PLOT THICKENS: One of the posters of Game of War – Protect the King. The film is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Right: SMART MOVES: Zejad Sathar in a still from the film.
By Anand Holla
Slouched in front of a computer for weeks on end, skyping with a motley crew of animators from across the world doesn’t quite sound like a movie in progress. And definitely not if almost all of the 80-minute-long film is being made that way.
For his action-animation flick based on the game of chess, titled Game of War – Protect the King, Doha-based Indian independent filmmaker Zejad Sathar is doing just that. Hooking up with animators and visual effects artists from Iran, Bulgaria, India and Mexico, Sathar has been working with them online to bring his movie alive, pixel by pixel.
It all started with a game. “In January, when I was playing chess with my friend, for some reason, the moves we were making got me thinking about the game itself, its history, its back story,” says Sathar. The following few days were spent swotting up on how chess originated in India, why the pieces move the way they do, and other such elementary curiosities.
“Right from my school days, I have imagined scenes in my head from whatever I would see,” recalls Sathar. “On watching a film, I would reimagine it the way I liked it and would tell my schoolmates that story. Only when they would watch the film later would they realise that the actual story is totally different.”
In a similar fashion, Sathar reimagined an old story on chess which he read, and soon found himself obsessing over the story he wove out of it. “It was the story of a king who wanted to play chess with the queen. He asked a mathematician to find the game for him or face death. For a week, I stayed up at night and wrote a fresh story. I knew I wanted to make a film on it,” says Sathar, a graduate in filmmaking and direction from an Australian institute.
Set around only two ‘real’ characters – Sathar and his friend Anees Thajuddin, who play a game of chess – the movie is all about the 15 moves these two men make using their brown or black chessmen, as each move swings the story into animation mode, into a world of kings, queens, panthers (bishops), and centaurs (knights) and other animated characters.
“Initially, the animators gave me a hefty quotation for the work. However, I worked around it as I wanted to realise my dream,” he says, “For a couple of months, I would literally sleep in front of the computer as I would co-ordinate with all these animators and VFX artists operating from varied time zones. From language and communication problems to creative differences, I tackled everything.”
To stir up a cohesive cocktail of VFX, 3D and 2D animation hasn’t been easy for Sathar, who heads Zed Group International – a seven-year-old production company which makes corporate films and TV commercials. Sathar says he has tried to make the movie contemporary by straddling the ancient world with a futuristic 2022 Doha, featuring a funkier skyline and metro trains (where the two characters are set).
“I would explain frame by frame to the animators over skype, as to what exactly I want in a scene, or how the camera must move, by referencing YouTube videos or movie clips that showed what I had in mind. I even referenced stills from Hollywood hits to convey the costumes I wanted for the characters. Once they would create a look or a scene, they would send it to me for approval or further improvisation,” explains Sathar.
The ‘cast’, featuring Bollywood starlet Sufi Sayyad, American actors Ron Gilbert and Nicole Elise Cinaglia, American model Donna Feldman, and Noaman Surti from Qatar, had nothing to do with the movie except provide their close-up photographs in various moods and facial expressions. “We then made 3D models out of these actors, which now are the movie’s animated characters,” Sathar says.
With the project catching speed, Sathar hopes to complete the movie by the end of this year. “It has been a gruelling experience but extremely satisfactory,” he says, “Perhaps the best part is that nobody except me knows the whole story as they have all done only their bit. The beauty of animation is that you can give life to your craziest imagination.”
As for other aspiring filmmakers like him in town, Sathar asks them to believe in themselves. “If you have the passion to make a movie, stop talking about it. Just go ahead and do it. The problem with most of us is that we wait for an opportunity to come by. I don’t know whether my film will work or not. But I am happy I am making it happen. It’s truly worth it.”
