Director Vivek Anchalia spent 1,500 hours with AI to create ‘Naisha,’ a full-length AI film, how AI will empower small filmmakers, speed up filmmaking, and amplify personal storytelling
Mumbai-based film director and screenwriter Vivek Anchalia did not want to mope around waiting for his film pitches to materialise after his well-received directorial Tikdam (Trickeries), set in a fictional hill town, released in 2024. Instead, Anchalia, who is also a lyricist, decided to make a music video using what everyone in the Indian film industry is currently engaged in experimenting with — Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In a chat with The Federal, Anchalia shares, “I started making a music video with AI and then it became bigger. I felt I had an entire story here and I could make it into a film. I started to write, experiment and spent more than 1,500 hours with AI technology.” His efforts paid off and he ended up — with what he calls — India’s first AI film, Naisha, ‘a romantic love story spread across time and countries’.
Another AI feature film, Maharaja in Denims, based on Khushwant Singh’s novel of the same name, has also been in the making. The production house, Intelliflicks Studios in Chandigarh, even released a trailer last year.
The use of AI in filmmaking
To naysayers who say the technology is not at that sweet spot yet for filmmakers to pull off a full-length movie, Anchalia responds, “I guess it was my persistence that paid off. To acquire consistency in the character’s appearance, (which is a major roadblock for AI), I sat for hours on the machine, which also learnt about me as much as I learned it. And, at some point it started giving me consistent results. It’s not like others around the world are not doing it. Once you start understanding the machine, it starts figuring out what you’re asking for.”
In a few months, the technology is bound to get standardised and it will be possible to create the illusive character consistency with just a click, points out Anchalia, who ended up spending over a year tussling with AI to make Naisha, which is all set for a theatrical release, most probably in June. “We are in talks with distributors at present for the theatrical release,” shares Anchalia.
The usage of AI in filmmaking seems to be a growing trend in Indian cinema today. Though purists hummed and hawed about Adrian Brody’s Hungarian accent in Brutalist being allegedly fine-tuned by AI, the Academy did not flinch.
The Indian film industry too doesn’t seem to be shying away from diving headlong into AI and exploring how they can push boundaries in filmmaking with what some describe as a ‘revolutionary’ tool. In Indian cinema, AI is being tapped to make film pitches, for scripting, storyboarding (visual representation of the film), visual effects, to assist in film research, for animation technique rotoscoping, dubbing, for de-aging actors (a CGI technique used to make actors look younger) and more.
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Notably, young filmmakers are no longer sweating it out nervously narrating their story plot to jaded, busy producers, wondering if the penny will drop. Instead, they are making their film pitches through smartly crafted visual trailers of their story plots and the worlds they want to conjure up, courtesy AI to impress producers and studios.
‘AI empowering small filmmakers’
Experts and filmmakers say that AI has now become a part and parcel of a film production pipeline today. “I think a lot is happening with AI in Indian cinema but it’s all under wraps. Also, it is more at an experimental stage unlike what’s happening in the west,” says Anchalia, who also co-wrote the Rishi Kapoor-starrer, Rajma Chawal (2018), directed by Leena Yadav.
In his view, what makes AI attractive for filmmakers, especially on a shoe-string budget, is that it gives a more cost-effective version of VFX, which is deployed extensively in films, especially, in Indian mythology and sci-fi genres.
“It is easier to create worlds which do not exist with AI,” he points out. Earlier, VFX artists would sit for hours in a studio laboriously animating that world, a time-consuming process if not prohibitively expensive. But AI technology is actively speeding things up and at a cost which is minuscule compared to the original cost.
The usage of AI in filmmaking seems to be a growing trend in Indian cinema today.
“I can say, it will be less than 10 per cent of the earlier cost,” points out Anchalia. Voice cloning, which can be used for dubbing as well, is catching on too. AI will transform the Hindi film industry and there will be a very new world post-Artificial General Intelligence, asserts Anchalia, and that transformation is coming soon. It is then filmmakers, who have had no access to big studios, big money, contacts, actors, etc., will start emerging from different corners of the country, he adds.
