We Are Correcting The VFX Process With Devara: Nandamuri Kalyan Ram

Nandamuri Kalyan Ram once said that he watched his first two films, Tholi Choopulone (2003) and Abhimanyu (2003) more than 30 times to understand why they didn’t work at the box office. Today, after working for two decades as an actor and producer, he says he can analyse success and failure much more precisely. “I don’t watch films 30 times now,” he says with a grin. “Since you develop a level of maturity once you are into the profession, you start remembering the day-to-day activity while making a film. I remember that for every film of mine. I know where and when we made a wrong decision; where we rushed up the process and compromised on the quality of the film. Once I watch a film, it gets printed like a photocopy in my brain. I go back to every film of mine.”

In addition to being a producer, Kalyan Ram, is an active part of the VFX company, Advitha Creative Studio, named after his daughter. VFX is an area where the majority of Indian films, even big-budgeted blockbusters have been fumbling; Baahubali and RRR might be an exception. It is to be noted that even major Hollywood films outsource their VFX works to Indian companies, so, likely, the issue is not with the resources but with the process. “See, the Hollywood films we talk about are shot in 60-70 days but they are given more than a year to complete post-production. We don’t do that here, right? What I found out about this process is that we don’t consider these factors while planning the production. It’s important to plan the VFX involved in a scene based on the shooting schedule. Instead, we bring it into the picture just days before the shoot as we rush to execute something. So what happens in the end is, that even though the VFX people get involved, it’s not achieved in the best possible way,” he says, adding that ‘time’ is the most important factor. “It is highly impossible that we shoot a film and finish the VFX in a month or two.”

But Kalyan ensures that he and his team are adamant about fixing the process with the upcoming biggie is producing, Devara, starring his younger brother Jr NTR. “I don’t know about others but from our side, we are correcting this process starting with Devara. Our research process spanned close to eight months. Our research was detailed to the extent that we decided where to opt for VFX and where to go with real elements within the frame. For example, if a characters have to interact with something, we created it on the set to keep it realistic and created other layers accordingly. And we decided to start VFX only after locking the length,” he says.

And the team of Devara got the planning right, Kalyan ensures. “Remember the 8-month-long research process that I told you about? We had already storyboarded all the shots to achieve exactly what we wanted. And from a shooting perspective, our team finished shooting all the portions that demand VFX work already. We will only be filming parts that don’t rely on VFX going forward. And we gave the VFX team close to 4 months to smoothly finish the work. Things are slowly changing,” he concludes.