Mahesh Bhatt turns to NID graduates for Raaz 3

AHMEDABAD: When well-known Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt decided to give the horror characters in his new film 'Raaz 3' a more realistic look, he sought consultation from National Institute of Design graduates. The third part of the horror trilogy that will be starring Bipasha Basu and Emraan Hashmi, will have close-to-real horror characters whose faces will be made using silicon prepared by a group of young NID graduates in Ahmedabad.

"We are working on a project for Mahesh Bhatt's film 'Raaz 3' which is under production at the moment. We are in the process of making the scary face of a prominent character in the film," said Rajiv Subbha, a Ceramic and Glass Design graduate of NID who founded a startup company called 'Dirty Hands' along with his classmate Mamta Gautam.

The designers will make a silicon face mask which could be worn by the actor who is playing the role of a demon. The design will help the film crew avoid the tedious process of face make-up for the character. The film, produced by Mahesh Bhatt and his brother Mukesh Bhatt, will be directed by Vikram Bhatt.

Among many other design activities, developing hyper realistic mannequins and body limbs is a unique expertise of the designers at Dirty Hands which is being incubated at NID's incubation centre called National Design Business Incubator (NDBI). The company also made several silicon figurines for Darshan museum in Pune which is dedicated to the life of Sindhi saint and scholar Sadhu Vaswani.

Talking about the work with silicon which is still very new in the country, Subba said, "The idea is to make the models as real as possible. While wax is an alternative and known medium, silicon has an added advantage of durability and has soft realistic touch like that of real skin and diverse applicability."

"There are different ways of using silicon. We are also considering exploring the area of making prosthetic limbs with silicon," said Subba.