“I am just the face of a 300-plus team,” says production designer Rajeevan Nambiar, when he discusses Chiranjeevi starrer Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy , the biopic of Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy.
The production team designed sets that recreate Chennai’s Fort St George, portions of forts, palaces, five temples, the Kurnool collectorate, an ashram of yore, and eight villages. The jatara (carnival) in the opening portions and the arena for the climax were all shot on sets.
When Rajeevan settles down for this chat in his Jubilee Hills office, it’s a relaxed day before he plunges headlong into a new project. He’s in talks for a big star project that he cannot discuss now, but he looks back at Sye Raa with pride and declares, “A period drama is an art director’s delight.”
Seven months of preparatory work involved finalising the colour palette, looks for the characters and sets. They also designed canons, make-believe rifles of 1830s, bows and arrows (bows were sourced from a tribal village in Andhra Pradesh), shields and armours.
- “It was a conscious effort to construct as many sets as possible to make it look realistic, and then there was considerable help from the visual effects department (supervised by RC Kamalakannan) to provide extensions where necessary,” says Rajeevan. The ashram portion, for instance, was originally to be shot in the vicinity of Chalakudy falls in Kerala, but with Amitabh Bachchan’s dates being a constraint, the team had to shoot in Ramoji Film City and rely on VFX extensions. The visual reference for the ashram came from a set Rajeevan had designed for the AR Murugadoss and Suriya Tamil film 7aum Arivu ( Seventh Sense in Telugu).
It was a roller coaster; the production and costume departments worked in two godowns, designing clothes, weapons and accessories for the key characters and hundreds of junior artistes.
Unlike Hindi period dramas like Padmavat or Bajirao Mastani for which costume and architecture references can be gleaned from palaces and museums in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, there wasn’t enough documented evidence on the life and times of Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy. “We relied on paintings from 1800 to 1900. There were a few photographs taken after 1860 but we needed visual references from the 1830s,” says Rajeevan.
He explains how concept artists Gopi and Uday Krishnan drew sketches for characters and the sets; and 3D artist Sai made models of the sets to give everyone a clear idea of what to expect. Art directors Ram Prasad, Jayachandran and Paneer from Chennai, Sathyanarayanan and Srinivas from Hyderabad, stylist Uttara Menon and Chiranjeevi’s daughter Sushmita Konidela were just some of the people who collaborated.
Rajeevan Nambiar on set
The concept designs were presented to director Surender Reddy and Chiranjeevi. “It’s a joy when the director has a clear vision and gives you freedom,” says Rajeevan, in appreciation of Surender. Sets were erected in Kokapet, aluminium factory in Gachibowli, Pondicherry and Dandumailaram.
In December 2017, the unit began shooting. The first sequence to be shot was the pre-interval portion in Koilkuntla that leads to the beheading of a British officer.
For everything that was created for the film, Rajeevan was careful to use visual references and tweak wherever necessary. The house in which Narasimha Reddy originally lived has now been partitioned into several small houses. Yet, some of the interiors and the layout plan gave an idea of how he might have lived back then.
Nayanthara and Chiranjeevi in the palace set
Chennai’s Fort St. George, Rajeevan explains, was rebuilt after it was damaged during the clash between Dutch and British in the 1860s. His son who’s an architecture student helped access a few etchings of the original 1630s building from the museum archives.
Sye Raa has been Rajeevan’s biggest project so far. He was also on board for director Vikram Kumar’s Gang Leader starring Nani, but confesses that while he did oversee things, art director Ram Kumar took care of a chunk of the work.
Rajeevan’s first solo project as an art director was for the 2002 Tamil film Mounam Pesiyadhe directed by Ameer, starring Suriya and Trisha. He had earlier worked with ad agencies and television serials. Rajeevan remembers being absorbed in drawing and painting in high school but his father wasn’t keen on him taking up arts. He studied literature in Loyola College, Chennai, and moonlighted for a friend’s ad agency. “My dad had hoped that I would write civil service exams. That didn’t happen,” he laughs, and adds, “My mom would support me, I was scared of dad. My books would be filled with drawings and I would hope dad doesn’t see them.”
One of the fort sets
After Mounam Pesiyadhe , Rajeevan thought he would go back to the ad world. But Gautam Vasudev Menon asked him to design for Kaaka Kaaka (remade as Gharshana in Telugu) and that was a turning point. Remember the wooden house? That was a set built in Sri Lanka, because it was much more economical. The references for the wooden house and its surroundings came from Rajeevan’s childhood memories from Thalassery in Kerala. “I was enthralled by the shades of green and ochre in the moss and plants while growing up. We tried to bring in a few of those details for the film,” he shares.
Since then, Rajeevan worked for many of Gautam Menon’s films, including the forthcoming Dhruva Natchathiram starring Vikram. His Telugu films include Oye, Gharshana, 1-Nenokkadine, Sarrainodu, Dhruva, Gang Leader , and portions of A Aa.
Rajeevan watches movies and reads whenever he can, but the key to his art direction lies in observation during travels. “I travel frequently and I have a good visual memory. While there maybe a point of reference, I don’t copy pre-existing designs. I like to do my own work,” he says, signing off.
