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Eighteen year-old Jess's parents want
her to be a nice, conventional Indian girl. But she just wants to play football
like her hero, David Beckham. For Jess, that means kicking a ball around the
local park with the lads until she's spotted by Jules, who invites her to join
the local women's football team. The girls are the same age and they share the
same dreams. As they become firm friends, their team really starts to go
places.
But Jess's parents don't understand why she won't settle down, study for law
school and learn to cook the perfect chapatti. Why, they wonder, can't she be
more like her sister, Pinky, who's engaged to a very suitable young man? If
they only knew what Pinky gets up to?
Jules dreams of playing pro football in the States, but her Mum wishes she
could be a bit more girlie - how is she ever going to find a boyfriend if she
won't put on a dress? What her Mum doesn't know is that Jules isn't interested
in playing the field, she's just after one man, Joe, but being the team coach,
Joe is out of bounds.
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THE FOOTBALL CHOREOGRAPHY
Director, Gurinder Chadha wanted to shoot the football scenes in a realistic
and cinematically effective way. "I looked at just about every sports movie I
could find with my Director of Photography, Jong Lin, and talked through how we
wanted the camera to move and capture the action." Fortunately for Chadha, Lin,
who had previously worked with her on 'What's Cooking?' designed his own piece
of camera equipment specifically for shooting the football scenes. The Wego, a
similar devise to the Steadicam, could be used for the very low angled; fast
moving shots, that could not be accomplished with the Steadicam. "The Wego
created a new vision of shooting the football scenes as you could avoid those
high angled shots, seen so many times in football sequences." Continues Lin,
"because the Wego had to be held by two people, it achieved a very steady,
sharp look and allowed Paul Mayeda Berges, the 2nd Unit Director, to get very
involved with the sequences."
Chadha brought Simon Clifford on board, to co-ordinate the football sequences
and train the girls. He worked with the leading actors and actresses in the
film using Futebol de Salao training techniques to ensure that the football
scenes were of the highest quality. Simon worked in the weeks prior to filming
to bring the football up to standard and during filming to choreograph the
football scenes
Having previously consulted on the film 'There's Only One Jimmy Grimble'
starring Robert Carlyle, Gina McKee & Ray Winstone, Clifford was only too
familiar with football choreography. Says Clifford "I was totally flattered but
my biggest worry when I came to BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM was that I hadn't worked
with girls as frequently as with boys. The type of players I was most
accustomed to working with were gritty lads and in this case I needed a totally
different style of coaching for the girls."
It was up to Clifford to establish a sophisticated and comprehensive training
programme, as the girls had to look like genuine footballers. Training
schedules were tailor-made to each individual and Clifford spent ten weeks
working with the principle cast. As the rest of the team was to be made up with
experienced players, it was important that the actors looked like they could
handle themselves on the pitch
To add spontaneity to the scenes, surprises were dropped in, which only a few
girls were aware of. "It is difficult to make football scenes look authentic on
screen because of the speed, nature and movement inherent with the game," says
Clifford. "Many films have struggled to attain this realism and it was my job
to ensure that this was not the case for BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM."
Shaznay Lewis who plays Mel, the team captain, was cast later than the others
and a few extra sessions were scheduled in to her training practise to make up
for extra time. Says Clifford, "she took her role in this, her first film, very
seriously and worked incredibly hard at all of the sessions we did together.
Her hard work and effort, like that of the others, had really paid off."
The German match was the footballing high point and a time when both the actors
and footballers looked like a professional side. "They played and felt like a
proper team that had been playing for years together. They more than held their
own in a match that was extremely intense" says Chadha. "Once I got the shots I
needed, I'd yell cut but no one would stop playing. The girls refused to lose,
they'd completely forgotten the script and they begged me to let them keep
playing till they could give the German side a good stuffing. And the most
bizarre thing was how the crew went berserk supporting our girls against the
German girls," says the director.
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