Filmmaker Anees Bazmee is shocked over the untimely death of art director Nitin Chandrakant Desai. Bazmee had worked with the National Award winner during ‘Pyaar Toh Hona Hi Tha‘ and he was the brain behind the huge aeroplane set which was seen in the song ‘Hona hai jo hona hai’. ETimes reached out to the director who had visited the ND Studios recently and had also spoken to the late Nitin Desai over a phone call.
“Whenever we make films, the first thought that comes to mind is to shoot at ND Studios as it has everything in one place. I had been to ND Studios just a few days ago, and I also spoke to Nitin Desai over the phone as he wasn’t present at the location when I visited the place. But the good soul immediately made a phone call to me asking whether everything was fine as I was there at the Studios in his absence. He was a very helpful man. So I am getting all those flashes in my mind about our last phone call, which happened just a few days ago,” Anees recalled.
The director further shared, “It is shocking to know about Nitin’s suicide. I had never imagined that something like this would ever happen because he was a very full-of-life person, always laughing and talking to people. He was a great art director, which everyone knows. Nitin was simply a genius with a very sorted personality. I have never seen him under any mental pressure. What he has achieved as an art director is something very few art directors have done. Making such a big studio and maintaining it was not a joke. There were hundreds of people working at the Studios, and managing payments and everything was definitely not an easy cup of tea.”
Talking about the ‘Pyaar Toh Hona Hi Tha’ days, Anees recalled, “Nitin Desai had erected the huge aeroplane set. I remember telling him how difficult it is to work in such a set-up where camera moments get reflected on the screen, but he was confident about his work and told me that I should not worry and just ask any direction I want to take a scene from, and he would make it available for the cameras to move.”
“He designed the sets in such a way that the entire left, right, and upper parts were removable, and we shot the scenes very easily, which was a big and important sequence in the film. We got so much praise from the industry for how we were able to do it so nicely, which was so difficult,” Bazmee concluded.