sandstorm on their faces and all. Suddenly Shekhar Kapoor and Ashok Mehta they were surprised – how did this happen?
We were changing locations multiple times even within the same day. Most of the locations of Bandit Queen were within a one kilometre to seven kilometre radius – which means walking distance. We were travelling all that distance taking our equipment along.
In fact in Bandit Queen everyday was challenging because we were shooting in the ravine, and there was no proper roads to transport the generators, cabling and lights. So I sometimes used to ask the production team to cut down the ravines and make some kuchcha roads to take all these technical equipment vehicles as close to the location as possible. Only then we could start cabling and all. Most of the track and crane shots were also taken in a similar manner – like we were making our own riggings in the ravines, to lay down the tracks and all.
Once we also had a visit from real dakus there on the sets. They came enquiring – what is it that you guys are shooting and all those things. In fact we also had a real dacoit in our own team – one of the gang members of Bandit Queen. Phoolan Devi’s gang member was also with us in the unit, but I have forgotten his name now.
On one hand, there were films like ‘Bandit Queen’ (94) and ‘Electric Moon’ (92) and ‘The Jungle Book’ (94) – placed deep inside the badlands of back-of-beyond India; on the other hand, there were films like Meera Nair’s ‘Salaam Bombay’ or Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Dharaavi’ – placed entirely in the urban slums of Mumbai, with its own repertoire of unique lighting challenges, and their impromptu solutions.
Soon enough, thanks to his insatiable passion for cinema, Mulchand found himself importing the latest lights and creating his own clamps and rigging equipment. Those were the times when even dollies were hired from abroad – and that too only for big-budget films. He started making his own scaffolding and grips for lighting. Besides gaffer, he also worked as a grip.
So by the time Danny Boyle’s team approached him for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, he was fully prepared to meet any lighting challenges head on.
“I DESIGNED MY OWN LIGHTS FOR SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE”
When the crew came for the recee of Slumdog Millionaire, at that time I had a very serious back problem. I decided to say no to this film, I told them I can’t do recee in this situation. My doctor told me if I shot this film then I might have to be in the bed for the rest of my lifetime – I told them that.
But they insisted. They said no no, you have to be there, since everyone is recommending your name only. If you can’t do the recee, send someone from your team but you be there during the shoot. Finally I did the recee but I wasn’t walking much. I was getting information about the locations from other people. Otherwise I was sitting in the car only.
So when we went to the VT railway station for the recee, I told the director that we can’t do anything here, and we have to shoot using available light. But just before the schedule of that last song, he said no, I wanted the whole platform properly lit. So I designed my own light – like one long 4 kilowatt tungsten light. That was also challenging because I was getting permission to enter the platform to do this pre-rigging only after midnight – after 12:30, and we were thrown out before 4 o clock from the station, before the train starts. Last train to the first train – we had permission for only four hours. I had to light up eight platforms within that time frame – it was very challenging to finish all those.
I remember insisting on getting all new cables – since I wasn’t happy with the used ones. Since if something goes wrong there will be a big accident on the platform. So we used entirely new cables, and I designed my own lights for the platform. In the film, if you watch the scene, you can see those lights.
Lots of other stuff actually. Slumdog Millionaire was also very challenging.
You see, shooting in Dharavi was not really a tough call for me, since before this I have also worked with Sudhir Mishra in his film ‘Dharavi’, and lots of other films shot in Dharavi. So it wasn’t bad for me, but for the international crew, you can very well understand – it was totally different – you know, 5000 people around the camera and all that.
But I have gone through all these, you know – during ‘Salaam Bombay’ also, when we were shooting in the red light area.
Personally, I am a big fan of the ‘Mission Impossible’ franchise, and I am yet to develop a friendship with anyone who isn’t. So my next obvious question to Mulchand was about Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) – where the entire climax was shot in Mumbai.
It wasn’t a very long sequence, but within that short span, I saw so many crowded locations in Mumbai in an entirely new light; almost like I was not being able to recognize Mumbai. I particularly loved the chase sequence though the streets of Bora Bazaar.
“SHOOTING MISSION IMPOSSIBLE WAS CRAZY”
See, for that film, we didn’t have any prep-time at all. The first day we started at Worli, and then we started prepping outside the VT Railway station – one main street opposite VT and eight by-lanes were there. It was all point of view shot, so you had to light up everything, every single building.
I had 22 generators and more than 800 lighting fixtures with me. I also told the producer about manpower – I said I will need 140 boys. That American producer was going mad, crazy – he said 140 boys, we can’t believe what you are saying, since we work with only about 10-15 boys. But I knew their system, so I explained to him the details of how it works here.
