Aamir Khan reveals how Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra had expressed concern when they heard about Lagaan

Aamir Khan’s Lagaan completes two decades in the film industry today, and we got in touch with the superstar over a podcast call to discuss the film. While we rever and celebrate Lagaan even today, a lot of the behind-the-scenes moments have never made it to the media. In this Bollywood Bubble podcast (which is derived from a group discussion involving other journalists too), Aamir discusses the challenges behind acting and producing in the period saga, reveals how friends like Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra expressed their concern when they heard about Lagaan.

Revealing how making Lagaan changed his perception towards filmmaking, Aamir shared,“When I had decided to make Lagaan, I knew I was taking on a huge challenge because it was a very unusual film, very demanding. And just a few weeks before I left for shooting I met with Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar. I remember it was Anil Thadani’s party. He is a distributor. So he was hosting a party. There I met Karan and Aditya, they are very good friends of mine and they were concerned like genuinely concerned. They were saying, ‘Aamir you are making such a huge film as your first production, and we have heard that you are making it in a single schedule, and using sync sound and what not’. So basically they had two points 1) Don’t do one schedule because you will get into mess. Try shooting for 30 days, edit and then take it forward. Because then you won’t have time to correct your mistakes. 2) Don’t do sync sound because no one has used that for the longest time. It’s been 40 years and no one has used it in the mainstream. If you do sync sound then your shooting will get delayed. And before you realise it the things will go out of your hands. So they recommended me to not do sync sound and use dubbing instead. I had actually wanted to use sync sound and single schedule shooting for at least five years before that. Since 1995 I have been telling this to Dharmesh, Ram Gopal Varma that let’s make films in a single schedule and use sync sound. Because what I am performing live, the emotion created during that time gets wasted. And we are asked to recreate it during dubbing. So these were things that I always wanted to try and enact. So when I became the producer I was adamant about using these techniques. “

You can check out our entire conversation with Aamir Khan below:

The Mr. Perfectionist went on to add, “I also brought the first AD system. Apoorva Lakhia was the person we brought from New York. He was the first AD in our film. I had gone to New York met him and locked him. And one of the reasons I locked him was because he knew Gujarati. As he was the first AD he had to interact with people in Kutch, so him knowing Gujarati would be perfect. So he was selected for that and he was a great first AD. And a wonderful job he did as it was a very big film to handle as a first AD. So I brought in these three things. So when you ask me how it changed my filmmaking I want to say that experiment that I did was so successful for me that it is now being 20 years, I have only done sync sound since then and all my films are single schedule since Lagaan. And all my films have the first AD system. And let me also add that now after advising me not to these things, Adi and Karan are following exactly those things. They do one schedule film, they all do sync sound and they all have the first AD system (laughs). It made me realise that I was thinking right. After that I was able to build on it. So as an actor it has dramatically changed my life.”

For more such interesting and exclusive updates, stay tuned to Bollywood Bubble.

Also Read: Aamir Khan and Viswanathan Anand to play game of chess for Covid-19 relief