MUMBAI: Only a handful of films like Ra.One, Mere Brother Ki Dulhan and Mausam feature railway stations, according to a Central Railway report.

Revenue from that particular window has dipped by 60 per cent compared to that of 2009-10. The reason being cited is that filmmakers tend to make use of latest technologies like visual effects (VFX).

With the technology around, filmmakers have been desisting to go out to shoot on location for sometime now. What they primarily need are the basic shots that are later interspersed with objects, people and effects. Through this, film units save on time as well as money.

For the shooting of Ra.One, the makers used the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus for a day, though it had an elaborate sequence of a train ramming into the station forcefully, cutting through the platform and the station boundary walls and toppling on to the road only to be stopped by Shah Rukh Khan’s character with one hand in the exteriors of the station. It is said that the producers paid the CR Rs 125,000 for the shoot.

“The shot looked so elaborate on screen, making the film audience wonder as to how many days it must have taken to shoot the entire sequence. But, with the help of VFX, a few shots of the train and the station sufficed the wants of the makers. The rest was done by our visual effects team,” said Red Chillies VFX CEO Keitan Yadav.

Only 13 production houses including Red Chillies Entertainment, Excel Entertainment and Yash Raj Films shot at Central Railway locations in 2011-’12 compared to 28 in 2009-’10 and 19 in 2010-’11.