Hindi
Roadside Romeo nominated for American animation award
NEW DELHI: Even as India anxiously awaits the outcome of the Oscars, Roadside Romeo, directed by Jugal Hansraj, has been nominated by the Hollywood-based Visual Effects Society (VES) in the category of “Outstanding Animation in an Animated Motion Picture”.
The film, which had animation by Tata Elxsi‘s Visual Computing Labs (VCL) studios in Mumbai, will compete with films like Bolt (Walt Disney Pictures), Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation), Wall-E (Disney-Pixar), and Waltz With Bashir (Sony Pictures Classics).
Roadside Romeo was released in October last year and had the voices of Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Jaaved Jafferi, Sanjay Mishra, and Tanaaz Currim with lyrics by Jaideep Sahni and music by Salim Sulaiman.
The Visual Effects Society, with more than 1,800 members in 17 countries, is the entertainment industry‘s only organisation representing the full breadth of visual effects practitioners including artists, technologists, studio leaders, supervisors and producers in all areas of entertainment from film, television and commercials to music videos and games. The 7th Annual VES Awards will be presented on 21 February in Los Angeles.
A co-production of Walt Disney Pictures and Yash Raj Films, Roadside Romeo was named best animated film at the 15th Annual Star Screen Awards in Mumbai.
Roadside Romeo is considered to be India‘s first purely-entertainment animated theatrical motion picture, including eight original songs and five fully-choreographed musical numbers. This film departs significantly from the previous crop of animation films in India, in that it is a fully 3D animation movie, and follows a classic Bollywood formula as compared to the scores of 2D animated films based on mythology. Tata Elxsi – VCL‘s lead creative team on Roadside Romeo, individually named by the VES, includes Pankaj Khandpur – creative director and production head, Sherry Bharda – creative supervisor; Shrirang Sathaye – animation director, and Suhael Merchant – animation director.
According to Khandpur, “Our team got involved in the creative process right from the beginning. When Jugal Hansraj shared with us the script, we began conceptualising each individual character and their environments and we began to draw them, the old fashioned way, using pencil and paper. This process lasted three months. Once this stage was completed, we began storyboarding the film, illustrating each and every scene throughout the film. This was followed by the animatics‘ process – our first look at how all characters will move and interact with each other. The animation pre-production process took about 4 months, eventually overlapping the start of actual production.”
“For the full-blown production,” Khandpur explained, “VCL had an entirely in-house crew averaging 120 artists who worked on Roadside Romeo for over 15 months. The VCL team included modelers, riggers, animators, lighters and compositors, supported by texture artists, render wranglers and a core team of technical programmers. At the peak, we had a 170 member team working on this project. We have earned this nomination though the quality of our work, and yet the production cost of Roadside Romeo was a fraction of the production costs for major Hollywood CGI animated films.”
In addition to animating Roadside Romeo, Tata Elxsi Ltd‘s VCL division has created special effects for many significant films in like Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Jodhaa Akbar, Taare Zameen Par (India‘s official Entry to the Oscars), Rang De Basanti and Dhoom 2.VCL has also worked with other leading US entertainment companies including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), Lionsgate, Mike Young Productions, MGM, and STARZ/Film Roman.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
