The Making of Little Box Of Sweets (Productions notes and behind the scenes)
The producer talks about the Little Box Of Sweets journey
It has been a long journey for sisters Meneka and Sheenu Das to make their first feature film Little Box of Sweets. The sisters grew up in Allahabad, North India but moved to the UK in the early 90s. The film started when Meneka felt inspired to write the script after the death of their father. “When we went back to India we saw the rate that everything was changing – all the orchards and mustard fields where we used to run around and play were being replaced by concrete buildings. Meneka felt she wanted to write a story about the India we remembered, the people and places where we grew up”, says Sheenu.
Their vision was soon tested, however, when it came to seek finance for the film. When they approached investors in India, the story met with an enthusiastic response but there was always the stipulation that the film should include some Bollywood-style set-pieces. “It was encouraging to be offered so much money but it really wasn’t the style of film we wanted to make. We grew up on films by Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy, who told stories of an India they knew, and we wanted to capture the India of our time,” says Meneka. Eventually, feeling the film had a much more European sensibility, along the lines of Cinema Paradiso or Il Postino, the sisters started looking elsewhere and eventually secured funding from private investors in the UK. “This was a real breakthrough, because it finally meant we could make the film we wanted to make without having to give up creative control”, says Sheenu.
With enough money in place to at least shoot the film, Sheenu and Meneka travelled to India to start scouting for locations, with the help of their brother, co-producer Vijay Das. It became clear that the city of Allahabad, though it had changed dramatically over the last fifteen years, would still be able to provide most of the locations. “The film was written with Allahabad very much in mind and some locations, like the famous Naini bridge, we felt we had to capture”. For the location for the village where Asha lives, they looked at several options, but eventually came back to a small community. Originally a village in its own right, it had been swallowed up by the recent rapid growth of Allahabad but, having taken some stills to show to the director of photography, Dusan Todorovic, they realised it could still look like a quiet country village if the more modern buildings were framed out.
The other principal job at this stage was casting. The parts of Seth and his mother were to be cast in the UK and here, the sisters were very lucky to find help in the form of Lucy Bevan and the late Mary Selway. “Mary read the script and felt it was a very sweet and moving story and wanted to be involved in it. She helped us find Joe Anderson and Helena Michell. It turned out to be one of the last films she cast.” Other parts were cast in India, with casting sessions held in Bombay and Delhi. Again, the sisters were not looking for Bollywood stars and were lucky to find excellent actors like Rahul Vohra, Mohini Mathur and Tillotama Shome, who had come from a different background in films such as Monsoon Wedding.
A lot of the other parts were cast locally, in Allahabad. The part of Nana, Asha’s grandfather provided particular problems. “We just couldn’t find any actors with the right gravitas for Nana. We ended up contacting everyone we knew, uncles, friends and getting them to read for the part whether they’d acted before or not! Then Vijay took us to see Raja Zhutsi, who had not acted in films before but had done a lot of radio. We knew before he even said anything that we’d found our Nana”.
Shooting finally began in February, with the aim of being finished in March before the weather became unbearingly hot. A few key crew, director of photography Dusan Todorovic, focus puller Roger Bowles and assistant director Richard Jones, travelled over from the UK but the vast majority of the crew were from Mumbai, Hyderabad or local crew from Allahabad.
Again, co-producer Vijay was instrumental in gaining access to locations, using contacts made when he was a journalist. Most importantly, he gained the support of the local Chief of Police, which meant that not only could they close roads when needed but also the unit had an armed police escort wherever they went. This came in useful on several occasions when huge crowds gathered to watch the production in progress. “In one remote location, people came from miles around to see what was going on. We’d be shooting a very quiet, intimate scene between Seth and Asha, then you’d turn round and see a crowd of two hundred people watching. That was quite a challenge, keeping everyone out of the shot and quiet enough for us to turn over!”
The local connection proved to be invaluable, as Sheenu explains: “We had arranged to shoot a crucial scene at the railway station at dawn on three consecutive mornings but it was still tight as we had a lot to shoot and we were working around the regular train timetable. On the last morning, we realized we needed a couple more shots and were coming up with all kinds of plans to delay the train, like pulling the emergency cord or even lying in front of it. Then we realized that the station-master was standing right next to us! So we started to persuade him how important the film was for Allahabad and eventually he agreed to delay the train for an hour so that we could get the extra shots!”
There were certain things that couldn’t be delayed though. “To be able to use the original locations, we had to move fast as building contractors with their heavy bulldozers and diggers had already moved in to change the landscape forever,” says Sheenu. It was a particular race against time at the location for Seth’s parents’ bungalow and eventually the bulldozers in the fields opposite were written into the script to show the inexorable pace of change in the country. Even the church which features in several key scenes in the film, has since been demolished.
Post-production was handled back in England. Having originally only raised enough money to shoot the film, more finance now had to be sought to finish it. Here, the sisters were very lucky to gain the support of top companies like De Lane Lea, who handled all the post-production sound and MotionFX, who produced the digital intermediate.
It was clear all along that music was going to be crucial to the film and it was decided that the orchestral themes should be recorded in Mumbai to give them the authentic sounds of instruments such as the sitar, sarod and sarangi. “We also felt that even western instruments like the violin are played in such a different way in India and have such a distinct sound, that we had to go to Mumbai to capture that,” explains Sheenu. “We were lucky to go to the new, state-of-the-art Yashraj studio in Mumbai which was a fantastic experience, to work with all these incredible Indian musicians”.
“The urge to share the India we remember, before everything changed, was so compelling” says Sheenu. “Our journey isn’t over yet but with the help of family, friends, private investors and people in the industry we’ve made a film that we’re really proud of”.
