Rain in Indian Cinema (Part 2)

The more I watch Hindi movies, I more I realise that the rain is not an afterthought.  It is in the script, as a character that should be taken into consideration when getting lights and reflectors for scenes, deciding where grips are going to stand and where the director is going to call action. 

Take the soccer scene in Aankhen for example.  I wonder where the director Vipul Amrutlal Shah placed the lights and cameras.  Vishwas (Akshay Kumar), Ilyas (Paresh Rawal) and Arjun (Arjun Rampal) are blind men who are being trained by Neha, (Sushmita Sen) to rob a bank. 

The person pulling the strings is Vijay Singh (Amitabh Bachchan) who is holding Neha’s brother as hostage for his evil scheme to destroy the bank that fired him.

It is raining heavily and the men are playing soccer, stomping in the mud.  Vijay is sitting under a white umbrella.  He is wearing a black jacket and a black baseball cap.  His face is well lit and I’m wondering how the Director of Photography did that. 

Was it the effect of a white umbrella above a black background?  Vishwas comes close to him and bounces the soccer ball in front of him.  It is still raining heavily but the ball and Vishwas are properly lit. 

There’s a beautiful scene in Kyo Kii Main Jhuth Nahin Bolta, where Govinda’s character is dancing with his mistress while the rain is cascading on the glass roof.  How did director David Dhawan know that the heavens will be crying buckets of tears?  Was the scene shot in the studio?

Kya Kehna, directed by Kundal Shah, starring Preity Zinta as Priya and Saif Ali Khan as Rahul has a painful scene where Ajay is crying in the rain because Priya just fainted at her brother’s wedding because she is pregnant.

It is raining steadily at the poolside where Ajay, who has loved her since childhood is drinking.  There was even a close up shot and I scratched my brain once again, how did the Director of Photography do that?


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