Harry Hingorani and Keitan Yadav talk about SRK immortalised in 3D print

Shah Rukh’s company Red Chillies has done something no production house in this country has done. The VFX team has made a life-size 3D print model, the first of its kind in the world.

With this, SRK becomes the first movie actor to be immortalised in this medium. Harry Hingorani and Keitan Yadav, VFX heads of Red Chillies tell us about this belated birthday gift to their boss.

How did the idea come up?
Harry: We stumbled upon the idea when we attended an autodesk event and they showed us a 3D printed iPhone cover. We wanted to gift something very special to SRK and Keitan came up with this idea to make a statue. Initially, the idea was to make it one or two feet in size. Then we learnt that even life-size printing is possible. We took around two months to make it while the printing took around three months to finish. So in about six months it was complete. It was ready in August and we wanted to present it to him on his birthday but Happy New Year was going on and then he got busy with Fan.

Was he aware that you were planning this?
Harry: I think he must have thought that we will give him something to do with computers. He was stunned when he saw this and he didn’t say anything for five minutes. He got very emotional towards the end and said he wanted to show it to his children first.

Do you plan to make the statue available for public viewing?
Harry: We will decide on that later. Shah Rukh has an idea of making a museum and print other stars of Bollywood. We have done Krrish and Ra.One too, so we already have those models in hand.

Does this statue weigh the same as SRK?
Keitan: No, this one is lighter, around 40 kilos.

Do you have a wish list of models you want to create?
Harry: First I wanted to create is G.One and Ra.one and the Krrish model. If we are making a sequel to Ra.One, then we will make statues of that too. Even 3D maps of a city can be created.
Keitan: Shah Rukh wants one with his abs, but that’s for later as he is busy with Fan now. I want to come up with weird, extreme things beyond our imagination. It could be anything. Say if we want to redo our office, we can create a model first and then work on it. It’s all about what you imagine.

How does it feel to revolutionise the concept of VFX in Hindi films?
Harry: You feel content. These days many VFX offices are shutting shop. But we are happy to be working on big movies and trying out new things.
Keitan: We are doing something very different for SRK’s next film Fan, it’s something that has never been tried before. That’s our next challenge.