The crew required 3 corpses out of which one was created using pillows and cricket bats. but the other two had 2 be real bodies. finally 2 of the team members volunteered to perform the 'easy' role. the 2 gals willingly crawled into the coffins.
Well, the experience of 'playing dead' was so much fun initially. hundreds of people watching u while u pretend 2 b sleeping in a coffin... no acting skills required, no extra efforts needed, all u hv 2 do is 2 b still till the directer says "cut".
in a few minutes the real stress came 2 light. staying still 4 a long time is truly challenging. u cannot move even if u feel itchy under ur feet. controlling ur breathe is NOT at all easy especially when ur face is covered with 2 layers of thick cloth. keeping ur limbs stiff in a small enclosed space with no room 4 adjustments of any sort, it aches for sometym and then it goes numb. its a terrible feeling.
u hear people passing comments on the acting skills of the corpses (and the funniest part is when the duplicate corpse wins the competition) and then u hear the other characters delivering their dialogs, making mistakes, the rest of the crew laughing and then going 4 another shot. u feel a severe temptation 2 peep out of the blanket and b actually a part of the fun, but NOOO. and when the crew go on a one minute brk in between shots, u hear the 'other corpse' communicating to u. she admits our luck 4 being a dead body in a coffin or else they wud hv burnt us alive. when the others praise u 4 ur acting skills, u hv no other go but giggle and realize that ur whole body is numb.
Finally, after an hour and a half, the directr decides to wrap up the first secne, but failed to say 'cut'. the team dispersed 2 relax 4 smtym & 4got all abt the 2 living corpses under the thick sheets of cloth in the coffin completely dedicated to making the shoot a perfect one.
but no, they were not 4gottn 4 evr. in 5 minutes tym one of them suddenly realised that there were 2 more members in the team and returned to wake them up from 'death'.
2 get out of that coffin was a real task. 2 people had 2 literally pull them out of it. it was a relief to feel the breeze and breathe the fresh air, taste a glass of cold water trickling dwn ur thirsty throat and of course the jilebees... (hw cn i 4gt). it was total fun.
after the lunch brk, the 2 corpse ( thats hw people called them ever after) were bak 2 the coffin 'playing dead'.
Seriously, death is no simple game, it takes a lot of hard wrk.
(sincere thanks to Navin (dirctr), harsha(fotografr))
(Article date ; October 2010)
