Bollywood director, entrepreneur and a pioneer in the Indian animation industry – Ketan Mehta shares his journey
Thursday 15 January 2015
He is the critically acclaimed director of many movies including Mirch Masala and Sardar, who draws inspiration from living subjects. But he also has the knack to narrate great stories using animated virtual characters like he did with Ramayana – The Epic, but ask Ketan Mehta whether he is more a director or an entrepreneur and he says: “I don’t believe living life in compartments. All is an extension of creative urge, a compelling urge. It’s an idea to buy your creative freedom. You need a tool to excel yourself in a particular manner, that is good for you and this new technology is the digital tool in my hands,” he says.
For the uninitiated, Ketan is also the founder of Maya Digital Studios(MDS) — India’s first animation studio that he started in 1996. He had also founded Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics, which was invested in by Intel Capital and Enam, who successfully exited it in 2010, when it was sold to Aptech. Today, along with his feature film work, Ketan also oversees production of animated content that MDS is making for TV networks, and says that he enjoys both equally. In a chatty mood, Ketan spoke to YourStory about the beginning, the present and the future. Excerpts.
Birth of Maya
Ketan started Maya because he was not satisfied with the last scene he shot for his movie Maya Memsaab. “Based on French writer Gustave Flaubert‘s novel Madame Bovary, the last scene was a magical VFX shot, where Deepa Sahi drinks a magic potion and then bursts into a form of light and disappears. At that point in time, there was no technology available in India to do that shot. We tried doing the shot 10 times, it didn’t work out. We even went to Hong Kong to do the shot, but the end result was not fully satisfactory,” recollects Ketan. Maya Memsaab was released in 1993, and Ketan says that was also the time when digital technology was coming into movies and many new “fascinating frontiers was opening up.” At this point the entrepreneur in him spotted the opportunity to create a facility that would soon be adopted by the largest film producing nation, and the result was Maya Digital Studios.
