O' Faby
Theatrical poster
Malayalamഓ ഫാബി
Directed bySreekumar Krishnan Nair (as K. Sreekuttan)
Written bySimon Tharakan
Dialogues:
Satheesh Babu Payyannur
Produced bySimon Tharakan
StarringNagesh
Thilakan
Srividya
Roque Tharakan
Ashokan
Manoj K. Jayan
CinematographyJayanan Vincent
P.N. Sundaram
K. Ramachandra Babu
Venugopal
Edited byM. S. Mani
Music byJohnson
Animation byRam Mohan
Ram Mohan Biographics & Gimmicks
Production
company
Jensher Productions
Distributed byJensher Productions
Release date
27 August 1993
CountryIndia
LanguageMalayalam
Budget1.4 crores[1]

O' Faby is a 1993 Indian Malayalam-language film. It was Asia's first full-length live action/animation hybrid feature film. It is directed by Sreekumar Krishnan Nair and stars Nagesh, Thilakan, Roque Tharakan, Manoj K. Jayan and Srividya. The director of animation was Ram Mohan, known as the father of Indian animation. Famous singers KJ Yesudas, KS Chithra and SP Balasubrahmanyam sing songs with lyrics penned by Bichu Thirumala. The cinematography team included Jayanan Vincent, Ramachandra Babu and Venugopal Madathil.

Plot

O' Faby tells the story of the friendship between the hero and the animated character, Faby. The producer's son Roque played the hero role. The hero experiences many troubles but is saved by Faby.

Cast

Production

Development

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 Sabu travelled to India to meet the inventor and he decided to produce a film.[1]

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.[1]

Filming

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.[1]

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.[1] Makers had problems in including the animated sequences to the footage so a basic Click 3 camera was bought and a halogen light was fixed onto it, "Each film from O’ Faby's reels was then fixed onto the Click 3 camera for the image to get magnified, making the tracing simpler". Around 50 artists too were hired full-time to sketch the cartoon characters into cel sheets which went on for more than a year.[1] The film's budget was around 1.4. crores.[1]

Soundtrack

Soundtrack was composed by Johnson.[2]

Release

Simon Tharakan who produced the film had distributed it all by himself. The film was released in August 1993 despite hype, the film failed at the box-office.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Menon, Vishal (9 March 2019). "O' Faby: The Heartbreaking Story Behind India's First Live-Action/Animated Film". Film Companion. Archived from the original on 20 June 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  2. ↑ "List of Malayalam Songs from the movie O Faby". Malayala Chithiram. 26 October 2019. Archived from the original on 26 October 2019.
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