As Delhi gears up to dive into the festive season, the line producers of the Capital and adjoining areas have little to no enthusiasm. A season spanning from September to January, typically is a rush hour for line producers as filmmakers throng to the Capital to weave the beauty in their film but this year shootings have gone almost down 80 percent. A problem that is costing line producers and other associated artistes livelihood, the Delhi-NCR line producers have now come together to form an association, which will raise several issues affecting shoot productions in Delhi-NCR, including the increasing prices of shoot.
HTCity has exclusively learnt that this association will bring together almost 50,000 members encompassing of not just line producers but also vendors, equipment suppliers, junior artistes, technicians and other integral elements of the production.
Line producer Javed Khan, who is known for anchoring several Bollywood film and web series shoots in Delhi, shares with us, “Getting permissions in Delhi for a shoot has become very difficult. Film producers from Mumbai are going to smaller town for cost-effective shooting. We hope that this association will help our issues get heard. When so many people will come together and speak, it will help.”
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The organization is expected to be voice of 40-50 line producers who are responsible to shoots in Delhi. The current process of drafting and registration of the association will be completed by within the next two months.
In 2022, a single window Delhi film policy was launched to help getting more shoots and making the process of getting permissions from various authorities easy. However, not much help has come.
Line producer Kishan Dagar tells us, “The single window process requires permission requests to be put in one month advance. Many a times, producers do not know if they have the actor’s date available to come to Delhi even three-four days before the shoot date. How can they block dates a month in advance. It hasn’t helped much.”
However, a source close to the development of the association is not in favour of a line-producer association being formed. On the basis of anonymity, he tells us, “I don’t think that making a union will help. Pehle Mumbai mein ye unions hote the aur producers tangg ho kar Delhi aa gaye. There (Delhi line producers) demands are also not very feasible. They want producers to connect directly with line producers and not the vendors for their props and equipments. Why will any producer do that. They will start getting their own equipments from smaller towns instead of being dependent on the line producer.”
He adds, “Tum Pehle kaam to wapas lao Delhi mein. Aap kisi ke haath nahi baandh sakte. Ministers se milo, subsidy relief to lao. Uske baad unions banao. Abhi to kuch kaam hi nahi hai dilli mein.”