I told him, let’s count; say 15 boys for the pre-rigging, of all these 10 lanes and bye lanes and cranes; 15 riggers, 15 grips – for the first part. We had two parts actually on road. Night shoots. One was at Bora Bazaar main road and Bora Bazaar eight bye-lanes; we were allowed to shoot there up to the midnight. After mid-night we were supposed to shoot on the main road, because the main road permission was only there after midnight till 4:30 – 5 AM in the morning. So every day we were rigging and re-rigging on the road.
The lights which were fixed on the balcony and terraces – all remained fixed for the entire span of time – but all other stuff on the ground level we had to remove everyday and re-do everything again on the next day. When I started counting in the American system, the crew went up to 180 boys.
Then they realized how it works here. See, because in the American system they work in a different way. They have a department in which they have a key-grip, best boy grip and all that.
I mean two or four people is fine in one location – but here you have one main road and eight bye-lanes, you have a 200 feet crane, and on top of that crane you have a 20 feet by 20 feet hanging box-platform – for the lights and my boys. My crew was up there for the entire night. For five nights my boys were there. I mean every evening they were going up and in the morning they were coming down.
Those were crazy days. See, for six night’s shoot I had only 16 hours of break.
I was reaching on location at 2 o clock, we were starting pre-rigging, pre-lighting in Borrabazar and bye-lane. We were finishing lighting at 6 PM or say about 6:30 PM. Then we shot till late. When we wrapped there I used to tell my boys to finish everything and took half the crew outside for the main road sequence. Then we shot there, finish those sequences and then again remove everything.
See if we finish the shoot at 5-5:30 in the morning, it took us time till 8:30-9 AM to load everything in the trucks and wrap up everything. From there I used to go home, just took a bath and other stuff. So I reached home at 10 AM and then again left home at 1 PM to reach location at around 2 PM – so my sleeping time was only 16 hours. That was one crazy shoot.
Immediately afterwards, I had another week long schedule in Rajasthan – for ‘Dark Knight Rises’. That was in Jodhpur. But that was a very quiet shoot – I mean no work at all. My entire crew was sitting there and I was just walking around. The whole week was like that – except one well scene that we did with green chroma. I designed some of the stones also for green screen – for that jail sequence.
So you know, sometimes you go into the hectic mode and sometimes it’s otherwise. But none of these films posed any major challenges for me – I could say that.
Now let’s go back a few years.
At the turn of the millennium, Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai were two cult-classics that transformed the way commercial films were made and perceived in India. I do remember watching them multiple times in big screen – both kept me mesmerized.
Besides Aamir Khan, Mulchand was the common factor in both of them.
Anil Mehta was the DP for Lagaan, so in his long ISC: Conversations interview with Mulchand, they went on and on about that film – including interesting anecdotes about cabling and the use of Chinese lanterns to light up the song ‘Radha kaise naa Jale’ etc.
I would propose all serious students and enthusiasts of cinema lighting to go through that interview cover to cover. It’s a real study in contrast. While Lagaan was mostly outdoors, Dil Chahta Hai had extensive indoors sequences. If Mulchand didn’t tell me that it was all sets and not real locations I wouldn’t have realized it – although I have lost count of how many times I have seen DCH in the last two decades. Mulchand designed special lights for those sets, neatly planned and integrated in the film’s production design.
See that interview. For now, here, let me bring you another interesting challenge – a lesser known film called ‘Darjeeling Limited’ (2007) – shot inside a real moving train. Not a set – but a real train, travelling across landscapes. The idiosyncrasies of it’s Director Wes Anderson added on to the formidable challenges of achieving something that complex.
‘DARJEELING LIMITED WAS SHOT CHRONOLOGICALLY’
In Darjeeling Limited, it was a long three months schedule. Entire train was designed by the production designer. During those prep-days, I had left two boys for the electrical connections and cabling and connectors – everything was concealed within the production designing itself.
For the main hero compartment –– we had an AC ducting gap. To hide the lights I had designed my own lighting – you know the lights were of the size of the ducting. The entire hero compartment was lit by those kinds of lights actually.
And then, we had like a mirror image of the main Hero Compartment. So for half a day we were travelling from south to north and for the second half we were travelling north to south – hence we were changing compartments. So the extras and cameras were going into the mirror-image compartment during the second half of the day – so that the sun movement and the train movement looks the same.
The other challenging thing was that Weys decided to shoot the whole film chronologically.
So it was like scene no 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… like that. So if you go to compartment number two for scene number one, and then you have to go to compartment number one again for scene number 25 – so you have to return there again and light it up again. You know mostly what we do is – we finish all scenes in one particular location and move on to the next location. But here, because of his decision to shoot the film chronologically, we were visiting most of the locations multiple times.
It was probably because the story was like that. The story was following these three guys – so if you are jumping from one scene to another scene – it becomes difficult. I mean in the train compartment also, if you are doing something different then your timing will change – you know like when it is sunrise or afternoon time – the light conditions and source will change. So he was going chronologically.
