Mirai Director Reveals Interesting Facts About ‘Sampathi’

Teja Sajja’s Mirai is currently performing well at the box office. On the release day, the movie opened to a good response, competing with Kishkindhapuri. Alongside, Little Hearts is also doing wonders at the box office currently. One of the major highlights of Mirai is the VFX work on which the team did not make any compromise. Interestingly, the bird Sampathi and its backstory on the screen received a positive response.

As many are of the view that Sampathi has been created in CGI, director Karthik Ghattamaneni has given clarity over the same, that it is not completely created in CGI but also uses animatronics.

“We made the bird Sampathi not completely in CGI. It was created using animatronics, designed like a real bird and operated with a remote control,” said Karthik.

The director revealed that there is only one person in India, operating from Mumbai, and working on animatronics. He created a huge bird-like creature, and the makers got it designed in such a way that it responds to the remote control. The team shot the sequences between Teja and Sampathi near Samshabad.

The makers are receiving a lot of appreciation for the technicalities in the movie. For instance, Karthik revealed that the particular underwater sequence between Teja and Sampathi has come out extremely well.

“The underwater sequence between Teja Sajja and Sampathi is the proudest cheat I pulled off in Mirai,” explained the director, who could not find a big pool that could fit the bird. They had to film the shots separately and scale it down to match it on the screen. Luckily, the audiences liked it and there were no complaints on it.

A homegrown team in Hyderabad has been assigned the job of performing VFX for the movie. People Media Factory bankrolled the film, which was released on Friday.