O' Faby (1993)

Interesting facts

O' Faby is a 1993 Malayalam-language film. It was Asia's first full-length live-action/animation hybrid feature film. Directed by Sreekumar Krishnan Nair. It stars Nagesh, Thilakan, Roque Tharakan, Manoj K. Jayan and Srividya. The director of animation was Ram Mohan. Singers K. J. Yesudas, K. S. Chithra and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam sing songs with lyrics penned by Bichu Thirumala. The cinematography team included Jayanan Vincent, Ramachandra Babu P. N. Sundaram and Venugopal Madathil.

Production

Sreekumar Krishnannair (K. Sreekuttan), son of veteran director M. Krishnan Nair decided to make a live-action animated film after watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit and wanted to attempt similar experiment in Malayalam. Simon Tharakan, an NRI who learned of a news article about a mechanical robot founded by Sreekuttan's friend VS Sabu travelled to India to meet the inventor and he decided to produce a film.

VS Sabu and Tharakan decided to have Sreekuttan to handle the direction after observing his work on the sets of Sargam. Sreekuttan expressed his interest to do a live-action animated film to which they agreed. Tharakan came up with a concept based on character Fagin from Oliver Twist. Tharakan's son Roquey was chosen to portray the film's main protagonist.

To make actors react and emote to the animated character, Sreekuttan chosen Raghu of Mela to play human version of Faby and a costume was created to resemble the sketches of Faby and given to Raghu. After this, the scenes were shot again leaving spaces to be “filled in later” with the animated figures.

For the post-production to include animation, makers met Ram Mohan, father of animation who scolded them for making a film without employing an animator for pre-production and for not story boarding the film however he then gave them drawings for the cartoon characters along with a template of expressions for each situation.

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