Ram Gopal Varma Blog #171. The Third Dimension

After getting hit by the incredibly enormous impact of AVATAR and then once you get over the dazzling Special EFX and the unimaginable imagination of James Cameron if you just concentrate solely on only the 3D aspect of it you will see that it surely and clearly opens up a new dimension for any kind of cinema not necessarily only for huge mega budget special EFX films like Avatar.

Not that 3D is a completely new phenomenon. I still remember standing in the line to get tickets for “Chota Chetan” at Ramakrishna 70mm in Hyderabad and wondering what exactly 3D means. When I finally got to see it I was blown away with the effect of objects seemingly coming out of the screen onto me. “Chota Chetan” was one film which used the 3D effect sparingly and correctly by not over doing it and making people constantly conscious that they are watching a 3D film. In short both the narrative and the 3D effect merged seamlessly in “Chota Chetan”.

In the subsequent films after “Chota Chetan” most of the 3D films have over done it so much that the effect almost became a point of irritation than that of enhancement.

A few months back I announced my intention to make a horror film in 3D tentatively titled “Warning” but on second thoughts I felt that making a mere horror film is not enough especially if it’s going to be the first 3D film ever in Indian cinema with the new enhanced 3D technology developed since the days of “Chota Chetan”. Even the subject matter should be novel and deserving enough and also wider in both scope and scale than anything that has been seen so far, and after a long deliberation I came to a conclusion that there is only one genre that Bollywood never really truly seriously made a film on and that is of the Adventure genre and this in spite of Hollywood paving the way, since a long long time.

I was always fascinated with the Adventure genre films of Hollywood like “MacKenna’s Gold”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” etc. Men out of greed or courage daring to tread into dangerous territories in the hope of achieving their desires or amassing fortunes always made a compelling story telling. It is a very identifiable emotion and if this kind of a story is set in exotic locations and packed with never before seen sequences and on top of that if shot in 3D I have no doubt that the combined effect is going to be absolutely mesmeric.

If 2D succeeds in making the audience feel that they are watching things happening to somebody else up there on the screen, 3D makes us feel that we are there with that somebody in the screen and what’s happening to them is happening to us too.

Set against hitherto unseen landscapes and mountainous locations and deep dark caves and also along sharply dropping cliffs being battered by giant waves my 3D film tentatively titled *“RAKSHA”* is being designed to have very high intensity action sequences along with nail biting sequences of suspense laced with constant sharp twists and turns, and it will also have a very wide array of dynamically different characters and all these are going to be captured and visually highlighted in the unparalleled cinematic experience of 3D.

The script work is almost completed and I am beginning to cast in a month or two and I am going to start shooting as soon as “Rakta Charitra” is over.

After over doing gangster films and horror films I think it’s high time that I add a new dimension to my career and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that I am embarking on “RAKSHA” my new 3D Adventure.

Let the expedition begin!