Location Diaries: With love, from Korea 

This weekly column details the fascinating encounters that often take place on the sets of a film and this week it is Chandini sharing her expriences while shooting for Raja Ranguski
Location Diaries: With love, from Korea 

The shoot of Raja Ranguski turned out to be a very interesting experience for Chandini. Being a person who loves travelling, she apparently got to experience another country and its culture without even stepping on it.

It all happened when the unit headed to Sriperumbudur to shoot for the film starring Metro Sirish and directed by Dharani Dharan. The lodging arrangements were made in a gated community which comprised of almost 100 identical villas. Staying there, the team felt, would save commute time from the city for the unit. When she finished unpacking and stepped out though, Chandini noticed something peculiar. All her neighbours in the villas around, were Korean nationals, families of employees of a nearby Korean factory.

As the actors shot in and around the villas, they constantly ran into Koreans, who were apparently very curious about the shoot of a Tamil film. As the shoot was mostly at night, Chandini says she had a lot of time in the day to interact with her Korean neighbours. “They were most courteous and friendly. They spoke about Rajinikanth and some of them had even seen Lingaa. After school, their kids would come and see the shoot, and then chat with us," she says. "The women invited us into their homes and cooked Korean meals for us. They are fond of Karaoke and involved us in singing. We discovered that they also loved cricket and volleyball; so we had matches with the families. They love nature and also took me on cycling trips nearby and on fishing trips inside the gated community. They cooked fish in Korean style for us.”

Chandini says she also picked up Korean words, games and learned a lot about their folklore from the children. No wonder then that she says she felt like she was on a Korean holiday. The experience has in fact whetted her appetite for the country's culture.

Later, the shoot that happened at an abandoned factory in Ennore in North Madras, turned out to be a very demanding one. The unit shot there for four days and nights. “The dilapidated structure was rotting and the stench of rotting chemicals was in the air. We had to wear masks to protect ourselves and had to avoid touching anything. I took allergy tablets for all the four days, and yet, I got rashes all over. It is a shoot I’ll never forget.”

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