Hindi
‘Jab We Met’ takes unique campaign track
MUMBAI: The film Jab We Met has already piqued viewer interest for various reasons. The Shahid-Kareena break-up being one of them. One more good reason that may attract audiences is the unique way the film is being marketed.
The producers Shri Ashtavinayak Cinevision have painted two entire trains, from the Western and Central lines respectively with Jab We Met posters.
Shahid Kapoor, the hero in the film, eagerly expressed his wish to travel by those trains. The producers took the necessary permission from the railway authorities and Shahid along with the director Imtiaz made a late night journey yesterday.
Despite the fact that this journey was deliberately unpublicised to avoid a stampede, an enormous crowd showed up on learning that they had a surprise celebrity guest at the station.
Incidentally, Jab We Met is a story of how two individuals set out on a journey after they miss their train, which explains the rationale behind using the train journey as a publicity tool.
Talking about the different phases of the pre-release publicity, media consultant to Ashtavinayak, Parag Desai says, “We have divided the publicity into three phases. The first phase (three months prior to release) was flagged off with a contest for selecting the title of the film. We invited response via email, sms, radio and then zeroed in on the title, Jab We Met.
“The second phase offered the first look of the film. And the final phase is the current one where the stars are making appearances at important events like dandiyas to generate the required eyeballs. This phase includes routine out-of-door activities like hoardings and taking space on 900 Best buses and unusual stuff like the painting of the two trains.”
The movie, directed by Imtiaz Ali, hits the screens this Friday (26 November).
Lets wait and watch if all of this brings the crowds to the theatres.
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.
