Built the set with the help of books and Google research: Mission Mangal’s production designer reveals…

Mission Mangal is all set trace the journey of a team of scientists, who executed India Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) successfully in November 2013. The movie stars Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha, Sharman Joshi, Nithya Menen and Kirti Kulhari in pivotal roles. 

The movie, that is inspired by real incidents and directed by Jagan Shakti, has taken some liberties when it comes to the script because they wanted to commercialise the events and not portray them as a documentary. The movie being positioned as a fictional story, the characters and their names have been changed.

Apparently, director Shakti had to recreate ISRO at a Mumbai studio, for the movie, and it took production designer Sandeep Sharad Ravade, who is known for his work in Baby and Parmanu, two-and-a-half months to replicate ISRO at Mumbai’s Film City. 

Ravade revealed in an interview with Mumbai Mirror, about the challenges that he faced, despite having a team of 100 people, he said, “We could not enter ISRO. A day before our visit, the appointment was cancelled. But our director had visited ISRO multiple times with his production team, and based on their conversation, books and Google research we built the set at Film City." 

He also revealed that creating satellites was the biggest task, "It wasn’t only about replicating the original 1.5 metres satellite but also previous models like Rohini for display in the lobby. No CGI was used."

The production designer also disclosed that ninety per cent of what the audience will see on screen is created by the design team, "We had to create ISRO and not NASA, so the brief was to keep it simple, yet real."

Last but not the least, he also gave an insight into the recreated rockets and said, "We didn’t have a studio big enough to house the original 145-feet rocket so we built a 27-feet nose and an 18-feet tail, the rest is visual effects." 

Mission Mangal is set to release on August 15 alongside John Abraham’s Batla House. 

Stay tuned for more updates!

Credits: Peeping Moon