Amitabh Bachchan has won four National Film Awards as Best Actor and one of those awards was given to him for his performance in R Balki's film Paa. But, there was a time when Balki was on the verge of calling off the film as he couldn't figure how to shoot Amitabh Bachchan and make him look like a 12-year-old boy. The look test of the film "irritated" Bachchan as he couldn't understand why Balki was taking forever. He was shocked when he learnt that the look was "scary" as Balki described it as "f**kall." In a chat with YouTube channel Cinemaz, Balki recalled the making of the film and said that he had done enough research on progeria and knew what people with this condition looked like. He even found a makeup artiste for this in Los Angeles but said that he was "foolish" and "blind" about the whole thing. Balki said that after he had written the film and finalised all the details, he and cinematographer PC Sreeram conducted a look test with Big B to see what he would look like on screen as Auro. Balki said they were in Hyderabad for the look test as Amitabh was shooting something else in the city. As soon as Amitabh Bachchan came on set for the look test, Balki looked at his cinematographer and said, "This is scary. What do we do?" Sreeram was still hopeful and proceeded to arrange some lights for the shoot but as soon as they lit up the set, Balki told him. "He is looking even uglier than before." ALSO READ | Farah Khan recalls hitting poverty after dad’s film flopped, renting out living room to survive: ‘He died penniless with only Rs 30’ Balki shared, "Because he is 6'2 and he is big, and I had not thought he is a child. Which child is 6'2? I mean he can act cute and all that but we didn't have the technology or the money to shrink him in those days. And I had not planned for all that." Balki recalled this as a "big blunder" and said that while everyone was excited for the film, no one had asked him how he was going to make Amitabh look smaller. The constant back and forth in the room during the look test irritated Amitabh Bachchan. "After one hour of trials, Amitabh Bachchan was getting irritated. 'Balki what is happening, it's all looking fine'. I said 'Amit ji, it's looking f*ckall, it's looking so bad, it's scary," he recalled. After this, he showed all the pictures to Bachchan and there was a stillness in the room. In that moment, Balki thought of calling off the film and quickly discussed this with PC Sreeram. "I told PC that I think we need to call this film off, this is not going to work. It's an embarrassment. Let's not spend any more penny, and run from here," he said but PC wasn't willing to give up. He did a few more trials and found a top angle that made Amitabh look small. Balki said that they then found the correct angle to shoot Bachchan and proceeded to shoot him from a top angle throughout the film. Paa also starred Abhishek Bachchan and Vidya Balan. The film won four National Film Awards - Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress for Arundhati Nag, Best Feature Film in Hindi and Best Make-up Artist.
