About a month ago, actress Hariprriya almost drowned while shooting for a bilingual project. She was apparently in a swimming pool for almost 10 hours, had been awake all night when the incident occurred. Even Parul Yadav had a rude shock when she was shooting for Vaastu Prakara. She had a “wild” visitor that scared her to death while shooting on a lake for Pawan Wadeyar’s upcoming directorial venture Jessie also starring Dhananjay.
The visitor, a crocodile, silently swam underneath the raft on which Parul was romancing Dhananjay. Bengaluru Chronicle reports on these lucky escapes and how actors constantly challenge fate when shooting and how the perfect scene demands the perfect imagery, and the lengths they go to for that!
Pawan Wadeyar does not like using computer graphics for his action sequences, since he feels that the difference between graphics and real images is pretty evident. “I take my film crew into confidence and keep them safe and at ease when we are filming something very risky. Recently, while shooting for Jessie, on a lake which was easily 150-200 feet deep, we had an incident. The scene on the raft where Parul and Dhananjay were romancing for a song about 40 feet away from the crew, was going smoothly, but when the camera moved, I noticed something unusual, and it was a crocodile! I abruptly finished the shot, and no one had any clue as to what the movement around the raft was all about. When the crew learnt about it later, everyone including Parul were shocked,” shares Pawan, revealing that he noticed the crocodile while filming, and not as it was reported earlier, while the song was being edited.
Even in his previous films, Pawan has taken similar risks — the fight sequence on top of a train in Ranavikrama stands out as an example. Popularly known as Sandalwood’s Krishna Ajai Rai too recollects one such escapade in which he had a lucky escape while shooting for Rose in the Himalayas. “The high icy terrain is very dangerous and the Army had warned us that snowfall and landslides could lock us in for months. I survived a fire accident while shooting for Rose. There is a scene wherein the jailed hero, who would preserve all the roses sent to him by his lover. The roses caught fire inside his cell. I misjudged the distance to the roses, and fell face first on them, burning my beard, face and eye lashes. Luckily, it did not do any permanent damage,” Ajai Rao recalls.
While actors and film makers take several risks to get into their true character on a daily basis for that one perfect scene, they also feel that many a times, they are so immersed in their character that they do not even realise how dangerous the shot actually was, and thank their stars that their luck has not run out!
