Hindi
VFX keeps filmmakers away from shoot at railway stations
MUMBAI: Only a handful of films like Ra.One, Mere Brother Ki Dulhan and Mausam feature railway stations, according to a Central Railway report.
Revenue from that particular window has dipped by 60 per cent compared to that of 2009-10. The reason being cited is that filmmakers tend to make use of latest technologies like visual effects (VFX).
With the technology around, filmmakers have been desisting to go out to shoot on location for sometime now. What they primarily need are the basic shots that are later interspersed with objects, people and effects. Through this, film units save on time as well as money.
For the shooting of Ra.One, the makers used the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus for a day, though it had an elaborate sequence of a train ramming into the station forcefully, cutting through the platform and the station boundary walls and toppling on to the road only to be stopped by Shah Rukh Khan’s character with one hand in the exteriors of the station. It is said that the producers paid the CR Rs 125,000 for the shoot.
“The shot looked so elaborate on screen, making the film audience wonder as to how many days it must have taken to shoot the entire sequence. But, with the help of VFX, a few shots of the train and the station sufficed the wants of the makers. The rest was done by our visual effects team,” said Red Chillies VFX CEO Keitan Yadav.
Only 13 production houses including Red Chillies Entertainment, Excel Entertainment and Yash Raj Films shot at Central Railway locations in 2011-’12 compared to 28 in 2009-’10 and 19 in 2010-’11.
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.
