Shimla girl bags Filmfare Award as best production designer for Neerja
Written by Devyani Madaik | Shimla | Published: February 18, 2017 2:22:34 am
Shimla girl Aparna Sud, who designed the replica of Pan-American Airways’ Boeing aircraft for Ram Madhavan’s movie Neerja, has bagged the Filmfare Award 2016 for “Best Production Design”. Filmfare Awards 2016 will be telecast live on Saturday
“This is something really big for a small town girl. She had no engineering, aeronautical and technical background. The daughter of Shimla has done a proud to the town,” said Captain Ved Sood, her father. Creating the replica of the PanAm aircraft was not easy. “A lot of research went into it. It was almost like going back to school days. So many references had to be taken into consideration, from layouts and drawings to 3D models,” recalls Aparna, a production designer and architect.
For the job, Aparna referred to all possible information available online, including the website set up by the former employees of PanAm. She also went through detailed technical manuals of Boeing 747, consulted pilots who had flown the plane, and met aeronautical engineers and flight attendants, besides digging into all documented references of actual images of the plane from the day it was hijacked.
With her research, Aparna was able to construct a replica of the plane in 48 days. “It’s an achievement worth rejoicing. I will love to take up more challenging jobs. I already have some prestigious national and international projects,” Aparna says. Born on February 24, Aparna did her schooling from Loreto Convent, Tara Hall (Shimla), and graduated from Government College for Women (Chandigarh). Later, she pursued a diploma course in interior designing, one of her hobbies. Back to Shimla, she worked as understudy for a couple of well-known architects.
In 2002, she left for Mumbai where she started working as an assistant to a production designer that paved the way for her Bollywood career. Later, she started working as assistant art director in 2003 in the film Dhoom. As a production designer, she signed up for Neerja.