- Bringing Ramayana to the big screen took years of planning and hard work.
- Production designers reveals Ayodhya and Lanka took three years to create.
- Designer shared how they blended VFX with the real world.
Ramayana has already crossed Rs 1000 crore mark in just eight days but bringing this story to the big screen on such a large scale took years of planning, research and hard work. The film's grand sets, including Ayodhya and Lanka, took around three years to create. Production designers Subrata Chakraborty and Amit Ray made every location look real.
Subrata recently shared details about the work that went into building these places, including how they blended VFX with real world. For example, around 70 per cent of Ayodhya's throne room was built as a physical set, while the remaining 30 per cent was added through VFX. The aim was to make both look like one real place.
In an interview with Variety, Subrata Chakraborty explained, “The good thing is people are confused about what physical sets are and where we used VFX. We wanted viewers to be unable to tell what was set and what was VFX. That is a huge thing for us. That is a huge thing for us.”
The film's early design work was done with the help of a team of artists from Hollywood, led by Ramsey Avery. They worked closely with director Nitesh Tiwari and producer Namit Malhotra. Avery's designs gave the team a starting point, but it was Subrata Chakraborty and Amit Ray who added more Indian details.
Subrata explained that “To build Janasthan, we used aesthetics from Cambodia and a few other Southeast Asian references from in and around the countries of Sri Lanka.”
The team wanted Ayodhya and Lanka to look very different. According to Subrata Chakraborty, Ayodhya was designed to look peaceful, beautiful and rich. The makers chose soft and cool colours to give it a calm feel. Lanka, on the other hand, was planned to look like an ego.
“We had to work against green screens. We had to understand how to enhance the forest and how it would blend with our design. We didn't know where to put the elements, how to create the texture or how much to slide. It was a mathematical film. If the mathematics was even a little off, the VFX would be off. That's why VFX can look fake. We had to make everything mathematically accurate so that when the VFX was created after our work, it would look real,” he said.
Ramayana stars Ranbir Kapoor, Yash, Sai Pallavi, Ravie Dubey, Arun Govil, Rakul Preet Singh, Indira Krishnan and Vivek Oberoi in key roles.
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