Baahubali: The Beginning 2015

Baahubali: The Beginning  Interesting Facts

The director of the film, S.S. Rajamouli appears in a cameo as a liquor merchant.

The waterfalls scene in the movie is actually shot at a set of Athirapally Waterfalls in Kerala over which VFX were added to make it look real and larger than life. Creating the enormous waterfall took nearly 2 years as Makuta has to deal with a lot of complexity in fluid dynamics and simulations. The characterization of lead character Sivudu revolves around this humongous waterfalls.

Bahubali's advanced booking in a single theatre-Prasad's IMAX in Hyderabad accounted for around 1.2 crore. That's almost equal to 200,000 USD even before the release.

For the brutal warriors of Kalakeya, Madhan Karky created a language called Kilikili (or Kiliki), with 748 words and 40 grammar rules, said to be the first fictitious language to be created for an Indian film character. This language is heard in all versions of the film, regardless of the dubbing of other dialogue. In this language, basic words were first made up and opposites were represented by word reversals (for example: "me" was "min" and "you" was "nim"). The language, with 100 words, was called "Click" to highlight its simplicity.

Bahubali marks the first time Indian filmmakers have collaborated with AMD processors for VFX and animation.

Over 5000 junior artists worked for 200+ days for the war scene in the first part.

It took 200 days to construct all the sets in the movie on 20 acres of land with 1000 men working on it per day.

It took almost 1 year for pre-production work which was the longest for any Indian movie to date. The large-scale palaces, forts, and waterfalls were all created for the movie. Usually a 24-foot-high scale set is created, but for this movie the makers decided to go for 45-foot-high scaled sets.

Bahubali established a Guinness record for making the world's largest poster for a movie at Kochi during the film's Malayalam audio release. The poster had an area of 4,793.65 m² and it was achieved by Global United Media Company Pvt Ltd. This record has since been broken with a 5,969.61 m² poster for the film MSG 2 the Messenger (2015).

The role of Sivagami was first given to actress Sridevi who wanted 6 crores for accepting the role. The producers declined her demands and went to actress Ramya Krishnan which made a great casting choice for the part, according to the director.

The name 'Bahubali' means 'The one with strong arms'.

Every time there is violence against animals in the movie, an indication "C.G.I." appears in the lower left corner of the screen. This is to indicate that all the violence against animals was simulated through computer graphics and actual animals were not hurt. This is one of those rules the Indian censor board insists, like the anti-smoking warning.

20000 weapons are designed and used in the entire movie.

VFX of Baahubali cost more than 85 crore INR which is nearly 13.42 million USD.

Lead actor Prabhas had to gain muscle mass for the role as Bahubali as it was the part that was filmed first and then lose muscle mass for the role as Shivudu which was filmed later. The gym equipment he used cost up to 1.5 Crores INR. He even met WWE fighters for the physique.

The film is set in the 9th century.

90% of the movie was shot in Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

The first opening shot of the movie was filmed on the sets of Athirappilly Falls in Kerala and director S.S. Rajamouli specifically wanted a newborn baby for that scene. But the film-makers were unable to cast a newborn baby for that part. On that tight schedule, one of the production executives from Kerala informed about his newborn child to the director, and instantly the baby was cast.

First Telugu movie to be made with budget more than 100 crore Rs., at 180 crore Rs.. With the sequel's budget at 250 crore Rs., the total budget for the film series is 430 crore Rs. Both the first and second parts set records for the most expensive Indian films to date.

110 acres of land was utilized at Ramoji Film City to shoot war scenes.

The British Board of Film Classification passed the movie with a 15 rating (suitable only for 15 and over) for strong bloody violence. Interestingly, the Central Board of Film Certification (Indian censor board) passed the movie with a U/A certificate (with no cuts, even more surprising considering how strict the CBFC is for Telugu movies) which is the equivalent of BBFC's 12A rating.

The audio release had been conducted at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

This is the highest grossing South Indian, Hindi-dubbed movie.

Actress Nora Fatehi who was featured in the item song 'Manohari', in "Bahubali" suffered a wardrobe malfunction on the sets. Her top came off in front of the camera and lead actress Tamannaah Bhatia who was also present on the set, ran to her rescue.

According to director S.S. Rajamouli, his father Vijayendra Prasad narrated the story of Sivagami. He was so captivated by the opening act and wanted to make the movie on her. The character of Bahubali came very last and the script later changed into the story of Bahubali.

Story of this movie is from director S.S. Rajamouli's father Vijayendra Prasad. The music is composed by M.M. Keeravani who is S.S. Rajamouli's cousin.

