Ramoji Film City - Movie Magic

Today, we (Rayo, Mahi & me) went to Ramoji Film City at Hyderabad - the world's largest film studio unit. It's about 30 kms from Hyderabad.

We set out at 9:30 am and reached there by about 10:30 am, thanks to the traffic. It has a pretty impressive gate to enter from.

Strangely, though they do have an Internet registration facility, you still need to go to counter #4 to present the generated Internet number in exchange for a physical ticket. Sadly, there wasn't anyone at counter #4, and we had to stand in the general line to get our tickets. After which there was another line to get into the public transport buses for the first stint inside. Private vehicles aren't allowed inside the Film City. We had to park ours in the parking lot just inside the main gate and climb aboard standard buses which took us a couple of kilometers inside to a staging area. This is the central area within the film city, where four bus bays have been setup. Bus Bays 1 & 2 are for internal tours, while bays 3 & 4 are for buses which take you back to the entrance and the parking lot. The internal tour buses are quite quaint and nice. Kind of remind you of the old British Raj.

The central areas have a number of small areas such as Eureka, Fundoostan, Alampana (a theatre) etc. These cater to kids amusement games, cultural shows, etc.

The first stop that we made was to see as to how a movie is made. The movie clip that they were shooting was Sholay, and the person in-charge asked for a Female volunteer to do the role of Basanti. This area was divided into three sections - The first would do just the filming, the second would add in the sound, and the third section would have the final movie projected. Quite neat. He had Basanti sit in a cart, and two other volunteers would rock it from side to side to simulate the movement.The background was a traditional blue screen, on which they superimposed the bandits on horseback chasing her. In the sound section, a couple of volunteers took over few of the instruments to simulate the sounds emanating from the horses hooves on the road, the banging and creaking from the wooden card, the whistling of the wind, etc. In the last section, they showcased the entire movie, and boy was it funny. All in all it was really good. Quite similar to the one in universal studios at Los Angeles.

After this we took the guided tour and boarded the buses. The bus took us through the various production houses, as well as gave us useful tidbits of information, such as the fact that the entire area of the Film city was 2000 acres of which 1300 had already been developed. The film city also employs 8000 employees at any given time!! That's a lot! As part of the tour we also saw 4-in-1 sets, wherein the elevation on each side was different. We had the Airport, hospital, high court and library as one of these sets. We also ambled through the London street, the south Indian sets, central jail(s), etc. The tour guide also showed us a number of gardens such as the Japanese gardens, Sierra Hills, Arizona Garden, Mughal Gardens, Maze Gardens, and the Legs Garden, etc. Our tour guide was also a jovial sort of person, and kept the crowd quite entertained. The tour ended at The Hawa Mahal at the top of a Hillock, post which people could amble down all the gardens and lawns and land back at Eureka for games or departure. We spent some time ambling back and finally reached Eureka and then subsequently through the gaming zone, to Bus Bay #4, for our trip back to the parking lot. All in all, the place is worth one visit, though personally I felt that it could do with some more organization as well as proper crowd control.