Differences btwn East and West indie filmmaking

I’ve really been out of it lately, and when I say out of it– I mean in the jungles of Kerala, India on the production “Hisss” I helped package.

Besides a whole host of other stuff I will not be blogging about, here’s some crucial differences between Hollywood and Bollywood that should not be overlooked before started a collaborative production:

“Extras” are called Junior Artistes (bonus pts. for knowing the alternative U.S. terms “background artists” and “actor persons.”)

In Bollywood, the ADs have names like Yogi and Swami, and PAs are named Krishna. Actually, the term used for PAs is “spot boy” and they’re more like servants. The same guy asked to dig a ditch will be serving you tea later.

Most Bollywood directors use a microphone and PA system that blasts their direction for miles around. They also seem to be responsible for some script supervising and AD duties. Essentially, directors over here run the set more, and are expected to lead more. In the West, as far as I can tell, everyone’s pretty much kosher with a director who only talks to the DP, actors and a few keys, letting the AD dept. do their job.

No matter what is happening during a shoot day in Bollywood, tea and cookies will still be served. In indie Hollywood or NYC, I guess you can always count on… pizza?

No wonder there’s runaway production in our industry, and outsourcing of US jobs! So many essentials are so much less expensive in the East. Make your 3M movie look like 5-7M or more! Amazing sets that would cost 250K in the US costs 25K here! (But although one can get more prod value for their dollar, or in this case, rupee–and maybe not for too long– with that also comes an increase in chaos, because…

There are people everywhere. (1.2 Billion to be exact.) Huge crews, huge crowds rubbernecking and unfortunately, sometimes making the job of production harder. In Hollywood or NYC, shooting is no big deal to most people; it’s just another day at the office. We’z so jaded.

Set scaffolding is built with bamboo. It’s really quite amazing, and extremely impressive– I’ve even seen large, newly designed buildings being built using bamboo scaffolding.

Of course, there’s the language differences; not just with an English-only loser like me– within India itself are a bunch of different languages. But expect to be impressed when after a few weeks you still can’t communicate verbally but somehow manage to get things accomplished.

In India, just like in Saudi Arabia, non-gay men hold hands when walking down the street. I know, sounds weird at first, but you get used to it after awhile. Gay men do it too, which makes it hard to tell which is which…

Even though India’s had a long, vibrant film history– in many ways a parallel could be made to the wild west of Hollywood’s own Golden Age. The Bollywood scene is bursting, and the filmmaking style itself is rapidly growing and branching out.

Stunts. As a former stuntman myself, I can appreciate the wild abandon of the Indian stunt guys. No pads, no pulled punches, no net! Though keep in mind, most of these people come from a tradition of reincarnation philosophy. If they die, they’ll come back soon enough.

In sum, global filmmaking is the future. Statistics say that by the year 2015, 70% of all entertainment and media revenue will come from Asia. Count me in.