Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane recalled how difficult it was to shoot his period drama film Lootera during the winters in Dalhousie, and that Ranveer Singh had to be airlifted from set after he hurt his back on set. In an interview, the filmmaker said that he wanted authenticity with minimal use of CGI, but when the weather upset all his plans, he was left with no choice but to do exactly what he wanted to avoid doing.
Appearing on The Comment Section YouTube channel, he said, “It was an extremely tough film to shoot. The script was lovely, and we had actors and a crew that was very invested in it. We were supposed to film in Dalhousie in December… They told me not to, but I wanted the actors to actually feel cold and to see the smoke coming out of their mouths. I thought it would look great on screen; it’s just one of those filmmaker things…”
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When the crew showed up on location, there was no snow at all. The snow finally came a few days into January, and then it refused to stop. “It was the largest snowfall in that area for 40 years,” he said, adding, “It snowed so much, our set collapsed. We were stuck in Dalhousie, because there was so much snow.” It was finally decided to shoot a planned Kolkata schedule instead, and Motwane told his production designer that he would start working in whichever set was made ready first.
His plans now fully gone for a toss, Motwane returned to Dalhousie in March. The snow was still there. “Ranveer Singh meets me one day before we are supposed to leave for Dalhousie, and he says, ‘Yaar maine gym mein… my back is feeling a little messed up’. Within two days of shooting, his back has given up. He hasn’t realised, but it has happened when we’re shooting that scene where he has the bullet clipped on his side. Because he was feeling pain from the clip, he stopped noticing the spasm his back was having,” Motwane recalled.
“Ranveer was gone. We had to literally chopper him out of there,” he said. Ultimately, Motwane and the crew returned to Dalhousie for the third time in May, now shooting snowy winter scenes in ‘deep summer’. “The grass was so green there were ladybugs on the ground,” the filmmaker said with a wry laugh, revealing that they had to get a ‘guy from England’ with a snow machine to create the desired effect, which was touched up with CGI. Lootera underperformed at the box office, but was widely acclaimed for its performances, its music, and Motwane’s direction.
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