Exclusive! Uunchai director Sooraj Barjatya: A film set should be a space for creation and not correction

Filmmaker Sooraj Barjatya, whose latest film Uunchai is running successfully in theatres, opens up to OTTplay on why he directors less number of films these days.

Sooraj Barjatya on the set of Uunchai

Even though most of the films that he has directed in his more than three-decades-long career have seen huge success and achieved milestones, veteran filmmaker Sooraj Barjatya takes long gaps in between his directorial ventures.

As his new film, Uunchai, released after six years, during a conversation with OTTplay, the filmmaker (also the main man of Rajshri Productions) opens up on his thoughts behind making the film.

Sooraj told OTTplay, " I think there are a couple of factors due to which I direct less number of films. In fact, in my 37 years of career span, I only directed seven films. Look, writing and directing a film is not really my means of earning money. I am running a company, I do that as a producer. But directing a film is very different, it's quite personal to me. I am a perfectionist and I strongly believe that on the set of a film, there should be more, creation than correction."

Elaborating on the same point, he further added, " I, therefore, believe in investing a lot of time in pre-production. I take almost two to three years for that. I not only sit down for stories if I am not writing them; for example, our Uunchai is written by Abhishek Dixit; but we have done a lot of work on the script and character development. I have to sit with lyricists and musicians for the music of my films because that's also my signature of storytelling. So finally when we are going to the set, everything looks like a cakewalk."

The director known for delivering some of the most successful films including - Maine Pyar Kiya, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Vivah among others - believes that creating a happy film set is important for him to extract the best performance from actors as well as from every crew member.

As the veteran filmmaker has always come across as someone with a smiley face and soft-spoken by nature, it is hard to believe that he could shout at anybody ever at work.

However, he mentioned that the calmness in nature came with experience and he, actually was someone who used to get angry in situations.

"Of course when I was young, like any other youngster, I was also impatience, I shouted at etc. But with time and experience I have realised that if the director is upset on a set, it affects our actors the most. It is the actors who are conveying the vision of the director so I have to make sure that the environment on the set is conducive," he said.

" I work with so many people on a film set so obviously the clashes of mood, approach, and idea happened; but nothing will come out to spoil our mood; I do not let the anger overpower a situation," smiled Sooraj.

The film Uunchai, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Boman Irani, Neena Gupta, Anupam Kher, Sarika, Parineeti Chopra - running in the theatre.

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