Then Reis had another thing in his mind. Each time he was loading a magazine of 1000 feet onto the camera. So even if it was a one line dialogue, and he had to retake it 50 times – he will keep rolling camera. He will give instructions while the camera kept rolling, and then again the same line was taken – and so on. So he was not cutting anything – no cuts in between the retakes actually.
One day I asked him why you are wasting so much film. So he said, no Mulchand, this is not a waste of film, this is my way of working. Because if I cut that means the DP will say okay I am going to the loo and somebody will say I am going to smoke a cigarette and so on. Then again I will have to reconnect and restart. Instead of that if I continue to shoot, nobody will go anywhere. So in the entire 20 days schedule of train – none of the HOD’s had any lunch break. There were food-vendors outside the compartment, so whoever wanted to eat anything they could just go out, take it, and come immediately back into the compartment.
We had everything on the moving train – even a kitchen; but there was no break during the train shooting. Nobody could walk away, because he was not cutting anything – not even during the retakes.
I remember finishing the film 13 days before schedule. That sure was a different kind of experience.
Mulchand also thrives on the relationships he has built with globally renowned Cinematographers – over time. One particular example is that of Giles Nuttgens – with whom he worked in the Deepa Mehta trilogy Fire, Earth and Water. He has also worked with undisputed masters of the craft like Emmanuel Lubezki, Dion Beebe, Robert Richardson and Declan Quinn – just to name a few.
In all this exposure to international masters of the cinematic image, there’s one aspect that stands out for Mulchand. Every time they come, they want to do something different – never repeating themselves. That keeps the lighting crew, in this case Mulchand and his team, always on their toes – and ready to experiment.
The job of gaffer has never been easy. It’s become even more complicated with time.
To start with, you need to understand a wide range of requirements – that of the cameraman, director and the script; you have to understand the technology and the aesthetics of a camera – usage of lens, depth of field, colour temperature, exposure and all that. You will also need to know what light head will be most suitable for which location and what moods will it convey? Understanding the photo-metrics of lighting has become even more complex since now there are over 10000 varieties of lighting heads – from LEDs, to Tungsten, to a vast variety of HMI; you also need to have a firm knowledge of load distribution and cabling on the sets – for a trouble free session of shoots.
Mulchand also mentioned how the sound guy should also be involved. He explained how there have been situations when he had to place a high-intensity HMI really close to the sets – and how that could create ‘humming’ issues for sync-sound recording. This mention put a smile into my face – since sound has been my long term passion. And I am quite sure this is where my friend Tapas Nayak will also be smiling.
It’s all about collaboration and teamwork; and an obstinate urge to keep learning, which only comes with an undiluted love for cinema. At the end of it all, Mulchand did manage to make a sizable difference in the way things were done in the Indian Film industry. But that’s because he chose to be uncompromising with his quality of work.
If you have seen these three films, you will know what I mean.
Mulchand is taking it a bit easy now. At the most he attempts two films in a year.
Over the years, he has managed to create a pool of gaffers in Mumbai – including his own daughter Hetal Dedhia. Acclaimed as the first ever female gaffer in India – Hetal is doing significant work. Here’s a verve article on her.
But yes, when the likes of Mira Nair pick up a complex project like the BBC Mini Series ‘A Suitable Boy’ (2020) – she still ropes in Mulchand in person. Might be because they have worked together for 34 years – in all films she has shot in the Indian subcontinent.
Mulchand has not just transformed the diction of lighting in India – he has kept changing himself to be up to date with the best in the global industry. He kept on raising the bar, of the kind of equipment that we use, and the way we work.
That’s what kept him going all these years. It still does.
That’s solid life-advice, if I might say so.
I have seen quite a lot of people trying to match up to the expectations of others – and thereon failing to reach anywhere at all. It’s not easy understanding what you really want to do, and be the best in that field, even if it doesn’t feel lucrative or romantic enough at the onset. It will pay off eventually.
On that note, I close this post.
It’s been a long time since I came up with a blog. Even this interview was taken a couple of months back, but due to a string of personal tragedies and other sentimental engagements – I couldn’t focus on blogging.
From here on, I would like to rectify that. Let’s see.
Here’s a glimpse from a Vodaphone commercial.
Thoroughly researched and articulated. Informative yet written in such a manner that it held my attention through and through. And by the time i was done, left me wanting for more
So fascinating… A delightful read…
I got caught up in the narrative, so effortlessly it flows. Very interesting information, too .
Very nice Anirban Sir 🙂
Well researched and articulated. Enjoyed the read.
Perhaps the most engrossing piece of ‘therewillbe time’ great insight. Umesh Aggarwal