His dream of making films led him from Wayanad to Ahmedabad to Hyderabad with pit stops in between.
His run of success with Baahubali , Magadheera , Robot , Eega and Pulimurugan among others notwithstanding, P.C. Sanath still dreams of making his own film.
“My friends and I set up our studio and named it Firefly Creative Studio, and not Firefly VFX, says the tall and lanky VFX expert and two-time recipient of the national award for visual effects on the sidelines of the Toonz Animation Masters Summit.
While it will be a traditional film, the real challenge will be to cross boundaries and take it to the world, he says.
“The placement and marketing will be for the world. It is not really the money, it is the intent and ability to sustain that matters.”
Sanath says they had made a couple of attempts earlier, but things did not work out for various reasons.
Risk-taking and failures are something that he is well-familiar with. After passing out of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, he started working in animation. Between working at a VFX studio and doing ad films, he even made a film, but it failed miserably. He set up Firefly in Hyderabad along with some of his friends. To survive, they went back to doing VFX for films. It was then that the Chiranjeevi-starrer Anji came their way. However, the film did not do well commercially, and they were back to square one.
The turnaround came with the announcement of the national award for special effects for Anji .
People sat up and took notice that the special effects were done in India and not abroad. Visual effects became a rage and movie offers came flooding. “Last year, we did 23 projects,” says Sanath.
There is no point aping something, he avers. “The driving point should not be ‘it is big and let me make a film like that.’ That film has already been made. By the time one reaches there, they will have moved to something else. It will not be easy, but the trip is about that.”
Sanath who is currently working on Roshan Andrews’ Kayamkulam Kochunni says he does not believe that the Kerala film industry is small, unlike the Telugu industry. “We underestimate our power. Baahubali or Robot succeeded because they crossed all boundaries. Take Pulimurugan in Malayalam. Hats off to the producer for having the courage to take the risk. It opened up the market. Other people will now see the potential and be willing to take more risks.”
Successful Malayalam films are remade in other industries, he says. “Filmmakers in the State see it as a revenue model. They do not think it is an original story, and it can be made in other languages, and will fetch more money. We need to take risks and think on a bigger scale.”
About the future for visual effects, he says it is encouraging to see people getting excited about some movie and taking up visual effects as a career when they grow up. “Computer animation is a new way of storytelling. It is less than two decades old. It has to keep evolving.”
