Sabu Cyril on a roll

Noted art director Sabu Cyril is on a roll. The set he has put for Shankar-directed Endhiran starring superstar Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has become a major tourist attraction.

The set for the climax scene, erected behind an entertainment complex on the ECR near Chennai, is reported to have cost around Rs 5 crore. It is definitely the most expensive set put up for a Tamil film. The sequence shot on this expensive set will have Rajinikanth, who plays a scientist, fighting with 100 and more robots which are his look-alikes!
Sabu Cyril has revolutionised the concept of an art director in Indian cinema. Today, he is one of the busiest production designers (as Hollywood would call him) in Indian cinema.

Currently, Sabu is the art director for three Bollywood films and Endhiran is his first film in Tamil in five years, after Shankar’s Anniyan.

Says Sabu, “I’m doing more work in Bollywood because the budgets are bigger there which gives you room to experiment. But as far as Endhiran is concerned, it is close to my heart as it is my 100th film as an art director. I’ve been fascinated by the project ever since director Shankar narrated the script. I had originally signed up for the project 10 years ago, when Shankar was planning to do it with Kamal Haasan.

We had even done a photo shoot then. Later, SRK was supposed to do it, but that too did not work out. Now, Rajinikanth is doing it and he is the right choice.”

Sabu has always been innovative and uses new materials for constructing film sets. He had remarked in an earlier interview that the perception of an art director had changed from being seen more like a carpenter who does the sets to wizards who give life to the film. Today, with the art director being consulted on everything from the colour scheme to the lead actor’s wardrobe, he had also requested that the term art directors be replaced with their Hollywood equivalent, production designers.

In Endhiran, Sabu is using aluminum composite panel (ACP) for creating the sets. “Endhiran is the first film in India to use ACP to create eco-friendly sets, which unlike wood, can be recycled and cost only a third of the price of wood,” says Sabu and adds, “And structure wise, we have used scaffolding as support system.”

Today, directors like Mani Ratnam, Shankar, Priyadarsan, Farah Khan and actors like Shah Rukh Khan want only Sabu for their films, but he just does not have the dates.

“I love doing sci-fi as we have to do it on a limited budget, but at the same time, come up with sets that compete with Hollywood. I’ll prove with Endhiran, the biggest challenge in my life, that we are on par with the best in the world,” he signs off.