Dharmendra knew that Kumar was also interested in Malini. Hema Malini was reluctant to play the role of a "tangewali", more so after Sippy told her that the film belongs to Sanjeev Kumar and Amjad Khan, but she trusted Sippy to give her a meaty role, given that he had played a huge role in essaying her stardom. During the film's production, four of the leads became romantically involved. Bachchan married Bhaduri four months before filming started. This led to shooting delays when Bhaduri became pregnant with their daughter Shweta. By the time of the film's release, she was pregnant with their son Abhishek. Dharmendra had begun wooing Malini during their earlier film "Seeta Aur Geeta" (1972), and used the location shoot of "Sholay" to further pursue her. During their romantic scenes, Dharmendra would often pay the light boys to spoil the shot, thereby ensuring many retakes and allowing him to spend more time with her. The couple married five years after the film's release. Much of "Sholay" was shot in the rocky terrain of Ramanagara, a town near Bangalore, Karnataka. The filmmakers had to build a road from the Bangalore highway to Ramanagara for convenient access to the sets. Art director Ram Yedekar had an entire township built on the site. A prison set was constructed near Rajkamal Studio in Bombay, also outdoors, to match the natural lighting of the on-location sets. One part of Ramanagara was for a time called "Sippy Nagar" as a tribute to the director of the film. , a visit to the "Sholay rocks" (where much the film was shot) was still being offered to tourists travelling through Ramanagara. Filming began on location on 3 October 1973, with a scene featuring Bachchan and Bhaduri. The film had a lavish production for its time (with frequent banquets and parties for the cast), took two and a half years to make, and went over budget. One reason for its high cost was that Sippy re-filmed scenes many times to get his desired effect. "Yeh Dosti", a 5-minute song sequence, took 21 days to shoot, two short scenes in which Radha lights lamps took 20 days to film because of lighting problems, and the shooting of the scene in which Gabbar kills the imam's son lasted 19 days.