One Dream I want to be true…
As a child, I have read all possible comics of almost all kinds of Super – Heroes, Both Indian & International, of which Batman was always my favourite, I have watched all batman films released till date, followed all animated series on Doordarshan, Cartoon Network and my admiration for this Dark Knight grew always, Then I was bowled over by the charisma of the sci-fi flick Matrix’s character Neo, These two characters have left a deep impact on my mind, I can never forget visuals from movies of these characters, which further propelled my dream to see our own epic Mahabharata and Ramayana to be made into a mega feature film, having a strong potential to enthrall audiences across the world.
I always would rate the efficiency with which the matrix trilogy and Batman Begins was directed, the scene in Batman begins where Bruce Wayne stands surrounded by bats overcoming his childhood fear for bats, with the dark score of Hans Zimmer matching the scene perfectly, and from the second edition of matrix where Neo does a fly away after beating down few agents, he soars high in the skies running through the clouds, a slow frame showing him descend down against the backdrop of a full sized moon, are scenes which never go out from my mind.
It’s not just action that would help us make our epics a mega film it would be the way the action sequences are choreographed which would leave an impact on the audience. Following are my thoughts for Mahabharata:
1) The film can be a trilogy or even more parts, directed LOST series style, let the movie begin on the war turf, the kurukshetra war ground with battle lines drawn, and sun rising from the mountains tearing the mist of silence spread across the ground. A conch blows showing a frame of shadowed
2) Next frame shows a shadowed image of Arjuna pulling out his bow and fires it across the ground which will then pave way for the opening titles, shown in a format of a Bow zipping across the screen and leaving behind the title credits shown from different angles in the beginning.
3) Then as the credits end the battle cry erupts louder and the images start getting bloodier, as one of the warrior slashes his sword across an opponent, blood spills and the camera view (CGI effect) zooms out to the eyes of Sanjay with a disturbed face, frightened to narrate the war events to his blind king Dhritrashtra.
4) From here the movie would stay focused on the characters of Mahabharata, pulling the audiences back to why a particular character jumped in for this epic war, narrating his part of the story, for example we can show the chariot of Bheeshma standing still, with other Kaurava chariots departing fast to battle the Pandava’s, as Duryodhana looks amazed questioning Bheeshma is he on the side of Kaurava’s or Pandava’s, on which he gets furious and answer’s back Duryodhana, “ Im not here to fight a personal battle like you, im here to fight for Hastinapur” from here the scenes flash back to events that brought Bheeshma to the war, even though he was suffering deep pain from within he chose to be on the wrong side, still fighting for the land he loved, for which he was committed to.
5) Coming down to the aesthetics of the movie, choosing of locales and using a mix of CGI and artificial sets all needs to be done very carefully as overdoing of CGI and artificial sets would kill the emotional side of the movie, the warrior dresses need to show the royalty of the characters still not too heavy and first of all should not look artificial, hair dressing of characters also would be important, accessories all would matter a lot.