Hindi
A ‘Sooper se Ooper’ launch of Jigsaw Pictures into feature films
MUMBAI: Having produced over 150 television commercials, music videos and even a critically acclaimed short film, The Fall (starring Rahul Bose), production house Jigsaw Pictures is now venturing into feature films with their first commercial film Sooper Se Ooper. This quirky drama with Vir Das in lead has been co produced with Reliance Entertainment and is scheduled to come to theatres across India on 25 October, 2013.
Jigsaw Pictures CEO and creative producer Rajnish Lall has had over nine years of experience in advertising, having worked in Clarion, Contract & Bates and thereafter headed the marketing division at B4U shortly after. He then founded Jigsaw Pictures about eight years ago and will debut as a creative producer and the line producer of Sooper se Ooper. He is among a few who is comfortably straddling the productions both in the TV commercials and feature films.
On his first production, Rajnish said, “Working on this film was like taking a fresh guard in the field of production… it has been an amazing, exciting and rich experience in the last two years. From fine tuning the script, putting together the right cast and technical team of my choice, the extensive shoot in Rajasthan and Mumbai to production of lovely songs all within a modest budget has been a Sooper se Ooper experience! In this journey we had the support and guidance of a big studio like Reliance Entertainment.”
The movie Sooper se Ooper is based on an Indian superstition ‘that making a will (legal document) is an indication that that your time has come near’. The story revolves around the character of Vir Das, whose fortune has dwindled and selling his ancestral property may just be the way out of the situation but he runs into a problem as the ancestral land was not will-ed to him by his parents. Filmed in Rajasthan and Mumbai, the story takes an interesting and entertaining turn during the journey from village to city and vice-versa.
The film stars Vir Das, Gulshan Grover, Deepak Dobriyal, Kirti Kulhari and Yashpal Sharma, among others. The music has been composed by Sonu Niigam and Bickram Ghosh who debut as a music duo in Hindi films and has quirky fusion BGM from Ranjit Barot. The director, a veteran of TV commercials also makes his debut with this film. The film is being presented by Reliance Entertainment and produced by Jigsaw Pictures.
Jigsaw Pictures’ next feature production is a comic thriller set in Mumbai and Kerala, which they will start shooting in April 2014.
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.
