{"id":1253,"date":"2026-08-31T05:58:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T05:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalprindia.com\/news\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2026-08-31T05:58:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T05:58:54","slug":"hocco-ice-cream-bullet-brand-film-making-production-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalprindia.com\/news\/hocco-ice-cream-bullet-brand-film-making-production-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"A chocolate bullet, a fake katta factory, and a brand that refused to be safe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe were supposed to do food styling.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is how Nitin Tandon remembers the beginning of the Hocco \u00d7 Mirzapur<\/em> Bullet Ice Cream project.<\/p>\n

There was no elaborate production brief waiting on the desk. No months-long development process. No grand plan to build a Mirzapur<\/em>-inspired factory.<\/p>\n

The Nitin Tandon Studios team was simply scheduled to join Hocco for a shoot involving the Mirzapur<\/em> cast and crew.<\/p>\n

Then came a seemingly innocuous request.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince you’re coming anyway, bring us some crazy ideas.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The team took that literally. Dharmesh Joshi came onboard<\/p>\n

Three ideas were developed overnight.<\/p>\n

One was selected the following morning.<\/p>\n

And within roughly a week, what began as a food-styling assignment had turned into a complete film production \u2014 with a fictional Katta factory, custom bullet moulds, industrial machinery, specialised food styling, production design and a rather ambitious attempt to make chocolate look like molten metal.<\/p>\n

For Nitin Tandon Studios along with Dharmesh Joshi, the project became an interesting demonstration of how far a food-production company can stretch when it moves beyond simply making food look good.<\/p>\n

The idea: What if the Ice Cream Bullet was actually made in Mirzapur?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hocco’s collaboration with Mirzapur: The Movie<\/em> had already produced an unusual product \u2014 a Bullet-shaped ice cream.<\/p>\n

The obvious route for a production team would have been to photograph the product dramatically.<\/p>\n

The Nitin Tandon Studios team and Dharmesh wanted to go one step further.<\/p>\n

The thought was:<\/p>\n

What if the Bullet Ice Cream was actually being manufactured inside the world of Mirzapur?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That changed everything.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the product needed a factory.<\/p>\n

The factory needed machinery.<\/p>\n

The machinery needed a production process.<\/p>\n

And the production process needed to feel believable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn’t want to make another ice cream film,\u201d says Tandon. \u201cThe idea was to make the product feel like it belonged to that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

That distinction became the creative foundation for the film.<\/p>\n

The strange case of chocolate becoming metal<\/strong><\/h2>\n

One of the biggest challenges was making familiar food-production processes look like something completely different.<\/p>\n

The team wanted chocolate to resemble molten metal.<\/p>\n

The solution wasn’t to completely fake it with visual effects.<\/p>\n

Instead, lighting, smoke, heat and food behaviour were used to create the illusion.<\/p>\n

A red light helped give the chocolate a heated appearance. Hot smoke added atmosphere, while dry ice was used for the colder sequences.<\/p>\n

The production team effectively took elements that belonged to a bakery or ice-cream facility and photographed them through the visual language of an industrial factory.<\/p>\n

It was a recurring philosophy throughout the shoot:<\/p>\n

The world could be fictional. The physical details had to feel real.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The factory had to be found before it could be filmed<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The production challenge quickly moved beyond cameras and food.<\/p>\n

The team needed machinery that could convincingly become part of the fictional Katta factory.<\/p>\n

So producer Akshay Narayankar<\/strong> and the art team began looking through industrial estates, workshops and factories.<\/p>\n

More than ten locations were explored.<\/p>\n

Equipment was sourced and adapted.<\/p>\n

Chains were tested.<\/p>\n

Props were fabricated.<\/p>\n

Some elements came from unexpected places \u2014 including a scrap dealer who eventually provided the oversized industrial chains the team was looking for.<\/p>\n

The production was constantly operating between two worlds:<\/p>\n

What does the creative require?<\/strong><\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

How do we actually make that happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Narayankar, that is where production becomes creative problem-solving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the director wants something, the producer’s job is to figure out how to get it,\u201d is essentially the philosophy that drove the exercise.<\/p>\n

The Bullet was treated like a character<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For a studio known primarily for food styling, the most fascinating part of the production was perhaps the treatment of the product itself.<\/p>\n

