There are
somethings in life that need to be seen, heard and experienced to believe them.
India’s Telugu magnum opus movie “Baahubali: The Beginning” is one such
phenomenal achievement. Taken simultaneously in Tamil as well, and dubbed into
Hindi and Malayalam, Baahubali was released globally in 4,000 screens on July
10, 2015. The fantasy period film, billed as the most expensive Indian movie
ever made at USD 40 million (Rs 250 crore), has opened to rave reviews and
blockbuster collections, crossing the Rs 250 crore mark in the very first week.
It has won the appreciation and approbation of ‘who is who’ of Indian Cinema.
The movie that has been in the making for over three years is the dream,
passion and magic of its director, S S Rajamouli. Singlehandedly, as the leader
responsible for screenplay and direction, he conceptualized and catalysed a mammoth
planning and execution effort to bring Baahubali onto the screens. In
Rajamouli’s and Baahubali’s success lie certain inspirational guidance for
Indians and Indian organizations who despair that India cannot match up to international
standards. The film demonstrates that India can indeed take quantum leaps to
match or exceed the best that the world can do.
In terms of
scale and scope, Baahubali has set new records. The film was canned in
specially created sets, fields and expanses of Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad
(RFC) as well as in Oravakal Rock Gardens in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, Athirappily
waterfalls in Thrissur, Kerala for over two years. The film had a preceding one
year of preproduction planning. What started as a single movie became a two
part movie given the multi-generational story narration, with a sequel “Baahubali:
The Conclusion” committed upfront for release in 2016. Some highlights of the
movie relate to the gripping narration of a story involving warring brothers (across
two generations) for Mahishmati kingdom, one brother being good and the other
evil and the triumph of good over evil, breath-taking visuals of waterfalls,
expanses and hills of India and snow mountains of Bulgaria, nearly 5000 visual
effects shots that enhanced the scale and depth of visual splendour,
unprecedented aerial and multi-dimensional shots of the mammoth set of
Mahishmati fort, installation of a massive 125 feet high and 8 tonne weight
statue, over 20,000 uniquely designed weapons, and use of 110 acre space in RFC
with 2,000 artistes for a year for battle scenes. At least seven key actors
dedicated themselves to the movie for over two years while 25 national awardee
technicians worked on the movie exclusively.
Visualization + Detailing
S S Rajamouli
may have directed only nine movies in the past but with each movie has won
accolades for making films each increasing levels of uniqueness in thematic
content and differentiation in film making. Baahubali, however, represents a
quantum leap in his directorial style and story narration. Verily, it is his
most intense effort in bringing high technology visual effects with sweepingly
successful impact to the Indian cinema to date. According to Rajamouli, the
story has been developing with him for seven years, with key roles emerging
adding drama and emotion to the story. That he has been able to accommodate
eight key characters in pivotal roles and have both hero and anti-hero almost
as powerful equals and yet narrate the story in a silky smooth fashion reflects
his competence. Rajamouli has amazing clarity in narration, and a rare skill in
aesthetically translating to the screen what he visualizes.
Rajamouli is
detail oriented and meticulous in his work, and never takes his viewers for
granted. Some of his directorial tweaks are out of the box yet very logical.
There is a scene in the movie in which the hero tattoos on the hand of the
warrior heroine as she sleeps on the riverside dipping her hand in the water;
an alert warrior, she is not disturbed by the underwater calligraphy as several
small fish are seen to dabble with her hand simultaneously. In a follow-up
tattoo scene, he is able to repeat it on the warrior girl even as she is ready
to shoot an arrow by bringing on a green slithering snake onto the arrow, and
making her stay frozen and fixated on the snake until she is able to release
the arrow with the snake. It is this
capability of Rajamouli that pervades throughout the movie and makes the period
fantasy look and feel not only visually grand but also emotionally inspiring, transporting
the viewers into the mythical kingdom and the life with the protagonist
characters.
Specialization + Integration
Specialization
with integration ensured end-to-end success for the movie. As Rajamouli states,
selection of, and dependence on, the most appropriate technicians and artistes
has paid off handsome dividends. The faith in the completely fictional story
developed by Vijayendra Prasad was the bedrock of the movie. The heads for
visual effects (Srinivas Mohan), cinematography (Senthil Kumar), art (Sabu
Cyril) and costumes (Rama Rajamouli) are not only the best in the field but
they gave also their best to the movie. Each expert had absorbed Rajamouli’s
visualization and narration, and produced expected output. Sabu Cyril drew more
than 20,000 sketches in the pre-production phase. The Art department became a
design studio and construction factory for developing the unique sets of fort,
weaponry and sculptures with contemporary construction materials sporting
period look as well as colour schemes reflecting historical times. The
cameraman, Senthil, is an expert in use of sophisticated digital cameras,
drones, cranes, blue mat and slow motion technologies. He is an adept at
enhancing physical camera capture with computer graphics and visual effects.
Srinivas Mohan
is the master CGI and VFX Supervisor of India who played a major role in
Baahubali’s success. His work on 1,500 feet high waterfalls, snow avalanche,
war sequences, beheaded walk, statue installation, and aerial shots of
Mahishmati fort (to name just a few) with the latest software and multiple
visual effects studios resulted in unprecedented visual grandeur for the movie.
