After all these years, I watched Apoorva Sagodharagal (1989) only recently. As usually Kamal's film is nice. While enjoying the film, I was also wondering on how they shot midget Kamal's scenes.
It was very interesting to analyse the tricks they used to shoot Kamal as a midget. Here are some of the tricks the film guys used to shoot the midget 'Appu' Kamal...
It's not true as it was marketed that Kamal tied his legs for the whole film to act as a midget. In most of the scenes where Kamal comes as a midget, they show only his body above his hip or knees.
In the scenes where midget Kamal is showed completely as standing, they should have dug up the surface and buried his legs. He could shake his body but wouldn't move his place in the dance sequences. Only because of this trick, they were able to film him at top angle, but not for any other scenes.
His walking scenes also used the same trick of 'dug up surface' and they made him to walk in that pit while others walk on the surface. If we notice, we could find that these kind of trick scenes were shot at the ground level at some distance. So one would be deceived because of that angle.
There are few scenes where he was showed swinging the legs childishly or keeping one leg above the other. They filmed these scenes by using 'dug up surface' trick, making Kamal to stand inside a hole and making another real midget guy to stand upside down in the hole - thereby the guy could hide his body inside the hole and could shake his own legs, deceiving as if Kamal's legs. Otherwise a puppeteer would hide his body in the hole and puppet fake legs by wearing midget Kamal's pant in the hands and moving accordingly. If we look these scenes attentively, they wouldn't show his back (or buttocks) because it's risky as it would reveal this trick.
