“How did you guys manage to do it?” wondered superstar Amitabh Bachchan, after seeing the climax of Priyadarshan’s Gardish (1993), supposedly shot in Mahalaxmi in south Mumbai. Even decades back, he couldn’t shoot the title portions of his blockbuster Don (1978) there. Priyadarshan had a valid reason to be proud: the shooting was done at a set in Chennai. The man behind it was Sabu Cyril, India’s most valued art director, or production designer, as he prefers to be addressed.
“There is a vast difference between an art director and a production designer,” explains Cyril. “An art director primarily takes care of the set. A production designer has to arrange everything that would appear on the screen. His decisions range from the type of costumes to the location of the shooting.”
The process of a cinema, he explains, starts when the writer conceives the idea. The director visualises it, which he conveys to the production designer. He and his crew create the environment, which is captured by the cinematographer.
Execution of ideas is an old game for Sabu Cyril, right from when he decided to take up art as a career option. He joined the School of Arts in Chennai, against his family’s reservations — their major concern was that it is tough to make a living out of art.
Proving them wrong, he started earning from the first year in art school doing freelance work, designing advertisements for companies like TVS Lucas and Madura Coats. When he finished the course in 1985, he got an offer from Hindustan Thompson Associates with a salary of Rs 5,000, Cyril recollects: “I was already earning Rs 8,000 then. So I continued freelancing.”
Cinema was still not an option for him even though his uncle was the noted cinematographer A Vincent. However, art was not to let him be and soon he began doing small works for cinema like creating a miniature helicopter for the Kamal Hassan movie Vetri Vizha (1989). A similar assignment, at the request of his art director friend Ashok Kumar, landed him as the second unit art director in a Malayalam film, Iyer The Great (1990).
Director Bharatan happened to see his work and signed him for what would become his big break in Malayalam film industry, Amaram (1991). Cyril managed a feat similar to what production designer Joe Alves and crew did for Steven Speilberg in the iconic thriller, Jaws (1975) — creating a shark for the climax in the sea.
“The size of the shark and the fake blood was managed using big tyre tubes. The movements were controlled by underwater cables from a boat that ran parallel to the camera,” recalls Cyril.
The shark came at an incomparably minuscule cost when compared to the Hollywood classic. “The work had impressed greats like Richard Edlund, the multi-Academy Award-winning US special effects cinematographer, known for his work in the original Star Wars trilogy,” remembers director Priyadarshan. He first saw Cyril’s work during the shooting of Uncle Bun (1991).
In the movie, Cyril had to make Malayalam superstar Mohanlal a super-obese person. Innovative like ever, he ditched the regular, easy idea of stuffing the actor’s costumes with cotton. Instead, he came up with a body suit of rubber bags that can be filled with water. The result was remarkable. The water filled in the body suit gave the look and weight of an obese man to Mohanlal, resulting in a life-like performance on screen.
Impressed by the near-perfect work, Priyadarshan signed him for his next film. The association continues till date, spawning 64 films working together.
“Our personal equation works well, which shows in our films,” explains Cyril. But Priyadarshan admits that it’s sheer talent that draws him to Cyril for each of his projects.
“There’s nobody to match Sabu’s calibre. He’s a chemist, a physicist, an architect, an engineer and an artist combined,” commends Priyadarshan. “But his greatest quality would be his affordability. He always comes up with the best work within the budget allocated.”
Their association turned out to be mutually beneficial. His work in Gardish (1993) earned Cyril his first Filmfare award. Malayalam movie Thenmavin Kombathu (1994) fetched him the National Award for the Best Art Director. Gardish opened the doors of Bollywood and some major projects came his way, which included the set of the Miss World Competition 1996, held in Bangalore.
Frequent works made him relocate to Chennai by that time. Soon Cyril began working on his first period film, Priyadarshan’s multilingual magnum opus Kaalapaani (1996). The movie about the freedom struggle, set around the infamous cellular jail in the Andamans, was an arduous effort, says Cyril. “We had endured a lot for that movie. Only the dilapidated jail building was left in the island. We had to bring everything — cars, horses and all the equipment — from the mainland.”
The interiors scenes were shot in sets in Chennai. A scene in which a train was blasted off using explosives was shot using miniatures in Cyril’s workshop. “The entire production designing was done in a budget of close to Rs 2 crore, which is still a huge amount for the Malayalam film industry,” explains Cyril. The critically acclaimed movie gave tremen-dous recognition to Cyril, including his second national award.
