The Great Expectations

From being in a successful career as an engineer in New Delhi, to being the director of one of the most successful shows on television, ‘Sea Hawks’ to Bollywood with films like the sleeper hit ‘Tum Bin’, ‘Dus’ and Shah Rukh Khan starrer ‘Ra.One’ – director Anubhav Sinha has come a long way.

It was 15 years ago that he made the film, ‘Tum Bin’ that started small, enjoyed quick success for a week before it was removed from the theatres.

However, the film garnered popularity over the years on social media, so much so that Anubhav has decided to make a sequel. Too many expectations and a lot of hard work went into the making of ‘Tum Bin 2’. He shares the details…

Extracts from the interview

Why did you choose to make the sequel after 15 years?
When ‘Tum Bin’ released, there was no fad of sequels or follow-ups in India and it was a small film; we only had 100 screens.

There were no screens left after a week as there were huge films releasing before and after ‘Tum Bin’. We enjoyed success for a week and were very happy that we made a film and it worked.

But, over the years we realised that it was much bigger hit than what we thought. It kept growing. Every year I received more phone calls for ‘Tum Bin’ and enquiries for its sequel.

And around 2010/11 when Facebook and Twitter started to boom in India, it was then I started talking to the audience directly and that is when I understood the real size of ‘Tum Bin’.

People over the years asked me to make a sequel to ‘Tum Bin’, which is when we decided to make the part 2.

‘Tum Bin’ music is a huge hit. Does that raise expectations for the sequel?
There was immense pressure on the team of ‘Tum Bin 2’. The two months that I was writing, every team member including the cast and music directors were told that there will be this comparison and it is an unfair comparison because you have been listening to ‘Tum Bin’ songs since 15 years and loved it.

So, there is no way that anything can come close to it. We decided that we will not take that pressure and concentrated only on doing the best and that is exactly how we went ahead, and made the best possible film that we could have made.

The super hit song “Koi Fariyaad” by the maestro Jagjit Singh from ‘Tum Bin’ is retained in Part 2!
We took the risk of releasing the most popular, cult song of ‘Tum Bin’ “Koi Fariyad” and it was a very risky proposition as people may be unhappy and say we tampered with the original.

And about 3 to 5 per cent audience actually said that. I have been reading comments on the YouTube and the same people have come back and said they listened to it again and again.”

How difficult was it to include the original voice of Jagjit Singh in the new song?
Unfortunately, Jagjit ji is not alive, and the question that was running through our minds was how to recreate the song. If there is no voice of Jagjit Singh in the song - it will be sacrilege.

So, we decided that the first two lines of the song would be in female voice and the third line would be Jagjit ji’s voice. However, the bigger challenge was to find the original voice.

Then, we found this two-inch tape of the original song, which had his voice, and it turned out to be more difficult to digitise the tape. The technology was old and there were no machines to play it.

We called all over India and found that a couple of places in London had those machines and we were planning to take it to London and get it transferred.

Then, my sound designer found out that there is one machine that is available in Mumbai itself, and we were able to transfer and recreate the magical song. It was a massive struggle, though.

Why did you choose to shoot the film entirely in Scotland?
I had to go back and see why ‘Tum Bin’ became what it is today and I realised that the freshness of the film was much appreciated apart from the songs.

The freshness of the cast, the freshness of the locations and the way the story was told. I tried to retain all these elements and started searching for exotic locations and Scotland came to the table.

What makes you choose newcomers in your films?
Newcomers bring so much nervous energy to the table, which I think is very important. If the making of a product makes you nervous that is the best energy you can have and that helps everybody to do better.

Do you ever plan to come back to television?

TV went way away from me. TV content these days has become a new ball game and I do not relate to it; either with content or culture.

But, of late I have been receiving messages and calls from TV networks stating that they are open to something new and that is exciting, and I have also reached a stage in my career where I am not bound by feature films or theatrical releases.

Now, I am more interested in what excites me. So if a seven-minute movie excites me, I will direct it and if a seven-hour film excites me, I will direct it. The medium does not matter anymore. We are not far from exciting TV and web content.