Director of Photography, Charlie Locke headed out to India as part of a micro documentary crew for 3 weeks of blood sweat and tears in the height of summer. Having worked on the previous series of Dance Factory, we were delighted to be smashing out another series in Asia. The adventure began in Dehli, where the team set off on a 9 hour drive to Pushkar, Rajasthan for the first few days of filming. We shot with Colleena and her husband at her Shakti Dance school on the first day which was nothing other than dreamlike. We covered lots of other things in Pushkar, such as live music at Pushkar Lake, Gypsy dancing in the desert, Camels, food markets, temples and more.
Pushkar, India
Pushkar Lake, India
From Pushkar, the team moved south via breaking bad style RV to Patan, where by the presidential elections would follow from city to city from this point forward (Nothing to do with the production, just a spot of really bad luck), making it increasingly harder to find alcoholic beverages for the evening.
The heat was in the high 30’s (celcius) for the majority of the trip, peaking at mid 40’s towards the end. This was incredibly challenging for everyone aside from the local fixer who was of course accustomed to this kind of humidity and temperature. “Mr G” Short for Gauthem, was such an incredible asset to the production, and we’ve kept in touch ever since.
From Patan, the crew travelled to Kochi, Kerala, Chennai to Mumbai, mostly domestic flights with allot of ground travel too. The days would average out between 12-18 hours of work, which meant sitting by the resort pool in Kerala at night with a bottle in hand truly felt like heaven.
The show was broadcasted across 3 episodes, and most of the travel between cities was documented along the way. We experienced an incredible amount of new culture, and an overwhelming sense of intrigue, care, and appreciation from the local people. Focussing on Dance for this particular documentary, felt as though we had yet to scratch the surface of what India had to offer. We’ve since been back, and look forward to getting stuck in again in the future.
