I don't start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It's not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.
— Satyajit Ray
Ever since Two Daughters I've been composing my own music.
I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.
I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.
Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.
The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.
Well the Bombay film wasn't always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.
When I'm shooting on location, you get ideas on the spot - new angles. You make not major changes but important modifications, that you can't do on a set. I do that because you have to be economical.
For a film maker, an Oscar is like a Nobel Prize, you know. So I am very happy... delighted. There is nothing more after this. I cannot hope to get anything more prestigious.
I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.
I was interested in both Western and Indian classical music.
It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn't want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.
My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.
The conception of background music is changing. You use less and less of it these days.
There is a ban on Indian films in Pakistan, so that's half of our market gone.
What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.
You cannot go beyond a certain limit in your expenditure if you want to bring back money from your local market, which is very small after Pakistan.
At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.
I mix Indian instruments with Western instruments all the time.
I wouldn't mind taking a rest for three or four months, but I have to keep on making films for the sake of my crew, who just wait for the next film because they're not on a fixed salary.
Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.
Particularly in the final stages I always find that I'm rushed. It's dangerous when you're rushed in the editing stage, most of my early films are flawed in the cutting.
The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.
There's always some room for improvisation.
When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century.
