Abhay Deol: You can play with your imagination

Give him something he hasn’t done before, and Abhay Deol will jump at it. His penchant for doing offbeat things has led him to join forces with EDM artiste PIA for Follow the toad.

Joe Sill —who previously directed commercials for Apple, Nike, and Warner Bros. Games—shot the music video in a day using virtual production. For Deol, being part of a virtual production only added to the appeal. “[Usually], you’re on location and don’t have to use much of your imagination. But in a virtual production, you can let your imagination fly and play with it. I did it for the fun experience and because I love the music,” says the actor, who shot the single in Mumbai last November.

Joe Sill

For Follow the toad, Sill drew inspiration from adventure and fantasy film franchises such as Indiana Jones, The Lord of the Rings, and Dune. The song is set in an otherworldly land where the battle between good and evil takes place. The filmmaker shares, “By building virtual environments in Unreal Engine, we took our characters to these fictitious and larger-than-life places. By seeing the environment, Abhay and PIA were able to understand where their characters were and how they should feel, instead of being forced to imagine everything.”

As PIA’s single is gearing up for release this month, we ask Deol if we’ll see him more frequently in music videos now. “I knew that I was working with two highly skilled artistes here. It was a [wonderful] exchange of energy and creativity. If I ever got the chance to work with them again, I would do it in a heartbeat!”