BE Agency Reckoner 2014: Nirvana of 'Incredible India' fame is best film production agency

Last week, we brought you the Brand Equity Agency Reckoner 2014, the definitive ranking of the best ad agencies in the country. Now, read on to find out how the top agencies, across film production, made it to the head of their class.
Here's a look at their most challenging and prized:

[1] Nirvana

Sneha Iype Varma, executive producer and partner, Nirvana, says one of the most challenging and interesting assignments has been their 'Incredible India' work. "How do you fit a country into 60 seconds? It's so diverse, with so much to see and talk about. It was quite a logistical challenge, travelling the length and breadth of the country and fitting it into a single schedule."




[2] Chrome

Amit Sharma, director, Chrome says they did a lot of great films like Google Reunion, Lifebuoy – 'Help a child reach 5', Ulloo Na Banaoing for Idea (by Hemant Bhandari), and 18 Again (by Aleya Sen Sharma). But the most challenging was Lifebuoy.

"I didn't want to use a harness on the guy who was shown walking on his hands. We used two people and neither of them were actors. One of them just couldn't shoot any more after a day and a half and we had to wait for a month for him to get better. And then the shoot got disrupted by a cyclone! It took three months, but the outcome was nice and won us a Silver Lion at Cannes."



(In pic: Amit Sharma, director, Chrome)

[3] Bang Bang

Roopak Saluja, founder and CEO, Bang Bang Films counts the IPL carnival film, clicker for Axe with Ranbir Kapoor, Mountain Dew and the telematch style commercials for Vodafone amongst their best work.

"My favourite piece of work remains the carnival film for IPL. It really pushed our production capabilities to the limit. The artwork is a combination of a deftly put together shoot combined with state of the art VFX and incredibly skilled miniature work. We could have done it entirely with digital but the combination of different elements made it quite challenging from a logistic perspective. There are a whole lot of commercials that we did a pretty top quality job on from a production perspective even if the scripts were a little… questionable."



(In pic: Roopak Saluja, founder and CEO, Bang Bang Films)

[4] Equinox

Ram Madhvani, director, Equinox says, "We'd like to be known as the oldest youngest production house. Before you have settled down its time to reinvent again. We have a digital wing called Equinext and a collaboration with Great Guns, a UK based production house to form Great Guns @ Equinox which focuses on cosmetic and beauty brands."



As for work, expectations are so high, "you are scared you won't meet them." Amongst the most challenging assignments are films for Greenlam, where they built the parliament house in post production, and making the two cats in the HomeShop18 ad as realistic as possible while doing CG.


(In pic: Ram Madhvani, director, Equinox)

[5] Ramesh Deo

Abhinay Deo, director, Ramesh Deo Productions says, "Over the last two or three years, I've done the least amount of work: some 25 films over the last five years. But quality wise it's the best work that has come out of the production house."

One of them is the Mumbai Mirror film: incredibly challenging and at the same time highly appreciated at Cannes. The Nike Parallel Journeys film which also won at Cannes was a humungous task: 9 days across 8 to 9 cities. "There's not a single frame that was shot in the same location. Every model in those films is a different person and none of them were professionals."