“What AI will do is empower small filmmakers and democratise filmmaking in India,” affirms Anchalia, who says it continues to be an onerous task to make live films in Hindi cinema. “If studio agrees, you don’t have the star and if the star agrees, you don’t have the studio. It’s a loop you’re constantly battling and it is a miracle that any film gets made today, especially in the Hindi film industry,” says Anchalia, who says he is one of the privileged ones who has access to studios and producers and still struggles.
For big-budget filmmakers too, AI will work in their favour as they will not have to take years to make their films. “I won’t be surprised if Prime Focus Studios doesn’t use AI for their big-budget Ranbir Kapoor-Sai Pallavi starrer Ramayana,” says Anchalia.
On the human intervention
On the human interventions involved in Naisha, Anchalia admits that only the video is AI. “AI has not completely taken over the film. We have a lot of human intervention, too. Actors are dubbing for the AI-generated characters. We are finalising some good actors for it. Award-winning music director Daniel B George (Andhadhun, Bawaal, Merry Christmas) has done the background music and four songs for the film. Two other songs are done by Pratik Yuti Ghosh and Ujwal Kashyap,” he says.
On how he handled the set design and the camera shots in an AI film, the director shares that these aspects were handled by AI and was created from his prompts. “On different AI platforms, it works differently. Some platforms give you camera control, others work only through prompts. You have to break it down and describe what kind of camera control you want in the prompt itself,” he explains.
Did he provide similar prompts to achieve the impossible in AI — continuity with character likeness? “That’s not how it works. Multiple factors are involved and you have to constantly mix and match and keep trying different things. It’s a struggle. But AI companies are working to solve these challenges, especially with character consistency. Probably, in another six months it will become possible and people need not spend so much time like I did,” he points out wryly.
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With technology rapidly evolving, Anchalia realises that whatever they do gets outdated in two months. Therefore, he plans to do the rendering process for Naisha just before its release. “The music, the images, and scenes are ready but before releasing the final output in the theatres, we will use the technology available at that time,” he says.
‘Personal voices will remain intact’
Filmmakers, especially in the South, are experimenting heavily with deploying AI in deaging. The late Vijayakanth popped up in a fighting-fit form in 2024 Vijay’s GOAT, much to the delight of his fans besides a younger, meaner Vijay; a younger version of Mammootty surfaced in the slowburn Malayalam thriller, Rekhachithram (2025)and in Kannada film, super hero Shivrajkumar’s character is digitally de-aged to portray a younger person in MG Srinivas’s action-heist thriller Ghost.
Commenting on this trend, Anchalia says, “That is the first instinct for filmmakers because it sounds very, very novel as an idea. But I think there is so much more to AI because for the first time, your imagination is not limited by money. You can create wherever your imagination takes you and it won’t cost you much. Whether you are showing a volcano eruption or a simpler scene of a man talking, both will cost the same amount of money in AI to create for film.” It is a tool that can make you way more efficient than you are at the moment.
There is always the fear lurking forever in the background that dependence on AI may end up stifling human creativity. At a panel discussion in Goa on ‘Will Artificial Intelligence Alter Filmmaking Forever?, well-known filmmaker Shekhar Kapur had an answer: “AI has a long way to catch up with human imagination because human imagination is born out of uncertainty, love, fear, but for AI, everything is certain.”
Anchalia, too, does not believe that AI, with all its advanced capabilities, will kill the personal voice or the soul of a filmmaker. “We go to see a Spielberg movie because he is the one telling the story in his distinctive voice and we believe in his storytelling. Personal voices will remain intact. AI will only help to bring out more Spielbergs, Imtiaz Alis, more Vishal Bhardawajs, Anurag Kashyaps and the Rajamoulis,” he asserts. Maybe then, AI can help to finally reverse Bollywood’s flagging fortunes.
