A riveting piece of film history in Hyderabad is bound up in Ramoji Film City, Nitish Roy, and the conjunctions of art and architecture.
The following is the story about one of the iconic spaces of our city. Ramoji Rao garu asked Nitish Roy, who was working on the set design of the film Loafer in Hyderabad and the winner of several National awards for art direction by then, to join him to build Ramoji Film City.
This story is illustrative of the important tie between architecture and art direction. A tie that is built on a shared purpose in the creative use of spaces and in making spaces speak. Both disciplines work to shape our sense of space and place by expressing and incorporating ideas, emotions, and cultural values in the construction of that space. They are not the same, but they ravel and unravel together with details of texture, light-shadow, elements, and tools to establish the genius loci or the spirit of the place.
In the career of Nitish Roy, we see both disciplines come together to leave a lasting legacy for the world of cinema in the form of Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad.
Roy says, “Fortunately or unfortunately, I went to Art College, the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata. A senior who was a stage director asked me to help him.” This was the start of an award-winning career (National awards for art direction in Kharij, Mandi, Lekin, Ghayal, etc.) spanning films, television, and architecture. Of the several national and international awards he has won, he says that they were important in giving external validation for his work but also in making him see what was getting a response in his work, what was effective in his creative output, and how he could improve and build upon it.
In this art direction and set design work that he did in films and television (in T.V: Bharat ek Khoj, Mirza Ghalib, Tamas, Chanakya…) he says that the understanding of art, knowing the medium he was working in, a sense of history and architecture & of how sets and spaces speak, was crucial in elevating the level of his work to being worthy of awards: “As an art director, working in this realm required a deep sense of restraint, historical context, and authenticity. The aim was not just to tell a story, but to transport the audience into the world of the characters. I had to make sure every detail, from the sets to the props, was true to the era, social class, or environment depicted.”
It was in viewing the work of legends like Bimal Roy, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, and Satyajit Ray that he absorbed how art direction helped to fructify the vision of the project. He says, “Hitchcock was a master of sets and camera.” He mentioned that he had heard, after viewing Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, that the wall paintings in its set were inspired by the flow of life feeling in Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings. Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali was shot mostly on set, with some outdoor shots as well. “It was the first film I saw with this natural ambience. Hits like Awara and Shri 420 were very good films, but you can see they were shot on a stage.” He remembers the iconic shot of the train with the children running in the countryside in Pather Panchali. “It was shot in a village near Kolkata. It looks like a mofussil town. I went there and got to know they had shot there. I made a studio there called Purple Studio.”
He likes the work in The Lord of the Rings. “It is a fantasy, and as Art Direction, it has wonderful work.” While working on the renowned international production Gladiator in 1999, he was on his toes, delivering world-class sets while meeting near-impossible deadlines. “During those days, there was no internet access, and I started working with only a hastily collected library of coffee-table books on the Roman Empire and its architecture. I and my entire team of artists, sculptors, painters, and mould-makers worked out of a granite factory borrowed from a friend at Chinna Toopran in Timmapur.”
The result was an internationally renowned, iconic blockbuster film. And the sets and props designed by Roy and made with his team in Timmapur played their part in this success.
Speaking with Roy, it is clear that an art director with a solid understanding of architecture is at a significant advantage, as architectural knowledge directly impacts the creation of immersive, believable, and visually compelling worlds. It is essential in the creation of such spaces that guide the audience in the tone and location of the narrative. “As an art director, the “tools” aren’t limited to software or hardware; they also include skills like creative intuition, an eye for composition, and the ability to adapt to new technologies. My tool kit comprises of 3D’s – i.e., Dedication, Determination, and Devotion.”
“I was at my peak in the Mumbai film industry. Earlier, they used to say, ‘Yeh toh art film karta hai, commercial nahin (He only does art films, not commercial films)’. Then I did Ghaayal, Parinda, and Jo Jeeta Vahi Sikander, which became super hits.” As it happened, Roy had also been working in television and started building big sets outside the studio floor with serials like Tamas, Chanakya, and Mirza Ghalib. So he had a body of experience behind him when he was asked to build another big set.
This one was for designing the set and art direction of the Padmalaya Studios film Loafer (with the stars Anil Kapoor & Juhi Chawla).
As he tells the story: “One day on the set of Boney Kapoor’s Loafer in Hyderabad, a gentleman came up to me and said, ‘Nitish garu, I am from Mayuri films. Our chairman would like to visit the set and meet you. I immediately agreed. The next morning, a white ambassador drew up, then another, then another… a total of 25 white ambassadors came. We were amazed and wondered who this was for. What was this Mayuri films? I was awed by my ignorance. How could I know MGM, 20 Century Fox, Paramount, U A and not know the name Mayuri films and its 25 motorcade chairman?”
It was Ramoji Rao, the Eenadu newspaper baron, the Marga Darshi chit fund baron, the Priya foods baron. And a baron of many other industries. Rao came in a white ambassador with 4 more cars, making a total of 30 cars. Later, I found out this was to confuse any assailants and part of his security protection protocol.”
“The man who emerged from the car was very tall, well built in a white safari suit and matching sneakers with a simple, polite, down-to-earth manner and no airs whatsoever. He shook my hand, saying, ‘Normally I would not disturb a set and shooting, but I have been told about your set and wish to see it.’
I showed him around. I had made a small model of the set. He saw that too. At the end of the visit, he invited me to meet him the next day. The next morning, a car picked me up from my hotel and whizzed me out, and I found myself at the Eenadu office. We went up in a private lift to the third floor, and I found myself sitting opposite Ramoji Rao himself, hearing him say, ‘Can you help me with my dream of building a Film City?’ He told me he wanted me to be part of his dream project of making a Film City, to design the whole thing!”
And so began the project of creating the best film city in the world: Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. The next day, work started. It was 1993. I stayed in Sitara Hotel (I designed the hotel too) inside the site for 7 years. In 2000, the project was completed.”
This dream was realized, and it stands today as an evocative icon of Hyderabad’s film industry, indeed an icon of the Indian Film Industry, renowned all over the world.
This post was last modified on April 23, 2025 9:04 pm