had recced so much in byculla 100200300 chawls there was the pandemic and these places are crammed then we thought that we would build a set because its safer for everybody so we built a set thankfully we had so much research i had taken my dop anil mehta and my production designer garima mathur to see everything now we had to create that crammed look and feel there was no prep required for that because we had done that prep beforehand we shot lots of scenes in a day which was great so everybody had to be on their toes all the timewhat are the challenges faced by a firsttime directoryou have to have faith in your vision the film is hatke thankfully the people liked it and they found it interesting everyone has their own voice so when youre taking something new to a producer you need the producer to show faith in your film that yeh thodi hatke hai lekin jam jayegi somehowsecond challenge is that the first day you walk on to the set as a director where everybody is far more experienced than you are i had met each and every actor separately and prepped with them these actors were good enough to do that with me i think that helped build characters better of course i knew everyone but still that first day the whole crew was far more experienced than me you know the ads had done more films than me there were 140 people and its covid but i told myself that you know your script best you know your characters best no one can know the script or characters better than the director because you have lived with it for 34 years if you focus on that then youre okaythe lesson that i learned was to follow your gut its the best thing because whenever i did not follow it i made some mistake or the other just follow your gut stay true to your story stay true to your film and everyone listens to you and collaborates with you very welltell us about shefali shah and alia bhatt as powerhouse performersi prepped with them separately both of them are spontaneous their process is also different from each other shefali wanted to meet people from the chawl and all that i made her meet a couple of them she wanted to hear your character alia did not want that but i had to fill her with information but when they came to the sets i realised that i should let these two actors be give them enough information and then wait for the magic or happy accident to happen the freer you make them the better they are and the more original performance you getthere was one scene where the constable comes home so alia and shefali had to enter and say darwaza tod do so a lady constable is going to run and break the door and they enter