PLANNING
Having seen our 2021 Hockey history film ‘The Surface’ (see above), The Government of Odisha approached us and asked us to document the glorious history of Indian hockey. We jumped at the chance!
With 100 years of Indian hockey history to work with, we first had to decide which elements of the story to tell. We landed on 3 iconic mens games – India v Germany 1936, India v Great Britain 1948, India v Pakistan 1975 – and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics where both the men’s and woman’s team reached the bronze medal matches for the first time in 40 years.
The next challenge was to find the right characters to bring these stories to life; who could tell these stories, where were they now and, in many cases, were they still alive? Working closely with Hockey India, hockey historians and a Delhi-based logistics team – we whittled a list of 200 potential contributors down to 40.
ON LOCATION
After three months of planning we started filming in India; a 4000km, three week trip that took us from Bengaluru to Delhi via Odisha and the Punjab. In each location we interviewed current and ex-hockey players, fans, sports journalists, historians and family members of former players. For many of the players this was their first chance to give a personal account of playing for a team that inspired a nation at key moments in history.
Along the way we captured footage of Indian culture and the nation’s deep love of Hockey; from national training camps to remote village playing fields. The final challenge was to source as much archive footage as possible, often taking the chance to capture personal archive and medals while with our contributors.
THE EDIT
With 40 hours of fascinating and moving interviews in the can, we began the mammoth task of cutting the footage down to the best 30 minutes – adding a narrator to help lead the story and add to the finished film’s International appeal.
With a structure in place and a clear understanding of the specific stories we wanted to depict, we began sourcing further archive footage and still images from a range of international sources – including personal collections, hockey museums, the IOC, British Pathé and Hockey India.
THE RESULTS
India’s Game was launched on Odisha’s YouTube channel on August 15th – Independence Day in India. To date it has revived over 1 million views.
Level Films seamlessly captured the essence of the vision, and we are grateful that they loved being in India for this project. Overall, working with them has been a wonderful experience from start to finish. Their dedication to unique storytelling and their passion for bringing our vision to life on the screen made the entire process easy. We highly recommend Level Films to anyone seeking to portray their stories through the lens of expertise and creativity. R Vineel Krishna, Special Secretary to Chief Minister, Odisha
