Complete Mumbai Film City Tour in HD - Full Tour - Excellent Recording

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• published: 23 Feb 2017
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Mumbai - Filmcity - Maya Nagari Inside Maya Nagari This is one place that has impacted million of lives directly, and many more millions indirectly. Indian movies and its related industries have played ( and still playing) a significant role in our lives. Hate it or like it, movies/music/TV serials are part of our life. I recorded the whole tour. Its hour and half long. If you have time and patience, you can watch the whole video. Here is the link - https://youtu.be/kb00F1gf6cM Otherwise, here is my take on it- The tour is NOT about going inside the studio and see the movie shooting. It is not about meeting stars. It costs Rs 599 per person. You will need ID proof that shows that you belong to India ( foreign Nationals are prohibited). NRIs are OK as long as they have PAN card, Adhar card, Indian passport etc. Tour starts at the main gate of filmcity. There are 35 people in the bus. The tour guide was knowledgeable. He himself has acted in few Hindi serials. The tour bus takes you through various locations and production house sites where different movies were shot or are being shot. You can not go inside any of those. Those sites are considered properties of the production houses, so without their permission you can not enter. If you are lucky, you may see stars/ producer /director going in their car or going to their vanity van from their car. We saw Director Anurag Basu driving his car and saw Actor Saurabh Shukla entering his vanity van. We were told that in an hour Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor will start their shooting for the movie - Jagga Jasoos - in 2 hours and Anushka Sharma might be already shooting at other site, which was covered. We were taken to the location were hindi serial was being shot, but then quickly we were kicked out, as our presence was interfering with the shooting. I badly wanted to see the location of Tarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashma serial, but it was completely covered in such a way that I could only see the " gokuldham society" entrance from outside. We were told that it was the most popular and most in demand shooting location of all. I saw the 'ugly' side of the movie making too. The people who were making the sets ( it was practically a construction site) seems to be at the same poverty level as you would see outside. They were eating their lunch outside in the open area, in heat. Not sure if they had access to proper clean water source and bathroom at the site. The industry where crores of rupees are generated by some mega movies, the people who actually do the hard manual work ( like the people who were making the set of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's movie - Padmavati) probably are not getting paid well. Exploitation was very obvious. After my tour, I talked to few of local people, including the Rickshaw driver who took me back to Goregaon station from filmcity, to get the feel for it. They were not impressed or happy about it . First of all, it looks like they have created hype around the tour. People like me got sucked into spending Rs 599, which may not be much when you are converting Dollars to Rupees, but for someone with family of 4, who belongs to middle class family, this could be a significant expense. Plus, in exchange for Rs 599, they did not think that what they show is worth seeing. As they only show the sites where certain movies were shot or are being shot, nothing live. I think to some extent they were right, but for person like me who has nostalgia about movies, this was worth "wasting" some of my time and money. I have taken similar tour at Universal Studio in Los Angels. They do the same thing - they take you around the whole studio without you being able to see any live shooting. The only difference is - there it is part of your theme park entrance ticket, so you do not spend extra money for it. So, it all depends on how mesmerized you are about Indian movies and TV serials and how keen you are to remove that illusion. At the end of the day, it is an industry, with workers in it, owners in it. people who controls things, people who profits massively out of it. And there are consumers of that industry like me, who create their own dream worlds out of the stories told by that industry and willing to pay to be told their own stories back to them with fake means, appearing real. Watch the video and you may not want to spend the time and money I spent, or you may get curious enough to go and see yourself. I do not have any recommendation either way. Rakesh Shah Atlanta, GA RakeshShahMD@gmail.com +1-404-697-5625