Cinema and trains have been going hand in hand for ages now. It goes without saying that, this is the case irrespective of the different states or language. We have seen this in films like No.20 Madras Mail, Chennai Express & Dilwale Dulhaniya le Jayege.
Due to the huge costs involved, Malayalam cinema has been staying away from railway stations. And recently this trend has changed with films like Ivan Mariyada Raman & Oru Second Class Yathra.
North 24 Kaatham, Passenger, Mulla, Krishnagudiyil oru Pranayakalathu, Samantharangal, Train, Nadiya Kolapetta Rathri, Kilukam, Husbands in Goa, Yathrakarude Shradheyku are popular examples of films where trains and railway stations are featured like a character itself.
The charges for shooting anywhere in the vicinity of the railway station is around 25,000 rupees to 1 Lakh. For hiring a special train with 5 coaches, the daily rent comes up to 25 Lakhs. There is even a security deposit of 5 Lakhs which is returnable.
Depending on the stations, the daily rent rates varies. It is such exorbitant expenses that keeps away Malayalam cinema from venturing onto stations or trains.
According to Producer Anto Joseph, it is the finickiness on the part of the railway authorities that leads them to build from scratch sets of train or stations. For the film Ivan Mariyada Raman just a small portion was shot on an actual train. For the rest of the shots, they made a train set in Palani that cost them around 22.5 Lakhs.
After the film No.20 Madras Mail, Oru Second Class Yathra is another film that had 3/4 of it filmed on an actual train. For this the unit rented a train for 4 Lakhs per day, says Deepu S.Kumar the production controller of the film. The permissions are processed in no time, but nevertheless the rents are a tad too high, adds Deepu.
Factors like safety and security cannot be overlooked, and that is the reason only small stations are allotted for shooting purposes, the Trivandrum Division Senior Commercial Manager, V. C. Sudheesh says. Most of the time the film unit cranes are set under electricity lines that carry currents of 25,000 kW and above. Safety is of utmost priority and moreover the train schedules cannot be interfered with.
In the case of other language cinema, they are armed with enormous budgets and hence filming on trains does not pose any problem. For the new Dhanush starrer film directed by Prabhu Solomon; the producers Satya Jyothi films paid crores of rupees to the railways for filming purposes. This is a film that requires 2 months of complete shooting on trains.
In the middle of last year, the railways got close to 123 crores from film shooting alone. For filming a documentary on the Indian Railways, BBC gave the department 62.83 Lakhs. Prior to this, there has been a much talked about instance of the railways denying permission to film Sky Fall of the Bond series on the trains here. This was because the Hollywood unit did not agree to the railway authority's demands of not showing any passengers as dangerously traveling on the roof of the trains.
It is the Tamil & Telgu cinema that is pretty serious when it comes to filming on trains or stations. Before the Punalur – Chenkotta rail route closed down for gauge replacement, a major song location used to be the 13 Kannara Bridge near Thenmala. The Palakkad –Pollachi route which was a meter gauge had tree-lined stations that was a common sight in Priyadarshan films like Vettam & Megham.
There is a set for a railway station and a train in the Ramoji Film City in Hydrebad. In five minutes, this versatile set can be modified to look either like the Chennai Central or the Shornur Junction. But when the director says he wants an original setting, Telugu cinema shifts base to the real stations in a jiffy. In 2012, around 20 films were shot in the backdrop of railway stations across Andhra Pradesh and Tamil cinema is not far behind. The Tamil film Biriyani that starred Kaarthi was shot in the Kaachiguda station at Andhra Pradesh.
Thanks to Bollywood, the Mumbai Central Railway Station earns 2 crores annually. Shooting inside trains is a very tricky affair, especially when it comes to certain angles or adequate lighting. On the other hand shooting in a train set is easier as the roof can be dismantled for flexibility in lighting the shot. While this is the general opinion among the film makers in Kerala, other language directors feel that no train set can ever come close to the real thing.