Soon Cyril began taking up ambitious project. Along with cinematographer Ravi K Chandran he transformed rural Pollachi in Tamil Nadu into a North Indian hamlet for Priyadarsan’s Virasat (1997). Along with the regular Priyadarshan movies, came a slew of period films, such as Hey Ram (2000), Asoka (2001) and the shelved film Maruthunayagam (Tamil).
“Maruthunayagam was Kamal Hassan’s pet project. We had a grand launch, with Queen Elizabeth inaugurating the shooting in 1997, but the production scale was huge, going way beyond his financial capacity. We had to drop it, wasting all the research and efforts done,” remembers Cyril. The disappointment was promptly compensated by Hey Ram (2000), written, produced and directed by Kamal Hassan.
A big challenge for the art director, Hey Ram’s story moved from the then Madras to Kolkata, Maharashtra and Delhi — all recreated in Chennai! “The trams created to shoot the Kolkata street scenes were moved using Ambassador car engines,” he explains.
Cyril admits that he was disappointed when all those efforts went unrecognised by the outside world. He had expected a national award for Hey Ram. So was the case with Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamittal (2002), where he had to recreate Sri Lanka in Kerala. “There was a scene of a mid-sea collision of boats, which was shot in one huge tank in Chennai. Everybody who saw the movie thought that was shot in the sea,” he says.
According to him, a person thinking that a set is for real evokes a kind of mixed feeling. “The disappointment factor is there because they don’t realise it’s our effort, but it is the ultimate goal of an art director to make a set look realistic. So there are no complaints.”
Mani Ratnam’s next venture, the multilingual Yuva/Aayitha Ezhuthu (2004) had him shuttling between Mumbai and Chennai. The story of ‘Yuva’ was set in Kolkata, while Aayitha Ezhuthu was based in Chennai. The hectic schedule of shooting two films back to back had really pushed the limits, remembers Cyril.
Difficulties in shooting in the crowded areas of Kolkata made him recreate the streets in Chennai — complete with sign boards and hand-pulled rickshaws! However, they had to shift to Mumbai to shoot the ‘Chennai harbour’. “It was for the Tamil version (Aayitha Ezhuthu). We wanted to shoot at the Chennai harbour, but were denied permission. So we had to put the set up in Mumbai, in two days.”
A popular name in Bollywood by now, thanks to Priyadarshan’s regular Hindi films and big budget projects such as Major Saab (1998), Main Hoon Naa (2004) and Jaan-e-Mann (2006), he is now moving his base to Mumbai. No one can be happier than Farah Khan, for whom Cyril has become a regular crew member. The sets he created for her film Om Shanti Om (2007) had earned him another national award.
“My association with Sabu started during my early days as a choreographer,” recalls Farah. “Our personal rapport is pretty good and I blindly trust him on the production designing part.” For the latest movie Farah Khan movie Tees Maar Khan, Cyril went all out to create a whole train.
“That was a necessity,” says Farah. “Shooting on a real train on tracks is tough and expensive. There’ll be permission problems, traffic trouble and the train won’t be available at our convenience. He solved the trouble by creating one!”
“That was run on a truck engine,” reveals Cyril. “The train was not a full-length one, but we’ve made it appear like that on screen. A truck driver actually operated it.”
This major-league production designer is so preoccupied by the steady stream of projects, which he had to defer the dream to direct a movie. He was all set to direct a Malayalam project Anandabhadram, an adaptation of an award-winning novel. However, lack of time made him hand it over to friend and ace cinematographer Santosh Sivan, for whom he had done the period film Asoka.
The next big thing in Cyril’s list is Shah Rukh Khan’s Rs 150-crore science fiction film, Ra-One. Speaking of science fiction, one cannot avoid mentioning this year's mega-budget blockbuster Robot. To create an army of life-size Rajnikanth replicas, Hollywood technicians had asked for about Rs 5 crore. Cyril finished the work in Rs 6 lakh.
“He was the right person for that film, a science fiction,” says director Shankar. “All the Hollywood technicians who worked in our film have appreciated him for the quality he has given — that too very economical.”
Impressive work keeps coming one after the other, but Cyril stays impartial when asked to pick a favourite. However, his directors beg to differ.
“He has done an impressive work for Tees Maar Khan, complete with a miniature of New York,” says Farah. “But I rate his work for Om Shanti Om better, because everything in the film, past and present, was sets. The burnt studio, the banquet hall — all was simply authentic.”
Priyardarshan has three in his list — Thenmavin Kombathu, for the fantasy-feel he created to shoot a non-existing culture, Kaalaapani for its authenticity, and, surprisingly, Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007). “Except for some exterior shot, the entire palace was a set,” Priyadarshan justifies his choice. “Nobody who watched the film realised it. That’s the beauty of Sabu’s work.”
