Mumbai: Filmmaker Shakun Batra stole the spotlight at IFP Season 16 on Day 2 with his insightful masterclass, ‘POST is the New PRE’, at Mumbai’s Mehboob Studio. Exploring how technology is reshaping the filmmaking process, Batra shared how he would approach the yacht sequences in Gehraiyaan differently today and offered a glimpse into his experiments with hybrid filmmaking through his new venture, Jouska AI.
Shakun weighed in on how AI is reshaping filmmaking, pointing to the response to the Ramayana trailer as an example of how accessible large-scale visual creation has become. “Previously I was just competing with a bunch of filmmakers who got budgets to make a film. Now there are kids who are going to be making insanely big-looking films. I mean, you saw that, right? Ramayana’s trailer came out, and then there were kids building what they think Ramayana would look like. And I think that’s going to happen to everyone,” he shared, adding, “It’s very easy to become a filmmaker today. But the benchmark to become a storyteller has gone really high.”
The shift, Batra explained, also opens up new ways to approach the practical challenges of production. Recalling the logistical hurdles of filming the yacht sequences in Gehraiyaan, he said, “For Gehraiyaan, we had to get a yacht from Sri Lanka to India to shoot all the yacht scenes. And we were supposed to shoot in Goa, and the Goa port did not have authority. Then we had to move it to Bombay, and we had to keep it here. And keeping a yacht in a city is really expensive. In that case, I would just shoot it in a grey box, and I would bring in the yacht later.”
Batra has already been exploring what this approach could look like in practice, revealing that his team has experimented with two hybrid shoots in recent months. “What a hybrid shoot truly means is we still go to a shooting floor. We have a grey box, we have certain props, we bring in the actors, we rehearse with the actors, we block out the scene with the actors. But when we come back, edit is not limited. We can change the world, we can create extra shots, we can create reaction shots, we can create extra angles,” he explained, adding, “In one way it’s really freeing, but in the other way. it’s really scary because your options are unlimited. You can keep going on creating, and if you do not know what you are really trying to make, you will find yourself lost very soon.”
These experiments are also taking shape through Jouska AI, his new venture exploring the intersection of traditional filmmaking and AI. “We have been experimenting with hybrid workflows where traditional filmmaking and AI begin to speak to each other,” Batra highlighted. For him, the possibilities go beyond cutting production costs. “I’m not here to just save you money. I’m here to tell you what is possible.”
However, Batra also acknowledged the implications of this shift for the people working across the industry, expressing concern about potential job losses and calling for safeguards. “Unemployment, people losing jobs. I can tell you, there is no way to sugarcoat it. I am supremely concerned with what… what can happen. And I think it’s not just going to be filmmaking. I think there’s a certain amount of disruption that in the next two years will happen across all sectors, filmmaking being one of them.”
He further called for the industry to address the issue collectively, saying, “Even though I use AI, I think we need unions to start ASAP. We need the governments and the unions to be like, ‘Hey, how do we handle this? How do we break down and put a process together?’”
From a 50-hour filmmaking challenge that began in 2011 to a multidisciplinary creative platform bringing creators from across the world together, IFP brings the 16th season with the same idea at its heart: make something, put it out into the world, and see where it takes you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=RtToJsBhYBatUrym&v=mOuYNSdhjHA&feature=youtu.be
