If you thought that Baahubali had some really stunning special effects, wait till its sequel hits the screen next year.
The makers are deploying technology to create an experience that has never been done even in Hollywood.
A 360-degree camera, called Bb360 — a combination of 24 high-end cameras rolled into one — has been created to shoot the movie in a way that viewers can not only get a 3D effect at the cinema halls but also experience the movie as though they are on the sets, getting a 360-degree view of every scene.
This has been made possible through a partnership with chipmaker AMD. Two years ago, just before the completion of Baahubali:The Beginning , director SS Rajamouli met his cousin Raja Koduri, currently the Senior Vice-President and Chief Architect of the AMD Radeon Technologies Group, and discussed how the sequel can be turned into a “mind-boggling experience” for the audience.
Under Koduri, chipmaker AMD decided to partner with Baahubali to build the special camera. “ Baahubali is the first movie to be created using the camera. In fact, as soon as we built the camera, we took it to Hyderabad. We are calling it the sword of Baahubali ,” Koduri told BusinessLine , talking about the camera that cost them ₹10 crore and six months to build.
“It is nothing that anyone has seen in Hollywood or even the gaming world. No one has created the scale of this experience. The scale of the experience is so high that it needs our next generation GPU that is not yet released,” Koduri said.
While the project with Baahubali was the first such technology collaboration for AMD, the company says it is already getting requests from half a dozen Hollywood studios requesting for the camera used to shoot the Baahubali sequel.
The company is now looking at similar partnerships with Indian and Hollywood studios and is considering licensing the 360-degree camera technology and create a new revenue stream altogether.
“Right now we created it as a proof of concept as a technology. But we will do partnerships with other studios like we did with Baahubali . I have half a dozen Hollywood studios lined up to use this camera. They are quite upset why it is sitting at Hyderabad right now,” Koduri said.
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