Kung Fu Panda director Mark Osborne, Nawazuddin awe IFFI audiences

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) in cinema came up for discussion at two sessions at the India International Film Festival (IFFI) on Tuesday.

Now in its 53rd edition, the festival opened on November 20 and concludes on November 28.

Also Read: Tehran bars Iranian filmmaker from going to IFFI for backing protests

At a master class, Mark Osborne, the American animator who directed Kung Fu Panda (2008) and The Little Prince (2015), was asked about how artificial intelligence would impact scripting.

Addressing a full house, he said scripting was more complex than just putting scenes together. Describing the process as “messy and scary” and comprising multiple interactions, he said, “You won’t know your full story just by writing it.”

AI cropped up again in the afternoon when well-known lyricist Prasoon Joshi spoke about the craft of writing songs for films. “When you attend a funeral and write two lines, they capture only a part of the full experience,” he said.

AI does not experience the smell and the heat, and so they are not reflected in the song it produces. Even if a poet is writing only about grief, the rest of the experience could come out at a later stage, perhaps in another work, he explained.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui was a star attraction at an evening session conducted by Vani Tripathi. He spoke candidly about his journey as an actor. Getting into acting after he saw a Gujarati play, he had earned popularity even before he went to the NSD in Delhi.

Also Read: Women directors embellish IFFI ensemble

When he moved to Mumbai after graduating, he was crestfallen to find “they didn’t need trained actors there”. The city wouldn’t even consider him for TV serials, saying he didn’t have the looks.

The success of Gangs of Wasseypur at Cannes earned him fame and brought him work in Mumbai. When he was offered Sacred Games, a Netflix production, he thought it was just another serial, and turned it down initially. He said OTT has made life less difficult for actors to find work.

Nawazuddin remembered the Kannada theatre legend B V Karanth in connection with his training at NSD. Karanth, he recalled, used to say that you could get away with being off-key but you shouldn’t be off-time. When they did a Bhasa play in Sanskrit, Nawazuddin, playing the vidushak, got a scolding from Karanth because he had cracked a ‘double meaning’ joke.

When he said films shouldn’t be judged by their box office performance, he was asked by a member of the audience how important money was to him. He said he had lived for months without money, thanks to the kindness of friends. “When you kick money, it comes and falls at your feet,” he said, to huge applause.