The Bullet Ice Cream couldn’t simply be visually attractive.<\/p>\n

It had to carry attitude.<\/p>\n

Its shape had to hold.<\/p>\n

Its surface had to photograph correctly.<\/p>\n

Its texture had to remain appetising.<\/p>\n

And it had to exist naturally within a much darker cinematic environment.<\/p>\n

That is where Tandon’s food-styling experience became central to the production.<\/p>\n

His approach has increasingly moved towards treating the product as part of the narrative rather than simply as an object being photographed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have to think, you have to become the product,\u201d<\/strong> is how he describes the philosophy.<\/p>\n

In this case, that meant asking questions that went well beyond styling.<\/p>\n

How would a Bullet be manufactured?<\/p>\n

How would it move through the factory?<\/p>\n

How would it be inspected?<\/p>\n

How should the audience first see it?<\/p>\n

The ice cream wasn’t just the hero product.<\/p>\n

It became a character in the film.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why the team didn’t need a celebrity<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Mirzapur<\/em> universe comes with its own cast of recognisable characters.<\/p>\n

There was therefore an obvious temptation to build the film around celebrity.<\/p>\n

The team considered it, including the possibility of using Makbul’s voice because of the character’s association with the gun-making world.<\/p>\n

But the idea eventually moved in another direction.<\/p>\n

The product itself had enough narrative strength.<\/p>\n

Instead of using celebrity to create attention, the production focused on making the Bullet Ice Cream interesting enough to hold attention on its own.<\/p>\n

That decision also made the film more product-led.<\/p>\n

The Bullet didn’t need to borrow the spotlight. It had its own story.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even the casting changed on set<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The production wasn’t immune to the kind of spontaneous decisions that happen when an idea meets a real set.<\/p>\n

The performer originally considered for the final eating sequence didn’t quite fit the world the team had created.<\/p>\n

He looked, according to the team, \u201ctoo nice.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The character coming out of this fictional factory needed to have a different physical presence.<\/p>\n

So the team changed direction.<\/p>\n

It’s a small detail, but it captures the nature of the production: the final film wasn’t simply being executed from a locked document.<\/p>\n

The team was continuously responding to what they saw in front of the camera.<\/p>\n

The bigger shift: From food stylist to creative production partner<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Perhaps the most significant story behind the campaign is what it says about Nitin Tandon Studios itself.<\/p>\n

The studio has been associated with food styling for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

But food advertising has changed considerably.<\/p>\n

The food stylist is no longer necessarily working at the end of the creative chain.<\/p>\n

The person who understands how a product behaves can influence how it should be shot, lit, directed and ultimately presented.<\/p>\n

That has led Nitin Tandon Studios to expand into concept development, direction and end-to-end production.<\/p>\n

On this project, Dharmesh Joshi<\/strong>, as director and creative director, brought the narrative and visual perspective, while Tandon brought his understanding of food, styling and product behaviour.<\/p>\n

The two approaches were complementary.<\/p>\n

One asked:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the story?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The other asked:<\/p>\n

\u201cWill the food actually do that?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The film was built somewhere between those two questions.<\/p>\n

Why this matters to food advertising<\/strong><\/h1>\n

There is a larger industry conversation underneath the campaign.<\/p>\n

Food advertising has become increasingly polished.<\/p>\n

But as production becomes more accessible, visual polish itself is becoming less distinctive.<\/p>\n

The familiar language of food advertising \u2014 slow motion, chocolate pours, perfect surfaces, ingredient splashes and immaculate kitchens \u2014 is now available to almost every brand.<\/p>\n

The challenge is therefore moving from production quality to creative relevance.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Tandon and Narayankar see it, brands don’t simply need more content.<\/p>\n

They need content that gives consumers a reason to stop.<\/p>\n

That requires production teams to understand the product, the culture surrounding it and the audience consuming it.<\/p>\n

The Hocco \u00d7 Mirzapur<\/em> film is an example of that thinking.<\/p>\n

The product wasn’t placed into a world after the creative idea was finished.<\/p>\n

The world was built around the product.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The production became the story<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The campaign was eventually brought together by a team spanning food styling, direction, cinematography, production design, editing and colour.<\/p>\n