Karan Johar spills the secrets of movie-making from sticking to a budget, to the tips he's learnt from his producer dad on keeping a good vibe going on the sets

Get a catchy title
I'm all about getting an interesting title because it's the first impression you have of the film. We've run out of Hindi words in titles and people feel that English titles don't work with the masses. As sad as it may sound, there are so many titles that any Hindi word loses its syntax and tonality. You know 'dil' is such a beautiful word, but the moment you hear of it in a title, you think, 'It's been done.' Anything with pyaar, mohabbat and dil bores you to tears. So what do you do? Where do you go? When I just titled my film Kurbaan (Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor), someone told me there are already two films with Qurbaan before. What do I do if I want the word 'sacrifice'? So we went with it.



The options for Wake Up Sid were ridiculous Sid Ka Kya Kare, Kaamchor, then Lazy. Is this a title?! Imagine if I said, Dharma Productions film called Susth; would you see it (laughs)? So we came up with Wake Up Sid, which was really Ranbir's (Kapoor) idea. Same with I Hate Love Stories (Imran Khan, Sonam Kapoor) we did a lot of internal research, put it out there on Twitter and checked it out with friends.

Now we're struggling with the Stepmom remake (Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Arjun Rampal) title. Can you imagine calling it Souteli Ma? Or Doosri Dulhan? Or Woh Aurat? Everyday, Siddharth,u00a0 the directoru00a0 comes with a title and it just sounds cracked! It's difficult to find an effective synergy with titles.

Don't be hung up on superstitions
I used to title all my movies with 'k' because I thought it was auspicious. I let go of my fixation with 'k'. I realised it was just idiotic of me. I'm too old now to live by superstitions. We should make our own beliefs the driving factors of our existence. I also felt that we work really hard, put in our 100 per cent and why should the letter take all the credit? If 'k' comes organically like in Kurbaan, then okay, but otherwise, there won't be an endeavour to go into that zone.