American-Indian filmmaker Chakri Toleti, who, along with co producer Ronnie Screwvala, gave India its first film shot entirely on 4K resolution (8.3 megapixels with aspect ratio of 16:9) - the Kamal Haasan-starrer Telugu thriller, Eenadu, which was the official remake of Neeraj Pandey's A Wednesday - is now back with India's first film shot entirely in 8K (33.2 megapixels), Khamoshi. Chakri is presently filming the trilingual with Prabhu Dheva, and actiondirector Stephan Richter in London.

While the Telugu version of the film, Kolaiyuthir Kaalam, has Nayanthara in the lead, Tamannaah Bhatia steps into the Hindi version. Chakri believes that it is the best time to widen the storytelling format in India, the largest producer and consumer of films and informs that it was his producer Vashu Bhagnani, who wanted to introduce the technique, despite the fact that with an 8K set-up, the cost of lenses shoots up. “Since the dynamic range of each image increases there's a special focus on the costume, make-up and detailing of sets. More effects can be played around with in post-production. Shooting at night becomes easier too,“ Chakri explains, reasoning that at the end of the day, no film is great without a good script and good actors. The filmmaker also contends, “Since filmmaking is an evolutionary process, I'm hoping the introduction of a better format helps India tell stories more effectively with world cinema appreciating our films. It's time to initiate the paradigm shift.“

While the first 8K cameras were only designed in 2013, and Hollywood embraced the technology instantly, the first 8K conversion had happened in 2007 in the West, when a film scanner was specifically built to re-scan to 8k the original 65 mm negative of the 1992 US documentary, Baraka. Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert had then described the 8K release of the film as “the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined“.