Telugu cinema's very own Babe'

Ravi Babu has made a name for himself as a director with unique concepts in films like Allari, Anasuya, Avunu,and Nachavule. His latest film is unique too…it’s about a piglet. “Yes, the piglet is the hero of my new film. Shooting is over and it’s now in post-production,” says Ravi Babu.

“The thought just came to me and I immediately wanted to try it. I developed it into a story, and since it is not possible to make a story with only a piglet, I added a few human characters too,” he adds.

“After I completed my script, I went through all films made around pigs. The Hollywood film Babe was a big hit but it had many other animals too,” he says.

For Babe, the makers had trained nearly 150 pure breed piglets and had also used animation. “Such a high budget would not work for us, so I decided to do a research on the subject,” he says. “I contacted a person who runs a farm and asked him to supply a piglet. It’s very expensive to maintain pure breed pigs. But I am an animal lover, so it wasn’t a problem for me,” he says.

“It was a big challenge. I had to make it believable, which was the hard part,” he says. He narrated the story to Suresh Babu. “I told him that I wanted to make a film with a pig. He first laughed and asked me whether I was serious. I said I was and narrated the story. He immediately said ‘go ahead’ and not to worry about finances,” he adds.

The director then went abroad to get the equipment. “Because it’s not always possible to shoot with a live piglet, I had to create a piglet. I went abroad and enquired about the parts, which cost almost as much as a big actor’s remuneration. I decided to go for an animatronics piglet, which is a new technology,” he says. The same technology was used in Jurassic Park. “I have taken ideas from JNTU sculptures. It took nearly seven months to create the animatronics piglet,” he says.

“Every day was difficult. Sometimes we couldn’t shoot even a single shot as we faced some problem or the other with the technology. One day the pig just fell to pieces... we needed a lot of patience. Luckily, my staff stood by me,” says the director, who spent almost '2 crore to create the animatronics piglet.

He is introducing Abhishek and Naba as the lead pair. “Initially, I thought that everyone would be scared of the piglet, but they all loved it. Naba would even feed it.”

Ravi Babu has also acted in the film as a real estate businessman.
“It’s the story of a real piglet that lives in a city and unfortunately encounters many humans. There are emotions, funny incidents and even action scenes. It’s about the piglet’s adventure while dealing with humans,” says the director.