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| Edited By: Chaya Unnikrishnan |Source: DNA |Updated: Jun 30, 2016, 07:30 AM IST
He assisted the renowned make-up artist, Pandhari Jhuker, before he branched out on his own. Vidyadhar Bhatte in his 40-year-old career has applied the greasepaint on veteran actors like Dilip Kumar and Manoj Kumar as well as the Gen Next stars like Anushka Sharma, Rani Mukerji and Shahid Kapoor to name a few. He has worked in over 80 Hindi and regional films and over 15,000 TV commercials. He is currently in the news for doing the make-up of Vidya Balan and Mangesh Desai in the Marathi biopic Ekk Albela based on the yesteryear actor Bhagwan Dada. Interestingly, Bhatte had also done the make-up for the Albela actor! Here the make-up whiz talks about his experience of working with the stars, the comparison with foreign make-up artists and more...
I have worked with Vidya right from her modelling days to her first film Parineeta to Ekk Albela. We have a good rapport with each other. To get the right look, I went through Geeta Bali’s films, the songs, the looks and accordingly designed it. We tried 10-12 different looks, shot her pictures in black and white and finally zeroed in on the ones that were nearest to Geeta Bali. It feels good when it is getting so much publicity because usually nobody talks about the make-up in the normal films. But whenever these kind of films are made we get an opportunity to show our work.
It’s the endeavour to get creative satisfaction. For instance I am doing another film Bioscopewala starring Danny Dangzonpa. It is based on Balraj Shahni’s Kabuliwalah that was inspired from Rabindranath Tagore’s book. In the film I am getting the opportunity to do Danny’s look from young to old as his character spans generations. In fact, I am doing the look for all the characters of the film, which gives me total satisfaction. If I do the look of a big film like Sultan starring Salman Khan and Anushka Sharma I may get good money, but will hardly have any work as all the big stars have their own make-up artists.
When the producers have a good budget they get foreign artistes. There are a lot of people here also who do prosthetic including me. But what happens is when I get such offers I am told, ‘We are starting the shoot next week. How soon can you do it’ On the other hand, when they approach foreign artistes it is done a year in advance because they will not do it in short notice. I have done a Dick Smith’s special FX make-up course but whatever he writes it can never be done here because we don’t get those kind of budgets. And what we do without all the required things foreigners can never do it. They are technically sound, no doubt about it but they won’t do without everything that they need. Also, sometimes there is no need for prosthetics. For instance in Kapoor & Sons was it really necessary to make Rishi Kapoor look so old with prosthetics? I think it could have been done with make-up also.
Yes, not only them even foreign DOPs are called. I was doing only commercials from 1986-2004. These days with the advanced cameras there is no need for make-up artists that much, with the help of the camera you can make blue look white!
Yes, there was this one incident that happened when I was shooting a Thums Up commercial years ago. We were shooting in Jaipur and when I went on the set I realised I had forgotten to carry the beard from my room. It would have taken two hours to go back and get it. I saw some horses there and asked the owner to give me some hair from the horse’s tail. With that I created a beard there and then and nobody even realised it! Then there was this film Shirdi Ke Saibaba where we had to create a bald look for Sudhir Dalvi who was playing the role. These days you get rubber caps for a bald look but at that time such things were not available. We created the look using old vests by cutting and sewing them in such a way that it could give the impression of a bald pate.
Not really because I was associated with a big name like Pandhari Jhuker. But yes the kind of attention foreign artists get we don’t get.
Sanjay Dutt. He was an extremely jolly person when he started out. I did his look for his first film Rocky and a few others. We used to have a lot of fun.
When I was called to do the make-up for the actors of Laga Chunari Mein Daag, I was apprehensive about working with Rani Mukerji because I had heard she was difficult and nakhrewali. But I went ahead and applied make-up really fast without looking at her. I was sure she would reject me. However, the next day I got a call from the production house saying Rani loved the make-up. When I met her she told me that when a make-up artist touches your face, you know how good or bad he is. I went on to do four-five films with her.