The VFX for this movie were done in five countries, something which had never been done before for an Indian film.

Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) were filmed simultaneously. According to the director the sequel of the Bahubali is already 40 percent completed, and wanted to polish the script after getting first chapter's audience reaction.

Vijayendra Prasad is the screen writer of Bahubali, who is co-incidentally also the writer of Bollywood super-hit film Bajrangi Bhaijaan starring Salman Khan which was released on the following week.

It is said that when Rajamoulie pitched Baahubali to Prabhas, he said" I am making Lion King and you will get to play both Simba and Mufasa"

Its Hindi dubbed version broke several records by becoming the highest grossing dubbed film in India.

None of the characters smoke in the film.

The film was produced in Tollywood, the centre of Telugu language films in India.

3D printing technology was used to create the head of 100-foot Bhallaladeva's character in the movie and flexi foam was used to create amours to make them light weight and to have the look of leather.

The international version of the film is 20 minutes shorter than the original one, done by Vincent Tabaillon and was screened at Busan International Film Festival. The international version of the film was released in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Philippines, Timor-Leste along with some European and Latin American countries.

The snow episodes in the film were shot in Bulgaria.

To make the swords lightweight, carbon fibre was used instead of steel, the same material used in manufacture of helicopter blades.

Prabhas had to postpone his marriage plans for this movie and had dedicated himself for five years just for the films.

Director S.S. Rajamouli revealed that Baahubali is inspired by the epic Mahabharata.

Though Mahismati is a name of a ancient kingdom in India, it literally means, "A city or country ruled by Mahishman". Since, there is no mention of Mahishman in the film, it translates as "Kingdom of Buffaloes" in Sanskrit which doesn't even stick with the plot. On the other hand, the Tamil name of the city is Magilmathi, which translates "A land of happy people".

During the shoot of Dhivara song, the lead actress Tamannaah Bhatia who had no time to go to her vanity van and change her dress, had to exchange her clothes at the shooting spot with a cloth against while she's dressing. S.S. Rajamouli notified this during the audio launch of the film.

More than 90 percent of the film had visually enhanced shots, a total of 2500 VFX shots.

Tau Films from Malaysia was responsible for creating the CGI bison, while Prasad EFX from Hyderabad was responsible for some shots in pre and post battle episodes involving digital multiplication. Prasad was also responsible for creating a 3D image of Kattappa and mapping his head on to a duplicate actor in one of the scenes.

One of the films featured in BBC's documentary on 100 Years of Indian Cinema directed by Sanjeev Bhaskar.

The film was produced by Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni and was shot in both Telugu and Tamil. This film was also dubbed into Malayalam and Hindi.

With a worldwide box office gross of 650 crore Rs. (USD 91 million), it became the highest-grossing film in India, third highest-grossing Indian film worldwide, and highest-grossing South Indian film, at the time of its release.

In February 2011, S.S. Rajamouli announced that Prabhas will star in his upcoming movie.

As of July 2015, the film series was considered the most expensive in India.

According to the producer, more than 600 VFX artists worked for the film from 18 facilities around the world led by Makuta VFX and Firefly in Hyderabad, Prasad Studios in Hyderabad and Chennai, Annapurna Studios in Hyderabad, Tau Films in Malaysia, and Dancing Digital Animation and Macrograph in South Korea.

The film boasts of one year pre production work where in 15,000-story board sketches for the film were created which is highest for any Indian Film till date.

Makuta VFX which had prior experience of working with S.S. Rajamouli was chosen as principal visual effects studio.

The cinematography of the movie was done by KK Senthil Kumar for 380 days using Arri Alexa XT camera with Master Prime lens marking S.S. Rajamouli's first film using digital camera.

Most of the film was shot in ArriRaw format in 4:3 aspect ratio while ArriRaw 16.9 was used for slow motion shots at 120 fps.

For the first time in Indian movies, 4K movie print was rendered with an aspect ratio of 1:1.88 as compared to Cinemascope at 1:2.35 to get the best cinematic experience in screens that support the 4K projection claimed the Producer.

Annapurna Studios from Hyderabad was chosen as digital intermediate partner for the film which is responsible for generating the digital feed with the best colour and audio for editing.

Open Gate format, which can use the full 3.4K sensor in the camera to produce frames larger than the standard ArriRaw format was tapped in to get the maximum image quality in VFX shots.

Reacting to media reports on the same VFX team for Baahubali and Jurassic World, producer Shobu Yarlagadda denied outright any such collaboration, calling such claims an internet rumour.

Firefly Creative Studio which is also based out of Hyderabad worked primarily on the avalanche and the war sequences which accounts for nearly 25 minutes of the film.

