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ARE SPECIAL EFFECTS THE WAY FORWARD?
Bollywood is testing the boundaries of imagination
From Shah Rukh Khan becoming a dwarf in Zero to Akshay Kumar becoming a gigantic bird in 2.0 — it’s all possible because of the magic of VFX, or visual effects. Though the recent release, Thugs of Hindostan, failed despite its extensive use of VFX, the strong response to 2.0 — starring Akshay and Rajinikanth and shot at a reported budget of ₹550 crore — and the lineup of more films with this technology are evidence that Bollywood has embraced its power.
It was Shah Rukh’s film Ra.One (2011), mounted on a budget of ₹130 crore, that first gave India a taste of bigscale VFX. The pay-off for that film was not so great, but in recent times, the success of the Baahubali franchise and its visual effects have encouraged filmmakers to take risks; more time and more money are going into such cinematic spectacles.
Pappu, the assistant director for 2.0, shares hat India is capable of delivering a worldclass experience. He says, “Most of the film might have been done with a foreign superviser and collaboration, but we shouldn’t forget that a ot of VFX companies from India worked on t, and produced world-class effects.”
Trade expert and critic Joginder Tuteja feels that making such big-scale VFX sagas is essential in this age of streaming content and TV shows. “The incentive you need — to bring audiences to theatres — is a larger-thanlife experience. But it also depends on what kind of a subject it is,” he says.
Actor Zeeshan Ayyub is a common link between two of the biggest VFX dramas this year — Thugs of Hindostan and Zero. He tells us, “In Thugs… we did many scenes in the studio with the green screen. Zero was a different experience. Har shot ke five different takes.”
Anubhav Sinha, who had directed Ra.One, feels that this rising interest in VFX for Bollywood films is because it has been adopted a lot internationally. He says, “It’s due to the global precedence that people know [that] something very exciting can be achieved.”
On the need for this tech, Mahesh Baria, senior VFX superviser at Prime Focus, which has worked on 2.0 and the upcoming Brahmastra, says, “The heavy usage of VFX is because filmmakers are trying out new concepts of storytelling, which isn’t possible without effects.”