Ramayana producer Namit Malhotra on AI-powered English trailer; says, “The heart of it is human”
When the makers of Ramayana dropped the film’s English trailer on Wednesday, the visuals stayed identical to the Hindi version, yet the actors appeared to be speaking flawless English, in sync down to the last syllable. That illusion, it turns out, was built on a mix of old fashioned voice acting and new age artificial intelligence.
How the effect was achieved?
Producer Namit Malhotra, speaking to NDTV, said the goal from the start was to keep international viewers away from subtitles and dubbing altogether. He said, “It is a very interesting process that is followed. What I was very clear about was we must use technology to make it easy, that means make it seamless so that people are not looking at subtitles or dubbed versions and make it as close to the original as we can.”
Rather than asking the original cast to dub their own English lines, the team roped in a separate set of voice actors. Malhotra said, “Fortunately, what we did was we hired a whole bunch of voice actors who really brought the nuance of performance in their voices. Then we created our own bespoke technology, which helped stitch the lip movements of those performances on to the faces of the actors.”
Technology in service of performance
Malhotra was careful to frame the AI tool as a support system rather than a replacement for actors. He said, “It really is a man and machine combination. As we always say, the heart of it is human. All the emotions are human. What the technology is doing is making it look seamless.”
The result is lip movements that align naturally with the English dialogue, cutting down on the distraction dubbed versions usually bring. Since its release online, the trailer has drawn considerable praise for its near flawless synchronisation, and Ramayana now looks set to become a reference point for how Indian films use AI to reach audiences beyond the Hindi belt.
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