Paheli may not have made it to the Oscars. Yet, Shah Rukh Khan - who was convinced that it had more than a ghost of a chance - remains undeterred. He has acted in movies which have made use of the 'Blue Screen' effect (especially the song Suraj Hua Madhyam from the film Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gam) and the more recent Paheli wherein he had to be both a Rajasthani and lovable and a romantic ghost.
So fired is he with technology that he does not flinch while labelling himself a 'geek', insisting that it's in the 'positive sense of the word'. Being introduced to computers at an early age, in class VII as he vaguely recalls, King Khan dabbles more with his computer than his cellphone.
During his school days at St Columbus in Delhi, the actor had learned the basics of disk operating system and programming languages like Basic and COBOL (now almost defunct), and later graduated to use an Apple Macintosh which remains one of his favourite computers.
He now even edits movies on Avid (a film-editing software) and uses the latest laptops with sensors that can follow a two-finger trail and scroll pages. He's even planning to have his own special effects studio. In a tête-à-tête with Leslie D'Monte, Sonali Krishna & Rajesh S Kurup, the Badshah of Bollywood talks about his passion for acting and technology.
Excerpts:
Is technology in Bollywood films lagging that in Hollywood?
I think in the last three years, Bollywood has been witnessing a major leap in technological advancements. However, the personnel working in these sectors of the film industry need to be trained on the latest machines - they lack experience.
Moreover, we are not complete experts in emerging technologies like mino-machines to compositing and special effects. We are yet to understand the intricacies of these machines. I think in the next two years, the Indian film industry will master these technologies like we have done with animation.
But some of the movements in the animation movie Hanuman were jerky...
A two-hour film when done on a 20 FPS (frames per second) instead of 24 FPS will cut out about 150 days work, so it is essential to take that call at times. Internationally, you only insert the first and last frames. The computer handles the rest. Hence, I think Hanuman is a great effort.
Do financial constraints also hinder Bollywood from making films like King Kong or Lord of the Rings?
In a way, yes. The Indian film industry might not have the resources to create a King Kong, where the cost could be around $200 million. And in India, we also don't have that kind of market. But, if we are asked to create around five seconds of King Kong footage, we would certainly be able to do so even though we would be spending thrice the amount of time and money.
Technologies like Rotoscope, which was used to can the world famous Star Wars trilogy is yet to reach India...
Rotoscope is not a small-time camera; it is a high definition camera. When they (Industrial Light & Magic) used it, it was specifically designed like the smart cameras we have from Sony right now, which works on 25 FPS. But to make this come alive on the celluloid, it should be converted to 24 FPS.
This was precisely what Steven Speilberg and his technicians did. They designed a camera that could record digitially. When Speilberg and his team were making The Phantom Menace, they developed a special steadycam as the places they were running through were small. To shoot in the locales, they needed a compact camera. Bollywood will eventually develop all this.
How is Red Chillies Production doing and are there any plans for expansion?
Red Chillies, as a matter of fact, is looking at getting into special effects and we intend to make two films this year. I don't run Red Chillies with a commercial bent of mind. I like to do one film that does well commercially and then experiment with something new like a Paheli.
So, the plan ahead now, is to make a commercial film and then go on to make an offbeat film. The thrust of Red Chillies is to be educated in all kinds of cinema and technology is something that I really promote in my company. So, the next step forward is that by the end of this year, I would like to have my own special effects unit in place. Also, I would like to progress from making one to two films a year.
On the digital divide in the country
We're jumping the gun if we think both the urban and rural areas are going to be similar. We still don't have similar roads in the rural and urban areas to begin with, so to think of technology in these areas to be on the same plane is a long shot.