In an interview with Quartz, the co-founder of Makuta VFX stated, "Most of Baahubali was developed in Hyderabad, home to Tollywood, and used local talent.

For the first time in Indian movies, Academy Color Encoding System workflows were implemented along with Infinitely Scalable Information Storage keeping in mind the mammoth scale of digitally enhanced shots in the film.

Arka Media Works, production company of Baahubali, teamed up with AMD to use the state of the art FirePro GPUs W9100 and W8100 during the post production of the film which are capable of rendering 4K content in real time and are considered the best in Industry to date.

Lahari Music acquired the audio rights in early May 2015 for an amount of 30 million Rs. and the audio is accessible from YouTube.

Lyrics for the three songs were penned by Inaganti Sundar and Ananta Sriram, Ramajogayya Sastry, K Shiva Shakti Datta and Chaitanya Prasad were written one each while Aditya and Noel Sean wrote the lyrics for the last song.

The music rights for the Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam versions of the soundtrack were acquired by T-Series. Zee Music Company bought the audio rights of the Hindi version of soundtrack.

A record number of 1600 screens in Telugu, 1500 screens in Hindi, 350 in Tamil and 225 screens in Malayalam were booked for the release.

Arka International, which is the sales arm for International release has made arrangements to release the movie in Germany and 70 other territories. The producer Shobu Yarlagadda who struck the deal at Busan Asian Film Market also revealed his plans to release the movie in Latin America, Germany and European countries. BlueSky Cinemas, Inc. acquired the theatrical screening and distribution rights in United States and Canada. MVP Entertainment is set to release the movie in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Timor-Leste countries. Twin Co which is a leading distributor for international films in Japan has acquired the rights for screening of the film. Sun Distribution acquired the distribution rights of the movie in Latin American countries while Creative Century Entertainment got the rights for Taiwan. In Korea, the movie is scheduled to be released via Entermode Corp. Producers of the film have planned to release the film in China in over 5000 screens in November 2015 by E Stars Films. The film was released in USA a day earlier by BlueSky Cinemas in 135 screens.

As the sequel Baahubali: The Conclusion was released on 28 April 2017, the producers and distributors re-released the first part (Hindi) again on 7 April 2017.

The film was screened at various film festivals like Open Cinema Strand of Busan International Film Festival, Indian Film Festival The Hague, Sitges Film Festival in Spain, Utopiales Film Festival in France, Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei, Taiwan, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, L'Etrange International Film Festival in Paris, Five Flavours Film Festival in Poland, Hawaii International Film Festival in Honolulu, Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival in Brussels, Belgium, Cannes Film Festival in France, Transilvania International Film Festival in Romania, Le Grand Rex in Paris, Kurja Polt Horror Film Festival, Festival de Lacamo, 8th BRICS summit, and the 2016 Indian Panorama section of the International Film Festival of India, Goa.

A cosplay event was held in which chosen winners were given a chance to visit the sets of the film.

A special skit was performed by the Baahubali team for the event named Memu Saitham to help the victims affected by Cyclone Hudhud.

Baahubali: The Beginning on the first day of its release collected 75 crore Rs. (USD10 million) worldwide which was the highest opening ever for an Indian film until Kabali surpassed it in 2016 by earning 875 million Rs. (USD12 million).

It became the first South Indian film to gross 3 billion Rs. (USD42 million) worldwide, reaching there in 9 days, and subsequently grossed 4.01 billion Rs. (USD56 million) worldwide in 15 days.

By the end of 50 days, International Business Times estimated that the film grossed an approximate 5.95 billion Rs. (USD83 million) crore worldwide.

It grossed around 500 million Rs. (USD7.0 million) on its first day of release in India from all four versions (Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi).

The Beginning opened to 100 percent occupancy in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and close to 70 percent occupancy in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

It had the fourth biggest opening weekend ever in India.

Both the Tamil and Telugu versions won several awards in their respective categories, including Best Film, Best Director for S.S. Rajamouli, and Best Supporting Actress for Krishnan at the 1st IIFA Utsavam.

The film collected around 200 million Rs. (USD2.8 million) in its first day from the international markets.

'Baahubali' is inspired by 'Mahabharata', and the upcoming second part is also inspired by 'Mahabharata'," said S.S. Rajamouli. Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli says he sought inspiration for his forthcoming mega project "Baahubali: The Beginning" from the epic "Mahabharata"

The word Baahubali is a Hindi word and a misnomer in modern times. It is generally used for criminals who do the dirty deeds for politicians or in a way act as a muscle for them. This is prevalent especially in northern India in states of UP and Bihar.

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