In the final segment of this interview, Shankar remembers that time he envisioned bringing three of his iconic characters in one film, the challenge of pulling off grand ideas, handling VFX-driven action, and more.
Edited excerpts:
At a recent event, you mentioned that you envisioned a Shankar Cinematic Universe at one point.
I got this idea while shooting Robo in 2007-08. I called my ADs (assistant directors) and told them about this idea of doing a film with the main characters from Indian, Mudhalvan, and Sivaji — three of them fighting for a common cause. They looked at me as though there was something wrong with me. They just laughed it off. I then brought this up with my chief technicians; they didn’t react either. So I left it thinking it was just one of those ideas that wouldn’t work out. A few years later, the first Avengers movie came out, and I thought I should’ve gone ahead with my idea. That’s why I keep telling all my assistants that if they get a crazy thought tomorrow, they should go ahead and do it without hesitation, or else someone else would. Some guy in some corner of the world would’ve thought of such ideas, and it’s better to do it before he does.
Does the word ‘impossible’ exist in the vocabulary of Shankar?
Well, it does get quite challenging when pondering numerous ideas, but I only go ahead if I know it’s possible to execute them. With every new film, you get a slightly higher budget, and then you start thinking about how best to pull off something within the given budget. I have kept aside some ideas that were deemed impossible. (Laughs) I will think about it when the right time arrives.
When watching a film, most audiences judge the story. If it’s good, the film becomes good, and vice versa. But beyond that, there’s the craft. Could you give an example of a scene that was so difficult to stage?
There are many, but there are two scenes in particular from Enthiran: The wedding scene where the evil Chitti kidnaps someone is one. A scene would’ve been simple, but, at the time, it would’ve been tough to do. The other scene is where they are trying to find out Vaseegaran among all of them. That whole portion was arduous from start to end. Generally, the action choreographers handle the action but in Enthiran, it was all VFX-action. I have to imagine all the visual effects areas because it’s only in my mind, right? So, to effectively convey my requirements, I was forced to write a VFX-action script. Then came the shot division, camera angles, lensing… all these, I had to choose personally. It’s very time-consuming and since the DoPs (directors of photography) are usually so busy, they can’t find the time to sit for everything. Each element had to be carefully thought out in pre-vis.
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