Many of us have watched Baahubali series of films twice or more just because of the grandeur and the set pieces that the team was able to create. They did manage to create an entire medieval period world for the film and for that Sabu Cyril, the production designer and art director had to work hard and smart at the same time. He revealed few important secrets about how they pulled certain huge set pieces that involved many actors and junior artists at the same time.
He said, “We don’t just rely on Computer graphics and imagery for every shot. We use practical effects and also set pieces and several get enhanced while few just are what you see on screen. For a pure Spatic Linga, we need lot of plaster of paris and even the quality of stone won’t be at the same high as that of the period. So, we used water bottles to create the shrine and you can see how real it looks. One has to use the waste materials too to creste something useful and that’s where our creativity comes out.”
He also said that they used the old style cooking machines and vegetable cutter ideas to develop weaponry in the battle scenes. “We got the idea to design a Spinning swords head to Rana’s chariot after we went through some old time cutting machines that used in cooking. Also, for 2.0, when we needed many robots we used the bodies of water heaters and made the Robots in less cost. We need to think about the time and budget constraints too as production designers,” said Sabu Cyril.
He then concluded by saying, “I used to get up at 4 in the morning and reach sets by 6 every day and by the time, we packed up and leave the sets, it used to be 11 in the night. This was my daily routine for 5 years and when you don’t have passion towards the craft, you can’t be a good art director in this field.” Well, behind all those huge action scenes along with VFX artists and actors, many technicians had to work for hours together to make Baahubali happen. We salute all their work!
