Origin, scripting, and casting The idea of
Eega originated in the mid-1990s in screenwriter
V. Vijayendra Prasad mind. At that time, he was joking about a housefly seeking revenge on a human in a conversation with his son
S. S. Rajamouli. Prasad later developed the idea as a script for an English-language film set in 1830s America, in which an
African-American boy dies in an attempt to free his family from
slavery and is reincarnated as a fly. After completing
Maryada Ramanna (2010), Rajamouli reconsidered the concept after thinking of directing a film that was distinct from any other. He decided to make
Eega a bilingual film in
Telugu and
Tamil – each scene including speech was filmed twice, once for each language. The Tamil version, titled
Naan Ee, was Rajamouli's directorial debut in
Tamil cinema. The film was presented by
D. Suresh Babu of
Suresh Productions. For the first time in his career, Rajamouli began casting after the script was completed because he felt the story required actors who were suitable for the roles.
Samantha, the second actor cast, Rajamouli chose
Sudeepa to play the fly's human adversary after being impressed with the actor's performance in
Rann (2010), Sudeepa drew inspiration for his role as the villain from the 1983 Kannada film
Bhakta Prahlada; he was portraying a character he considered to be a "bad guy" with "grey shades" rather than an antagonist. while Janardhan Maharshi and
Crazy Mohan wrote the dialogue for the Telugu and Tamil versions respectively, marking their first collaboration with Rajamouli. James Fowlds was initially chosen as the film's director of photography, but was replaced by
K. K. Senthil Kumar due to creative differences and scheduling conflicts.
M. M. Keeravani composed the film's soundtrack and score,
Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao edited the film, Ravinder Reddy was its art director, and Rajamouli's wife Rama worked on the costume design. Production of the film began with a formal launch ceremony on 7 December 2010 in
Hyderabad. The initial version of the fly animation was ready by November. Rajamouli felt the quality of the animation was poor. He wanted to shelve the movie, but by that point, around 50% of the movie was already shot, costing approximately 10-11 crores. He asked the team to rework on the animation from scratch. ninety percent of the film was shot at
Ramanaidu Studios in the city. A sequence was filmed at Sri Sita Ramachandra Swamy Temple in Ammapally near
Shamshabad, in early March 2011. Scenes with Nani, Samantha, and Sudeepa were filmed during the first shooting schedule, which was completed on 16 March. Shooting was disrupted in April by an ongoing labour dispute between film workers and producers. Rajamouli considered moving
Eega out of Hyderabad if the strike continued. Filming continued in
Kokapet in early September 2011, and principal photography was completed in late February 2012 as
post-production began. According to Rajamouli, the film unit consulted a 3D video of the
storyboard before shooting a scene each day. After the filming of each scene was completed, the editing and re-recording procedures were done with simple
greyscale animation. He used
GoPro cameras as they were the smallest possible ones that offered close to professional resolution.
Phantom Cam was used to film extreme slow motion sequences; certain scenes were shot at 2,000 frames per second. Singer
Chinmayi, who dubbed for Samantha in
Eega, found the process difficult because the footage did not contain the animated fly. This was the first non-Kannada film to credit Sudeepa (previously Sudeep) by his new stage name. Rajamouli approached
Anuj Gurwara to write the dialogue for the Hindi-dubbed version titled
Makkhi. The Hindi dubbing began in Hyderabad, and Gurwara dubbed for Nani in the film.
Ajay Devgan and
Kajol, acting as parents telling the film's story to their child at bedtime, provided voiceovers during the opening credits of
Makkhi. The visuals accompanying the closing credits were altered to show the fly mimicking the antics of Devgan,
Salman Khan, and
Akshay Kumar.
Visual effects R. C. Kamalakannan and Pete Draper of
Makuta VFX oversaw
Eega visual effects, and Rahul Venugopal was the film's set supervisor and
matte painter.
V. Srinivas Mohan, who later collaborated with Rajamouli on
Baahubali: The Beginning, worked on a short sequence for the film. Rajamouli planned to complete work on the fly imagery in four months, but it took fourteen. In an
Indo-Asian News Service interview, Draper said he collaborated with thirteen experts and a large team of animators to design the fly. Because the film's fly's eyes comprise 80 percent of its face, Rajamouli felt they could make it expressive; he used the 1986
Pixar American short film
Luxo Jr. for inspiration. The output of the first team of animators, using the reference material prepared, was unsatisfactory, and Rajamouli reworked the fly's detailing. The visual effects cost an estimated 7 crore. == Themes ==