How does he find working up to the mark with directors as different as Shankar, who took three years to complete ‘Robot’, to a superfast Priyadarshan, who churns out a film at the drop of a hat? “I consider myself as water, and the mould of the film as a container,” defines Cyril. “I just have to fill myself in.”
“There is a vast difference between an art director and a production designer,” explains Cyril. “An art director primarily takes care of the set. A production designer has to arrange everything that would appear on the screen. His decisions range from the type of costumes to the location of the shooting.”
The process of a cinema, he explains, starts when the writer conceives the idea. The director visualises it, which he conveys to the production designer. He and his crew create the environment, which is captured by the cinematographer.
Execution of ideas is an old game for Sabu Cyril, right from when he decided to take up art as a career option. He joined the School of Arts in Chennai, against his family’s reservations — their major concern was that it is tough to make a living out of art.
Proving them wrong, he started earning from the first year in art school doing freelance work, designing advertisements for companies like TVS Lucas and Madura Coats. When he finished the course in 1985, he got an offer from Hindustan Thompson Associates with a salary of Rs 5,000, Cyril recollects: “I was already earning Rs 8,000 then. So I continued freelancing.”
Cinema was still not an option for him even though his uncle was the noted cinematographer A Vincent. However, art was not to let him be and soon he began doing small works for cinema like creating a miniature helicopter for the Kamal Hassan movie Vetri Vizha (1989). A similar assignment, at the request of his art director friend Ashok Kumar, landed him as the second unit art director in a Malayalam film, Iyer The Great (1990).
Director Bharatan happened to see his work and signed him for what would become his big break in Malayalam film industry, Amaram (1991). Cyril managed a feat similar to what production designer Joe Alves and crew did for Steven Speilberg in the iconic thriller, Jaws (1975) — creating a shark for the climax in the sea.
“The size of the shark and the fake blood was managed using big tyre tubes. The movements were controlled by underwater cables from a boat that ran parallel to the camera,” recalls Cyril.
The shark came at an incomparably minuscule cost when compared to the Hollywood classic. “The work had impressed greats like Richard Edlund, the multi-Academy Award-winning US special effects cinematographer, known for his work in the original Star Wars trilogy,” remembers director Priyadarshan. He first saw Cyril’s work during the shooting of Uncle Bun (1991).
In the movie, Cyril had to make Malayalam superstar Mohanlal a super-obese person. Innovative like ever, he ditched the regular, easy idea of stuffing the actor’s costumes with cotton. Instead, he came up with a body suit of rubber bags that can be filled with water. The result was remarkable. The water filled in the body suit gave the look and weight of an obese man to Mohanlal, resulting in a life-like performance on screen.
Impressed by the near-perfect work, Priyadarshan signed him for his next film. The association continues till date, spawning 64 films working together.
“Our personal equation works well, which shows in our films,” explains Cyril. But Priyadarshan admits that it’s sheer talent that draws him to Cyril for each of his projects.
“There’s nobody to match Sabu’s calibre. He’s a chemist, a physicist, an architect, an engineer and an artist combined,” commends Priyadarshan. “But his greatest quality would be his affordability. He always comes up with the best work within the budget allocated.”
Their association turned out to be mutually beneficial. His work in Gardish (1993) earned Cyril his first Filmfare award. Malayalam movie Thenmavin Kombathu (1994) fetched him the National Award for the Best Art Director. Gardish opened the doors of Bollywood and some major projects came his way, which included the set of the Miss World Competition 1996, held in Bangalore.
Frequent works made him relocate to Chennai by that time. Soon Cyril began working on his first period film, Priyadarshan’s multilingual magnum opus Kaalapaani (1996). The movie about the freedom struggle, set around the infamous cellular jail in the Andamans, was an arduous effort, says Cyril. “We had endured a lot for that movie. Only the dilapidated jail building was left in the island. We had to bring everything — cars, horses and all the equipment — from the mainland.”
The interiors scenes were shot in sets in Chennai. A scene in which a train was blasted off using explosives was shot using miniatures in Cyril’s workshop. “The entire production designing was done in a budget of close to Rs 2 crore, which is still a huge amount for the Malayalam film industry,” explains Cyril. The critically acclaimed movie gave tremen-dous recognition to Cyril, including his second national award.
Soon Cyril began taking up ambitious project. Along with cinematographer Ravi K Chandran he transformed rural Pollachi in Tamil Nadu into a North Indian hamlet for Priyadarsan’s Virasat (1997). Along with the regular Priyadarshan movies, came a slew of period films, such as Hey Ram (2000), Asoka (2001) and the shelved film Maruthunayagam (Tamil).
