This year's biggest Bollywood release, Happy New Year, is close to the heart of the people of the UAE. Having been shot almost completely in Dubai, the film features more than 1,600 faces from the city in various roles.The sisters Rehaab Daud and Roha Daud from Muse Dubai – the homegrown talent management and PR agency behind the casting of HNY – explain what goes into casting extras and smaller parts on such a big project.
Now that HNY is out, how does it feel to have been involved into something so big?
Rehaab: We got HNY within a year and half of starting Muse. Being a new agency, we were up against some tough competition, established agencies, some of which were recommended by the Dubai Film Commission.
Roha: I remember Rehab coming up to me one day and telling me that she had had a meeting with the executive producer and I remember thinking that was just too good to be true. We didn't really speak about it after that, and then we got a call a few months later to say we got the project. It was such a huge break.
Rehaab: We knew from day one that Farah Khan was directing it and because it has such a huge star cast, it was going to be a blockbuster [the film made 100 crores in India within three days of opening on Oct 24]. Now that it is out, we have been getting calls non-stop. We have gotten such a good response. Watching the movie felt great because more than watching it, it was like reliving the experience of making it.
How many extras and actors in total did have to find, and how many were sourced locally?
Rehaab: It was three months of work – we provided more than 1,600 extras. Then there was the featured cast – the people who have small speaking parts. We also flew down a hip-hop dance troupe from Korea. The younger kid, who is an integral part of the film, was flown down from Mumbai for a month for the shoot.
Roha: We sourced most of the roles locally, including 10 teams of dancers and the models.
What were some of the most challenging aspects of working on this project?
Roha: We would have a lot of late nights, when we were casting. A lot of times, we would stay up overnight trying to source, like, 200 people for the next day because the scene being shot the next day was not the planned one, but something else.
We were working with so many extras and a lot of people wouldn’t show up, so we would have to get creative and we would run out to universities and public spaces looking for people.
Rehaab: The casting requirements were also very challenging. We were given very strict descriptions and we had to stick to them. A lot of things that you wouldn't even notice in the movie, but for which we had a brief to follow. For instance, there is a song where there are some women in Santa outfits in the background. The audience might not even notice them, but we had to source models with blonde hair and a specific look.
What other major projects have you been involved in?
Rehaab: HNY was our first Bollywood project. Right after that, we got a call from the Bollywood producer Om Prakash Mehra. We also did a Marathi-language movie that was partly shot here – Manidhari, with the actor Riteish Deshmukh, which became the highest-grossing movie in the history of Marathi cinema. We did the casting for the song that was shot in Dubai. We provided extras for the recently released film Bang Bang!, for the scenes that were shot in Abu Dhabi.
What are you working on now?
Roha: Now that HNY is out and doing really well, we are in talks with a lot of Bollywood, Pakistani and even Emirati filmmakers, but we can't reveal anything just yet.
artslife@thenational.ae
