The perfect length 
By Taran Adarsh, February 22, 2006 - 22:49 IST
If you find the length of SHAADI SE PEHLE just right, you ought to give credit to the film’s producer, Subhash Ghai, for it. It’s common knowledge that films are made on the editing table, once the entire shooting is complete. But it was different with SHAADI SE PEHLE. This film was actually made in the hotel suite where the director and writer were stationed.
SHAADI SE PEHLE director Satish Kaushik has an interesting incident to narrate before he commenced filming of this Akshaye-Mallika-Ayesha starrer. “At the very outset, while writing the film, Subhash-ji had told us categorically that the length shouldn’t exceed 2.10 hours. After we went through the first draft of the script, we realized that the film might cross 2.30 hours. We were in a fix,” the director reminisces.
But Ghai had a solution. He made Kaushik and writer Sanjay Chhel read out the entire script -- from start to end, exactly like the way the actors would’ve spoken the lines -- and then remove the portions they felt were adding to the length. That did it!
Not only did Kaushik and Chhel delete a couple of scenes, even the length of the film was finally brought down to 2.08 minutes. “This way, we avoided the practice of shooting first and removing the scenes during editing subsequently,” he smiles.
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