"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 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.
