Post Its Forever

“My mom always said that if I had Re1 in hand,I would rather watch a film than to eat. These two things: Photoshop and love for movies,connected through posters,” says Badruddin,sitting inside the corporate office of Yash Raj Studios in Mumbai’s Andheri. It seems he was always destined to land up at YRF — it is accentuated by the similarity of his red-and-white pullover to combat the office’s chilly air conditioner — to the company’s logo. “They keep teasing me in office about this,” says Badruddin,who had designed clothes when he was helping with his father’s business in Dubai. Baddrudin often used to make dummy posters from stock images of film stars on his brother’s computer. It is when few of his brother’s friends mistook them as real that he realised the true potential of his abilities.

“Posters made me feel close to the movie,one image can intrigue you so much,” says the 40-year-old. His uncanny spontaneity to identify such images gave way to the teaser of Mohabbatein,where he went exactly opposite to Aditya Chopra’s brief. “They wanted a youthful,contemporary look but I went the classic love story way. From the images from the film given to me one with SRK on a chair playing the violin struck me. I also found a floppy full of stock images of leaves,” he recalls. The leaves,SRK with violin and the catchline: “Some love stories live forever”,is still fresh.

The intrigue is visible in the teaser poster of Dhoom 3. With his well-sculpted back towards us,a bare-bodied Aamir Khan looking at an apocalyptic cityscape makes for a hoot of a teaser. “It’s a classic example of mystery,with the backs turned towards the wall which you can see in Ek Tha Tiger and Gunday too. We wanted to keep it cool,classic and minimal,” says Badruddin.

About comparisons with The Dark Knight in look and tone,he says,“It merely captures what is there in the film. And why would Yash Raj need to rip off from The Dark Knight,” says Badruddin. The flavourful kitsch of Shuddh Desi Romance has been quite a splash too. According to Badruddin,it required special efforts by the team — along with director Maneesh Sharma and writer Jaideep Sahni — to undo the “desi-cool template” the makers had earlier created with a string of earthy rom-coms like Bunty aur Babli and Band Baaja Baarat.

With the digital medium constantly pushing the envelopes of designing,Badruddin is constantly experimenting. He was the first in Bollywood to introduce motion posters with Ek Tha Tiger — of a keffiyeh-sporting Salman Khan striking a heroic pose against the ancient city of Turkey. But none of it is gimmicky.