To shoot Such a Long Journey in Bombay, India, the cast and crew took on challenges that not even experienced Bollywood producers would tackle.

The blaring car horns, the crowds of thousands, the government – and even local gangsters – have kept most Indian filmmakers inside their studios or away from the downtown area.

Not this Canadian/u.k. crew. In the name of authenticity and capturing the true nature of the city, they faced adversity and shot the film, which scored 12 Genie nominations including best motion picture.

A $4.5-million majority Canada/ u.k. coproduction from The Film Works of Toronto and Amy International Artists of the u.k., Such a Long Journey is based on Rohinton Mistry’s book of the same name and follows a few days in the life of a devoted family man in Bombay named Gustav Noble, played by Roshan Seth (Mississippi Masala, Gandhi) who is nominated for a best actor Genie.

On the eve of India’s war with Pakistan in 1971, Noble faces emotional challenges with his family, friends and community with dignity, forgiveness and humor – similar characteristics the crew had to have to shoot the film.

The film received funding from Telefilm Canada, the Harold Greenberg Fund, British Screen Finance and the federal and Ontario tax credits.

Typically coproductions have to be shot in one or the other country, says Film Works’ Paul Stephens, who shares producer credits with Simon MacCorkindale. But he says Telefilm and the British Department of National Heritage recognized the uniqueness of the film and allowed them to shoot in India.

To shoot on location, they had to deal with ‘many, many layers of government and oftentimes local gangsters,’ says director Sturla Gunnarsson (Diplomatic Immunity, Gerrie & Louise), who is nominated for best direction. Like many other people in the city, they paid the gangsters for ‘protection.’

They also managed to shoot at locations where no one was previously allowed for ‘security’ reasons, such as a bank, on a train platform and in the red-light district.

‘We had a superb location manager named Rajguru Swamy, which means king, teacher and holy man,’ says Gunnarsson. ‘You needed all three of those monikers to pull that off.’

During the location shoots, the crew was surrounded by thousands of curious onlookers and the perpetual sound of car horns and diesel car engines. But instead of trying to overcome some of these problems, they used them to enhance the film.

Sound recordist Henry Embry, along with boom operator Mark McNeilly, used eight different Neumann boom mikes, a Nagra 4STC stereo time code, a Dolby sr noise reduction system, a Cooper A-channel mixer and Vega radio mikes to capture the sounds of the horns, traffic, crowds and, of course, the actors. (Embry, Stephan Carrier, Lou Solakofski and Orest Sushko are nominees for best overall sound.)

‘Every city is famous for different sounds,’ says Embry. ‘I went into the film with the idea that I would use the environment rather than try to beat it.’

To avoid as much of the crowd and the noise as possible, the crew had to shoot many scenes early in the day when the streets were less congested, with Embry revisiting the locations to capture the sonic atmosphere.

‘Even though I may not have the [car] horns on one take from the scene itself,’ he says, ‘I would go where we had filmed and record quite a few hours of stereo sounds and ambiances, including a taxi horn repair shop, markets and the train station.

‘There’s no original sound libraries where you can go to get these sounds, so you make your own. I tried to provide as much as I could to the sound editors that they could possibly use in the film so they could fill the tracks to make it rich.’

Capturing India’s warmth

Cinematographer Jan Keisser (Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Clean and Sober) also used the city’s atmosphere to the film’s advantage.

‘We were trying to emulate the feeling of Bombay and India,’ says the Genie nominee for cinematography.

‘It’s a wealth of color to start with and a lot of the earth tones. We wanted to keep that feel, a lot of that warmth, so we used a color temperature orange gel that comes in different ratings that move the color temperature about 200 degrees per rating to warm up the light to make it a little more orange.’

Back in Toronto, picture editor and nominee for achievement in editing Jeff Warren (Joe’s So Mean to Josephine) acted as the ‘eyes’ of the production. In India, the crew had to view the dailies on video and ship the raw stock to Toronto for processing.

Once Warren saw the print, he would feed as much information as possible back to India, including the unfortunate news that a day and a half’s worth of shooting was damaged.

He says that in India if a package cannot be x-rayed, it has to sit in a warehouse for 24 hours for security reasons, therefore delaying processing. And in this case, because the film was accidentally x-rayed and therefore damaged, an interior dinner scene had to be reshot.

Despite all the adversity, ‘the whole experience was a gift,’ says Gunnarsson.

‘I loved the novel, and going to India was the best thing that could have happened to me at this point in my life. It put a smile on my face, which is still there.’

Distributor Red Sky Entertainment plans to release Such A Long Journey theatrically in February.