Rama played a stellar role in designing costumes to various lead actors that
are appropriate for the period film, providing authenticity. Costumes and
actors enhanced mutual impact. The costumes of warriors, kings and commoners
reflected authenticity that is vital for a period firm. They were ably
supported by music composer, M M Keeravani, stunt choreographer team led by
Peter Hein, dance choreography led by Prem Rakshit, sound engineer P M Satheesh
and editor K Venkateswara Rao, among others, to make each and every scene an
extraordinary audio-visual experience. And to add to the novelty, a completely new language called Kilikili was created by the lyricist Madan Karky to be spoken by Kalakeya tribe! The key in all this was that each of the
functional specialists were narrated the movie vision and visual expectations
by Rajamouli, and each absorbed and responded to the expectations, and worked
in an integrated and symbiotic manner making the whole far richer than the sum
of the parts.
Dedication + Development
No new amazing
task can be accomplished by merely following past achievements. Breakthrough
achievement requires not only dreamy passion, extraordinary vision and innovative
strategy but also development of high performing talent with new skillsets that
can enable quantum leaps in execution. However, dedication to the cause comes
first and development next. The life of Rajamouli mirrors the lives of several
self-made leaders, rising from the constraints of oscillating poverty and common
community to pinnacles of visualization and expertise. As Rajamouli says the
stories of Hindu epics such as Mahabharatam and Ramayanam narrated by his
grandmother in his childhood left a deep impression on him to create such epic
sagas on the celluloid. Each of the key actors in the movie, Prabhas as
Baahubali, the hero, Rana as Bhallala Deva, the warring brother, Anushka Shetty
as Devasena, Tamanna as Avanthika, Ramya Krishna as Sivagami, Nasser as Bijjaladeva,
and Satyaraj as Kattappa dedicated themselves to the movie fulltime all through
without any distractions or other career options. All of them placed once in a
lifetime opportunity of Baahubali higher than alternative and possibly higher
revenue opportunities.
Prabhas and
Rana learnt sword fighting and horse riding as well as marshal arts, endured
serious injuries, followed stringent diet and exercise patterns to reflect the
challenging requirements of their roles, from looks to skills. Each of the
other actors also underwent gruelling makeovers to match the requirements. Thousands
of stunt artistes from all over India were housed and trained in RFC for the
battle scenes for over a year. Yet, the whole team functioned as a family with
shared food, domestic attention and camaraderie. The core team of Rajamouli,
Rama, Vijayendra Prasad, Keeravani and Sri Valli belonged to a common family
but succeeded in enveloping the hundreds and thousands of workers in a similar familial
atmosphere inspired by a common cause. Producers, Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad
Devineni placed unwavering faith on Rajamouli despite this being an
extraordinarily high budget film for India. Dedication and development must come with a
canopy of gratitude. Rajamouli gave the credit to director K Raghvendra Rao as
the presenter of Baahubali because he gave Rajamouli the first break in independent
advertisement and commercial television serial making. The first frame of the
movie pays homage to the Telugu cine stalwarts who passed away in recent times.
Leap, unbounded
The success of
Baahubali spawns far beyond the success of a movie in India; it triggers a
sense of national pride that India Can! Every Indian in the faraway shores of
USA today aspires to see the movie and feel proud that India can conceptualize
and make such world-class celluloid epics. Baahubali inspires that India can
match world standards in conceptualization and execution of mega projects. It demonstrates
that Indian talent that works for international companies can produce a completely
Indian product bettering world standards. It teaches that the rich history and
ethos of India are indeed of epic potentialities even contemporaneously. Baahubali
also underscores a leader’s sagacious and bold role in scripting a future of
unseen and immense potential. Almost invariably, the leader who achieves
dramatic transformations dreams big. As Rajamouli admits he likes to dream of
larger than life images. However, he has the tenacity to persevere till he is
able to launch on his mission and translate them into physical realities. No
one had any expectations when the project was announced in 2011 that Baahubali
would be the high technology visual spectacle that it has been shaped into. It
is easy to develop an Avatar in a Hollywood ecosystem which routinely makes
Jurassic, Terminator and Avengers series. However, Baahubali proved that an
Avatar level film making is possible in India too, and that too at quarter the
cost of a similar Hollywood movie. Indian leaders have to only dream of
building infrastructure in India as in US, Japan or China and there could be no
reason why India cannot indeed build such infrastructure (Incidentally, a movie of Baahubali’s vision and
scale required the scale and scope of the infrastructure of
Ramoji Film City).
Dreaming a greater future and raising the bar continuously
is an essential enabler for world-leading development. The key lesson from
Baahubali for India’s build for the future is that India has the necessary
competencies for world class design, construction, manufacture, and delivery.
What is required is visionary leadership that can dream big, visualize the dreams,
detail the visions and deploy leaders who can execute the parts and finally deliver
the project as a whole. If one individual as Rajamouli can deliver a magnum
opus which is truly a world-class Indian movie, clearly other endowed leaders
and administrative entities and business organizations should be able to create
world-class infrastructure and deliver world-class projects in India in their
domains. The three formulae identified in this blog post as the key drivers of
Baahubali’s success, Visualization +
Detailing, Specialization + Integration and Dedication + Development,
constitute the unique alchemy for India’s quantum leaps of the future. If the
Baahubali momentum is maintained in its follow-on part, referencing the movie
as Indian Avatar may be passe; future Hollywood movies could be referenced as
Hollywood’s Baahubali! Prior to release of Baahubali this could have been a
bizarre statement but today it is a logical aspiration. So must be the aspirations
to discover new laws and theorems, innovate new science and technology, make
global products and services and build new infrastructure, ENTIRELY AND
INDIGENOUSLY IN INDIA, COMPLETELY WITH INDIAN TALENT.
Posted by Dr CB
Rao on July 19, 2015
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