Creature tales

Bipasha Basu and Imran Abbas are horrified to see the creature in the bus

For director Vikram Bhatt shooting for Creature 3D, a sci-fi fantasy film was interesting, but at the same time very challenging. Being the first creature film (a movie that features a giant monster) made in India, it was also a unique experience for the cast and crew. Since the creature who terrifies everyone was going to be added later through VFX, the actors had to imagine the creature’s presence and make the correct interaction.
“Except for me, no one else knew how big or tall the creature was, how fast he could walk or run and a lot was left to their imagination when shooting,” explained Bhatt.
The shooting was complex and could be very tedious at times, and the director goes on to explain how he went about shooting certain scenes in the film. For instance there was a scene that required the creature to pound very hard on a door and his hand smashes through.
“Since there was no creature, the question was how did one show the door breaking apart. If we had someone standing nearby to break it, then he would be seen. We needed to make a hole in the door without anybody being seen. So I figured out where exactly the creature would hit the door and break it. We tied cables to that particular spot and pulled them hard to show the desired effect. After that we used elements from another shot and superimposed them on this shot to eliminate the cables. It was quite a complex procedure,” he said.
Bhatt goes on to explain another scene where the creature enters a hotel, and when the hotel’s cook closes the door on spotting him, his hand gets caught in the door. That’s when the cook picks up a bottle of beer and brings it down hard on the hand, the creature removes his hand and the guy manages to close the door. “Here the problem was how much of the door had to be kept ajar for which we had to take measurements of the hand. Since there was no hand, the cook had to bring the bottle crashing down on a rod! But the minute we broke the bottle on the rod, it turned a different shade on becoming wet, because of the reaction of the liquid on the metal. We had to paint the rod to prevent the colour change,” he said.
Creature 3D which has Bipasha Basu in the lead and introduces Pakistani actor Imran Abbas, is produced by T-Series and releases on September 12.