Changemakers by Gayatri Rangachari Shah & Mallika Kapur

Author:Gayatri Rangachari Shah & Mallika Kapur [Rangachari Shah, Gayatri & Kapur, Mallika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353052676
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2018-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

With almost 200,000 followers on her personal Instagram page, another 122,000 following the official Yash Raj Films casting page, word that Shanoo is on the lookout for an actor spreads like wildfire. Once aspirants send their details in, her team handles the first round. This usually consists of a thirty-second video recording of the candidates introducing themselves. The shortlisted ones get sent to Shanoo. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can apply.

She watches each video like a hawk. ‘I am particular about these things. After a while, the faces start to look the same and when they start to look the same, that’s when I say STOP! My assistants say, “Ma’am, we have only forty more to go”, and I say no, it’s unfair. He could be the next one.’ Every candidate deserves her undivided attention. So she takes a five-minute break, closes her eyes, does something else for a few moments and gets right back to work. She demands professionalism, but leads by example.

What she looks for in an audition is ‘watchability’. She asks herself, ‘Am I interested in going beyond twenty seconds?’ If she likes something about a person, she works with them. In her trademark blunt style, she’ll spell out what needs to be done—fix your teeth, sort out your make-up, lose some weight, change your hairstyle.

She has a meticulous system of filing every audition she has ever held. She confesses she is ‘very, very organized’. Pictures of young female leads go in one folder, Bengalis are placed in another, middle-aged men go into a separate folder, there’s a another for overweight people, and so on. If she needs to cast a sardar for a role, out comes that folder, where she expects to see every Sikh she has ever auditioned. Given Shanoo has seven million auditions stashed away, being organized is critical. When you are a casting director in Bollywood, you don’t have much time. There’s always one more struggling actor waiting to be seen.

None of the auditions are deleted. ‘That’s a rule. You can be good, you can be bad, you can be horrible but you are not going to be deleted. A person comes to us with hope. How can I delete hope?’ If someone who has auditioned passes away, their videos and photographs go into a deceased folder. ‘I don’t like deleting,’ Shanoo says. ‘It’s a memory. Deleting feels rude.’

Once in a while, she receives a portfolio that she finds distasteful. Like the time a young woman sent her pictures in a school dress and bra. ‘That pisses me off. I used my driver’s phone and I called her and said—you don’t know who I am but you don’t need to be doing this. She said “No, my photographer said this is how it works.”’ Shanoo heard her out and then repeated, ‘In this industry, you don’t need to be doing this.’

She doesn’t sugarcoat her words when talking to anyone—be it an aspiring actor or her assistants. Her style has been compared to Miranda

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.