"Dhoondun
Tujhe"
Searching
For You
"Dhoondun
Tujhe" ("Searching For You") is Giju's second Latin
cross-over song showcasing the vibrant Cha Cha Cha
rhythm. Set to a brilliant orchestration and energetic
vocals, this song is about the artist's search for his
love. About the song conception, Giju says "Among
all the different Latin music styles that I work on,
this is the one that inspires my creativity the most. So
when I came up with the idea of fusing latin music
styles with Indian pop, I knew that the cha-cha had to
be one of them."
The music video
for Dhoondun Tujhe was produced entirely in Mumbai,
India, with Pradipto Nandi as the director. The whole
production from pre- to post- stage took around four
months. Interestingly, Giju had a totally different
concept for this music video. It was not meant to be a
dance number but rather a collage of symbolic visuals
shot at different locations in the US and in India.
During one of the brainstroming sessions, Pradipto came
up with the idea of doing an Indian take
on the classic "Dirty Dancing" story. Aware
of Giju's dancing skills and the talented dancers
with whom he worked, Pradipto was very convinced that
this idea would be successful. Once Giju reviewed
Pradipto's script, any doubt he had with
Pradipto's concept instantly vanished. The
pre-production work took off right away. Given the
storyline, Kristen Nolan, Giju's dance partner, seemed
to be a good fit. Once Pradipto okayed her screentest,
she was on board as well.
Giju wanted to
feature some of the talented dancers from the big Indian
salsa community along with US-based Dreamz dancers.
He roped in dancers from Lourd Vijay Dance Studio
("LVDS") dance company (Bangalore), Salsa-Banglore
(Bangalore), Salsa-India (Mumbai), DanzAmor (Delhi) and
a few more from the Mumbai salsa scene. These were the
dancers whom he had worked with during his previous
5-city Indian tour. The whole choreography was created
by Giju and Kristen in California and the Dreamz dancers
trained on the choreo for over a month in
preparation for their trip to India. Giju also brought
Arieh Alexander, a highly accomplished salsa dancer and
instructor, on board. This further boosted the overall
quality of the cast to top-notch.
A major challenge
was trying to train the Indian dancers since they were
all from different cities. Two separate bootcamps were
organized: one in Bangalore and another one in Mumbai.
Following that were costuming and make up sessions
during which the look of each cast member was
created. The goal was to give everyone a unique
look blending eastern and western flavors and
reflecting the overall feel of the video. The whole
shoot was done in two days, well within schedule,
thanks to the excellent and thorough planning by
Pradipto and the production team helmed by Dheeman and
Dipali.
Giju and Beyond
Dreamz Entertainment want to extend their heartfelt
appreciation and gratitude to all who were involved,
directly and indirectly, in this production,
namely:
Pradipto
Nandi - for his brilliant vision and
direction;
Kristen
Nolan - for being the beautiful and talented
lead lady;
Tatiana, Elena,
Jon and Arieh - for countless hours of
hardwork and support,
Lourd
Vijay - for being a wonderful host in Bangalore
and for his overall support;
Richard, Alex,
Madan, Bindu, Sahiba, Santosh, Pooja, Reema, Sejal,
Seema, Conrad and all other dancers -
for their immense talent and contribution as the
brilliant cast;
Diplai and
Dheeman - for being the backbone of the whole
production,
Ashwin Mushran,
Rajiv Roda, Samina - for being part of the
production and adding star quality;
and
ALL
friends of Giju and BD, for their continuous
and unconditional support, without which this
production would not have been a
reality.
About the Director:
Pradipto Nandi
With a
background in ad-filmmaking and corporate-filmmaking
(films department, JWT, erstwhile HTA), Pradipto Nandi
has been directing television commercials &
corporate films since 1989. He has several years of
experience with short-duration commercials and public
service ads films. Some of his Public Service TV spots
have been recognized by prestigious International
film/advertising juries. Versatility in his range of
work is widely acknowledged by clients and ad-agencies.
