After months of effort to raise money, develop a script for a film that would appeal to audiences both in the East and West, and recruit top actors from Hollywood and Bollywood, we were finally in production for our film, My Bollywood Bride. In the technology world I came from, going into production meant that you finally got to relax and deal with the the occasional problem. In the film industry, however, this is when the action begins -- as do the biggest challenges.

We started film production when India was flexing its democratic muscle and electing an Italian-born Catholic woman to lead it. Everyone stopped working as we heard the news of Sonia Gandhi declining the job of Prime Minister and handing the reigns to Dr. Manmohan Singh. The image of a Muslim President of a predominantly Hindu nation swearing in a Sikh Prime Minister was absolutely surreal.

We were creating our own surreal images: of an American writer landing in exotic Bollywood in search of an Indian woman that he met in Los Angeles and fell in love with. He learns that she is biggest movie star in this land of a billion people, and to win her over, he has to deal with major cultural conflicts and gain a grasp of Indian family values.

FANTASY PALACES.  In our own little way, we were also making history. We had a crew of about 200 Bollywood technicians working on a Hollywood project. The director was an Indian, but was assisted by a director from Hollywood. The cinematographer was an Englishman who calls Los Angeles his home. And the lead actor was Jason Lewis, the hunk from HBO's Sex and the City, who was working with some of Bollywood's biggest stars. This project was bringing together two very different worlds and presented many new challenges and life experiences. A recent trip to Mumbai to watch the filming seemed like a journey to another universe.

I've seen many movies in my life, but I never realized how much work and effort goes into producing one. On the big screen, things just seem to happen, and it's easy to get caught up in the fast-paced action. In reality, every frame is developed with painstaking care and creativity. Almost every scene is endlessly rehearsed and filmed over and over, until the director thinks it's right. And then it has to be shot repeatedly from different angles and positions by the cinematographer. On a good day, you may get a couple of minutes of actual footage completed. And all this takes place after a tremendous amount of work is done creating the sets.

Hollywood films are usually shot either on elaborate sets in large studios that are designed to look quite realistic, or are actually filmed on location. Bollywood works to a different standard, however. Indian films try to provide a means of escape from the harsh realities of life for the masses, so the sets and the backgrounds are usually very exotic and spectacular. Even films that try to be realistic have sets and dance sequences that seem like fantasy. In a Bollywood film, the hero and heroine may meet each other in a park in downtown Mumbai in one scene, and be singing to each other while driving a Ferrari through the Swiss Alps in the next. The dance sequences are usually filmed on sets that resemble the extravagant palaces of the Maharajas.

COMFORT AND QUALITY.  We had debated whether to have a song and dance number in our film. True, we were producing a Hollywood film meant for Western audiences, but the setting was Bollywood.

How could we produce a film in Bollywood without a song and dance sequence? This would be like going to an Indian restaurant and ordering a hamburger. So in our film, when our American writer, Alex, finds his way to Reena, the Indian movie star, she is on the set of a Bollywood film rehearsing a song, and the climax of the movie is a Bollywood dance routine.

During the week I visited, the scenes being filmed included the song and dance sequence. We had constructed a beautiful, exotic set in Mumbai's Film City, with a pond, waterfall, and lanterns. The scenes featured stars Jason Lewis, Sanjay Suri, Kashmira Shah, and Neha Dubey. The only problem was that we were doing things the Hollywood way, and Bollywood wasn't quite used to this.

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