Live elephant in Sudeep's 'Phantom' song shoot

Bengaluru: Sudeep-starrer 'Phantom', directed by Anup Bhandari, is one of the most eagerly awaited movies of Sandalwood. The action-adventure drama seems to have a unique presentation as the team have cast a 40-year-old popular elephant Raghuram for a phantom song. The reports from the Phantom sets claim that the song is being shot in Kerala for five days under the guidance of renowned choreographer Johnny Master. The song is being shot amidst a natural forest and rain. Even more special is that the song will revolve around the elephant, Sudeep and another lead character. "As using real animals in movies is very difficult and expensive, computer graphics (CG) is the only way. But now the team is planning to shoot the entire song using a live elephant. This is being done in a Kannada movie after ages. The song is composed in an emotional note for the movie's sequence," source close to the Phantom team says.

According to the reports, the song is sung by Vijay Prakash and it is said that Sudeep himself has taken special care to get this song shot. It seems to cost the producer between Rs 1.2 lakh and Rs 2.25 lakh a day to shoot the song sequence using elephant Raghuram.

Phantom is being produced by Manjunath Gowda, under the banner of Shalini Arts. It features Sudeep as cop Vikranth Rona, and sharing screen space with him will be Nirup Bhandari along with Neetha Ashok in the ensemble cast. This will be the first time that director Ajaneesh B Loknath is composing the music, and William David is handling the cinematography for a Sudeep's film.

The team is left with last schedule Kerala and later wrap the film in Bengaluru with a few shoots, for which they will be coming up with a grand set.

Phantom team has planned something big by reaching it to pan-India film, with the actor's popularity across the country working to its advantage. Also plans a trailer launch in one of the world's most famous and tallest Burj Khalifa Buildings.