New Delhi: All the films that SA Rajamouli has given in his career so far have turned out to be blockbusters and his contribution in these films has been made by South’s famous cinematographer KK Senthil Kumar. Both of them have shot big budget films like Magadheera, Bahubali: The Beginning, Bahubali 2: The Conclusion, but Senthil considers 2012’s Eega as the most challenging film of his career. It is known that Senthil Kumar has collaborated with Rajamouli in many films in the last two decades and he recently shared a funny anecdote from the shooting of Eega.
Rajamouli’s Makkhi film was more challenging than RRR
Cinematographer Senthil reveals how having a fly in the lead role in Eega challenged him as a cinematographer. The film stars Nani, Kiccha Sudeep and Samantha Ruth Prabhu in lead roles but the story revolves around a fly. Senthil said, ‘This was the most challenging film and I would say that this movie was more challenging than RRR. We had no reference point. We had not seen anyone do this. The closest people can come to doing something like this animation. I watched A Bug’s Life for inspiration but had never done anything like this in real life. Making the hero of the film, who was a fly, was the biggest challenge.
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The fly takes revenge for the hero’s death
In the film, Nani is killed by Sudeep’s character, who avenges her death by being reborn as a fly. Senthil Kumar revealed that creating and shooting the fly required a lot of observation, study and macro photography. He told, ‘We caught a lot of flies and studied them. We released that when exposed to cold temperatures for a minute or two they become unconscious and then regain consciousness and fly away. We saw them under macro photography, they looked really ugly and different. After studying them, we worked with several artists and created a custom-made fly and that’s how we got our hero.’
Major research was done on flies
In an earlier interview with Rediff.com, the cinematographer revealed that the team had extensively researched the film’s ‘star’. It may sound strange but a photo session of a housefly was done. We made a fly slightly unconscious and took pictures of it from very close. Pre-visualization was done by computer graphics people before shooting. This was one of the most difficult films I have shot. When I shot Yamadonga, Rajamouli pushed me. Then came Arundhati and later Magadheera. I thought, ‘What else?’ And Eega took me completely to the next level. Let us tell you that this film won not just one but 2 National Awards and it was made at a cost of Rs 30 crores, while it collected Rs 135 crores.
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A sequel to Eega is being considered.
And then the success of Eega opened up the possibility of a sequel. In an interview with Pinkvilla, Nani talked about Eega 2 and said, ‘It needs a sequel and Eega ends with a note, ‘I will be back.’ I keep telling Rajamouli sir, ‘If you announce Eega 2, it will be the biggest promotion ever’ because that film was 10 years ago and was actually the starting point of this. What is happening today and this was the first film to make a mark at the national level. He made it at a time when we didn’t even have a good base of CG (sic).
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Tags: Natural Star Nani, south cinema, south cinema news, Ss rajamouli
FIRST PUBLISHED: April 22, 2024, 11:24 IST