The Secret of 'White' Rajini

By: Settu Shankar
Monday, June 18, 2007
It is a pleasant surprise to watch our superstar Rajinikanth as a white man for the song 'Oru koodai sun light...' in Shivaji. Though Rajini's own colour is nevertheless a prize asset for him, some of his ardent fans might have had the wish to see him fair-skinned like Kamal Hassan! Anyhow, director Shankar has fulfilled the wishes of those fans in the film.

But how did it become possible? Producer AVM Saravanan and M.S. Guhan, and cinematographer K .V. Anand got together at AVM studios on Saturday to reveal the mystery behind the white Rajinikanth.

K.V. Anand said, 'it was an attempt never before tried in the history of world cinema. We made use of skin grafting technology to complete this uphill task. Originally we shot Rajini for the song for 16 days at the Bilbao Museum in Spain. After that we shot an English girl separately and later combined the colour of the girl to Rajini's image using the skin grafting technology. It took more than a year to complete this complex task. But the final result is a stunner for everyone...!'

Producer M.S.Guhan said that the idea was conceived by Shankar, and with the help of Indian Arts they managed to achieve this feat. Nearly 6000 frames were used in the song picturisation for imparting the colour to the superstar's image.