“Maruthunayagam was Kamal Hassan’s pet project. We had a grand launch, with Queen Elizabeth inaugurating the shooting in 1997, but the production scale was huge, going way beyond his financial capacity. We had to drop it, wasting all the research and efforts done,” remembers Cyril. The disappointment was promptly compensated by Hey Ram (2000), written, produced and directed by Kamal Hassan.
A big challenge for the art director, Hey Ram’s story moved from the then Madras to Kolkata, Maharashtra and Delhi — all recreated in Chennai! “The trams created to shoot the Kolkata street scenes were moved using Ambassador car engines,” he explains.
Cyril admits that he was disappointed when all those efforts went unrecognised by the outside world. He had expected a national award for Hey Ram. So was the case with Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamittal (2002), where he had to recreate Sri Lanka in Kerala. “There was a scene of a mid-sea collision of boats, which was shot in one huge tank in Chennai. Everybody who saw the movie thought that was shot in the sea,” he says.
According to him, a person thinking that a set is for real evokes a kind of mixed feeling. “The disappointment factor is there because they don’t realise it’s our effort, but it is the ultimate goal of an art director to make a set look realistic. So there are no complaints.”
Mani Ratnam’s next venture, the multilingual Yuva/Aayitha Ezhuthu (2004) had him shuttling between Mumbai and Chennai. The story of ‘Yuva’ was set in Kolkata, while Aayitha Ezhuthu was based in Chennai. The hectic schedule of shooting two films back to back had really pushed the limits, remembers Cyril.
Difficulties in shooting in the crowded areas of Kolkata made him recreate the streets in Chennai — complete with sign boards and hand-pulled rickshaws! However, they had to shift to Mumbai to shoot the ‘Chennai harbour’. “It was for the Tamil version (Aayitha Ezhuthu). We wanted to shoot at the Chennai harbour, but were denied permission. So we had to put the set up in Mumbai, in two days.”
A popular name in Bollywood by now, thanks to Priyadarshan’s regular Hindi films and big budget projects such as Major Saab (1998), Main Hoon Naa (2004) and Jaan-e-Mann (2006), he is now moving his base to Mumbai. No one can be happier than Farah Khan, for whom Cyril has become a regular crew member. The sets he created for her film Om Shanti Om (2007) had earned him another national award.
“My association with Sabu started during my early days as a choreographer,” recalls Farah. “Our personal rapport is pretty good and I blindly trust him on the production designing part.” For the latest movie Farah Khan movie Tees Maar Khan, Cyril went all out to create a whole train.
“That was a necessity,” says Farah. “Shooting on a real train on tracks is tough and expensive. There’ll be permission problems, traffic trouble and the train won’t be available at our convenience. He solved the trouble by creating one!”
“That was run on a truck engine,” reveals Cyril. “The train was not a full-length one, but we’ve made it appear like that on screen. A truck driver actually operated it.”
This major-league production designer is so preoccupied by the steady stream of projects, which he had to defer the dream to direct a movie. He was all set to direct a Malayalam project Anandabhadram, an adaptation of an award-winning novel. However, lack of time made him hand it over to friend and ace cinematographer Santosh Sivan, for whom he had done the period film Asoka.
The next big thing in Cyril’s list is Shah Rukh Khan’s Rs 150-crore science fiction film, Ra-One. Speaking of science fiction, one cannot avoid mentioning this year's mega-budget blockbuster Robot. To create an army of life-size Rajnikanth replicas, Hollywood technicians had asked for about Rs 5 crore. Cyril finished the work in Rs 6 lakh.
“He was the right person for that film, a science fiction,” says director Shankar. “All the Hollywood technicians who worked in our film have appreciated him for the quality he has given — that too very economical.”
Impressive work keeps coming one after the other, but Cyril stays impartial when asked to pick a favourite. However, his directors beg to differ.
“He has done an impressive work for Tees Maar Khan, complete with a miniature of New York,” says Farah. “But I rate his work for Om Shanti Om better, because everything in the film, past and present, was sets. The burnt studio, the banquet hall — all was simply authentic.”
Priyardarshan has three in his list — Thenmavin Kombathu, for the fantasy-feel he created to shoot a non-existing culture, Kaalaapani for its authenticity, and, surprisingly, Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007). “Except for some exterior shot, the entire palace was a set,” Priyadarshan justifies his choice. “Nobody who watched the film realised it. That’s the beauty of Sabu’s work.”
How does he find working up to the mark with directors as different as Shankar, who took three years to complete ‘Robot’, to a superfast Priyadarshan, who churns out a film at the drop of a hat? “I consider myself as water, and the mould of the film as a container,” defines Cyril. “I just have to fill myself in.”
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