Hindi
Haroon Rashid finishes film in one take
MUMBAI: After Roop Tera Mastana… from Aradhana which was supposedly canned in a single take on Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore by Shakti Samanta, filmmakers have often tried to do such sort of achievement.
The latest is debutant director Haroon Rashid who has completed a feature film of two hours and twenty minutes length in just one take without a single cut. Rashid claims that the film, titled One Shot Fear Without A Cut, is qualified as the world‘s longest one-take film and has been sent to the Guinness book of world records for the same.
The film’s story revolves around the TRP game of media and how a team of a particular television channel gets trapped in this race and desires to get fame and recognition overnight. This greed of theirs takes them to a haunted place, uninhabited for several years. The crux of the film follows hereon.
Rashid who wrote and directed the film had to double up as the cinematographer as well after many DOPs (director of photography) deserted him midway after a few days of rehearsal.
On the challenges, Rashid said, “We shot a full-length film with songs, dance, real-time action and chase scenes spread across seven kilometers on actual locations. We were very accurate in what we did because if one would have gone wrong we would have had to do it all over again.”
To make sure nothing went wrong, Rashid rehearsed with his crew for a few months. “We rehearsed for almost five months before shooting the film and we got it right in the seventh or eighth final take,” he pointed out.
The film is a magnificent presentation of a very well synchronized team-work. Covering four locations over a distance of seven kilometers, starting from the sea to the road, road to the jungle and jungle to the final building, again all in one shot was no easy task.”It took a lot of courage, passion, trust and faith to achieve our goal, “observed Rashid.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
