First it was Anurag Basu’s “Kites” that had Brett Ratner from Hollywood to put together the material. Now director Leena Yadav has roped in Oscar winning editor Hughes Winborne to edit her film “Teen Patti”, which is releasing Friday.
Winborne, who has edited Will Smith starrer “In Pursuit Of Happyness” and “Seven Pounds” and also won an Oscar for his editing in Paul Haggis’s “Crash”, has ‘re-edited’ “Teen Patti”, which was first edited by Kaushik Das.
“We needed that international sensibility to be placed on the footage. We sent a subtitled print to Hughes. But he soon did away with the subtitles. He got all the Hindi jokes and punchlines,” Yadav said.
Why was it felt that a Hollywood editor would be able to give “Teen Patti” the global cut?
“It’s really about getting the rhythm right. The Western audience has a different pace for movie viewing. That pace worked beautifully in my film,” said Yadav.
An international editor was not all that “Teen Patti” got from abroad. The film also imported a stunt coordinator. The German stunt director Armin Sauer, who has worked with global biggies like Matt Damon in “The Bourne Supremacy” and Ralph Fiennes in “The Constant Gardener”, had been called to supervise the stunts.
Yadav let go of all stops and made sure she pulled the punches as hard as Armin.
“These stunts that Mr. Bachchan has performed are very real, very raw. Not for a second was I allowed to feel like a woman on the sets. Agreed there were a lot of men on the set and two intimidating stalwarts like Mr Amitabh Bachchan and Sir Ben Kingsley. But any director regardless of gender would have fely equally intimidated by these two stalwarts.”
It’s generally said that female directors have a much tougher time directing a film than their male counterparts. Yadav says she has never had to suffer because of her gender.
“Not once did I feel I was disadvantaged by my gender. On the sets, my authority was never questioned. Whether it was legends like Mr. Bachchan and Sir Ben or the newcomers, they all surrendered to my vision,” she said.