Life on a 2000 acre screen

The travel schedule took me to Hyderabad and the two day stay at the Ramoji Film City was absolutely relaxing, to say the least. Pity there wasn't much time to explore all the areas as the stay was supposed to be work related :(

Ramoji Film City was declared by Guinness World Records as the World's largest integrated film studio complex. Well, when you spread the campus across 2000 acres of land, manned by a team of 7000 people & decorate the landscape with more than 90 different themed gardens, intersperse it with replicas of gardens and monuments from across the country and you need a whole fleet of buses just to take people from one spot to another what else can one expect? It has front facades of international airports, hospitals, post offices, central jails, railway engines, you just name any scene and they either have it already or can create an entire location in hours.

This location also has just received the Golden Pony Award for innovative and excellence by Games & Parks Industry. No wonder!

It offers preproduction & post production resources, 500 set locations, capacity to produce over 100 films simultaneously, more than 50 studio floors, locations, mock ups, set constructions, costumes and stage and an overall assurance that a film crew can just walk in and within days can walk out with a fully complete film ready for release...such is the comprehensiveness of the facilities here. Actually, the owner of this creation also happens to broadcast 12 television channels in multiple languages and the overall production happens here...it also houses the earth station for their bouqet of channels here.

I am not much of a filmoholic but the grand scale of the Film City,the sets and the facilities within the city seemed mind boggling. The Hotel was grand in structure as well as the comfort it offers with a fantastic pool surrounded by still grander tile designs. The professional service from the team here was the high light. The conference rooms are decorated in true filmi style...adding a lot of glamour to the official work.

There was also a practical demo of a stunt scene involving sliding along a rope, kicks and punches, electric flashes, bomb blasts etc ending with a free fall of one of the actors from a height of two story level.

While in the film city, I was thankful to the fact that I was not there as a producer as I could enjoy the grandeur without having to worry about how about the film's collections, or the availability of the actors or any awards!