If you watch and listen to the trailer and songs of the upcoming movie Aby starring Vineeth Sreenivasan, you would find that the aeroplane motif is prominent. You would see the character Aby sitting in his workshop and experimenting with different materials to make his dream aeroplane. Even the ambience of his workspace is in sync with his dream. Shiji Pattanam, the production designer of the film and brain behind this entire setting, says that it was a Herculean task.
“Showing the making of an aeroplane and its flight is no easy task. One needs to have sound technical know-how to do that,” says Shiji who learnt those skills from his mentor T. Muthuraj, a popular production designer. Shiji has been assisting him for the past 20 years. He was part of Muthuraj’s popular projects such as Robot, Pazhassiraja, Angadi Theru, Waiting and Theri. “That experience really helped me in executing Aby well. Muthuraj is my school. I have worked in almost all departments of art direction while working with him,” says Shiji, who did a thorough background research prior to starting the project.
“First, I studied about aeroplanes. Our director introduced me to Ashok Mehta, an aircraft expert in Bengaluru. I got a good amount of information about aircraft making from him. Then, there was Umayal Subramaniam and Geetha to help me with the mechanical aspects. It took me around one month to study the various aspects of aeroplane making. Then, as the movie is developing through three time periods, I had to concentrate on that also,” he says. “Everything was done in tune with the dream of Aby,” adds Shiji, a fine arts graduate, who began his journey almost 20 years ago. He was into advertising first and then moved to cinema.
“Guru was my first project when I met Muthuraj. Since then I have been with him. In between, I have done a few independent projects such as Aparichithan.” Shiji wants to continue his stride in art direction. He has three projects in the pipeline. However, working with the Aby team instilled in him a new thought. He is planning to launch a website on aeroplanes. He wants to share the knowledge he has acquired as part of the research for the film.