Check out www.aditudeproductions.com
for more details on Pradipto's work.
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"Dil Ko Kiya"
Unto
My
Heart
"Dil Ko Kiya"
was the first song that was composed in Giju's CD and it
has been very close to his heart due to the personal
significance of it's theme. When the CD was
released, along with the latin fusion tracks – rang rangeeli yeh
duniya and dhoondun tujhe –
this song also became very popular. Subsequently
the idea for making a music video to this romantic
ballad germinated. Since it was not a dance
number like Giju’s other songs, the video concept and
the treatment went through numerous rounds of
discussions. One of the initial ideas that gained a lot
of traction was to go to an exotic location like Brazil
(the director of rang rangeeli, Celso, had close ties
with some technicians over there) but was dropped when
the budget became a major constraint. The whole project
was pushed out to the back burner as the focus shifted
to Giju’s other dance video ‘Dhoondun
Tujhe’.
During one of Giju's trips to Mumbai, his
good old friend Sandeep Mohan – who is a noted
writer and upcoming director in Mumbai – floated (no pun
intended) the idea of making a music video for
Dil Ko Kiya with
the backwaters of kerala as the backdrop. He was also
very confident of doing it within a limited budget that
Giju had in mind, which he ended up fulfilling as well.
Giju recollects - "We were brainstorming for the
story line and Sandeep started coming up with these
wonderfully crazy ideas like floating bathtub, wearing
suit in rain, musical chess board etc. So I pretty much
went along with complete trust in his vision and
ability. And has he delivered or what..!! All those
‘crazy’ ideas were pulled off with such élan without
losing the emotional connect in the story. Hats off to
you Sandy..!!"
They also discovered a
very impressive young talent, Binendra Menon, who so
wonderfully captured the director’s vision in beautiful
frames. It was also Sandeep’s idea to cast Megha
Chatterjee as the leading lady opposite Giju. Being an
actress and model, she delivered an outstanding
performance. Watching their palpable chemistry in the
video, it’s hard to believe that they had only met for
the first time on the day of the shoot. True
professionals..!!
The shoot was done
over two days and nights in the backwaters of Alleppey
Kerala. Two houseboats were hired from the reputed
“Pulikkattil tours” and the whole camera and lighting
crew were brought in from Chennai.
Sandeep,
the director, had the following to say about the
video - "The experience of shooting Dik ko in
Alleppy was nothing less than magical. With rain in the
air, 4 cans of Super 16mm film stock, a small crew, and
lots of other challenges, we managed to pull off a neat
video, I hope. The song 'Dil ko' has a strange lingering
quality - i mean it grows on you the more you hear it.
Also Giju's rendition of the song is almost flawless,
and I am sure, he is going to carve his own niche in the
international music/dance scene soon. Apart from his
singing, what impressed me most as the director is his
performance in the video - for an untrained actor, he
does have quite a few aces up his sleeve as an actor
too."
About the Director:
Sandeep Mohan
Sandeep
Mohan started off career working as a Researcher
and Assistant Director for a current affairs programme
called "Adarniya Pradan Mantri' for Zee TV. Then moved
on from there to be an Assistant Director to Sanjay
Leela Bhansali on his National Award winning film "Hum
Dil De Chuke Sanam". After dabbling in the ad world for
four years in Banglore, he later on shifted his base to
Mumbai, with the aspirations of becoming a
writer/director. And he started off writing for
Television.
Sandeep's major break came
through "Siddhanth" - a critically appreciated law
drama for Star One. Conceived and written by
him, this series went to the Emmy Awards in
the year 2007 as India's nomination.
He continued
writing for a few more shows until his first love,
"direction" beckoned him. So he went head long into
directing Short Films, Corporates, Music Videos...and at
the moment, busy with the pre-production of his
first full-length Hindi feature film which should be out
next year.
