1.
Chandni Chowk to China (CC2C)–Flying Over Shanghai
It might have been a turkey at the box office, but this Akshay Kumar
starer kung fu comedy that marked Warner Brothers’ entry into India had
close to 1500 computer-generated VFX
shots, comprising almost 40% of the film’s length, arguably the highest
for any Indian film till date. According to Merzin Tavaria of Prime
Focus, unlike most Bollywood movies, CC2C involved VFX artists from the
very beginning, the special effects scenes being shot simultaneously
with the regular shooting of the film. VFX was deployed in hyper-real
shots (realistic looking but improbable shots) like Akshay Kumar and
Deepika Padukone jumping from a high rise building and floating over
Shanghai city using an umbrella as a parachute; the entire Shanghai
skyline was built in 3D. Logistical difficulties in shooting scenes
like Akshay Kumar hanging from the Great Wall of China also demanded
the use of VFX; also, aerial shooting over Shanghai was impossible as
it was mostly covered with fog. One of the more challenging VFX shots
was the jetty fight sequence, in which the main character unleashes a
Kungfu move called the “Cosmic Kick”. This causes a
huge tidal wave to shoot up out of the water more than 100 feet in the
air – all created by the Prime Focus CG experts.
2.
Raaz—The Mystery Continues—Creating Evil with VFX
Mahesh Bhatt’s Raaz 2 was dubbed as Bollywood’s most-expensive horror
film—post-production studios Prime
Focus and FutureWorks
helped with extensive VFX to bring out the movie theme of ‘evil within’
the human psyche and how it manifests itself. There was a bull sequence
in the movie where a group of bulls attack Emraan and Kangana’s car.
With no permission forthcoming to shoot with the animals, computers
generated bulls after studying their complete movements from head to
tail, muscle reactions, walk cycles, running processes and interaction
with live objects. Maya was used for modeling and animating the bull.
The most thrilling sequence in Raaz 2 was the mirror sequence with
Kangana. The effect of her getting surprised by her ghost and gripping
the audience was a brainstorm. The VFX aspect of the sequence started
where Kangana bends to pick something up and her reflection remains in
the mirror. Later, fog was added to the glass created because of the
steam coming from the hot water and after the fog gathered, the water
droplets were created to add realism to the mirror and shots. Even the
factory shown in the film was completely created on CG. That involved a
lot of Matte painting, which is a painted representation of a
landscape, set, or distant location that allowed director
Mohit Suri to create the illusion of an environment that would
otherwise be too expensive to build or visit.
3.
Paa—The Aura of Auro
If you thought that prosthetics was all that went behind making Paa,
think again. As was the trend in Bollywood in 2009, Prime Focus
delivered 664 VFX shots and full DI for this sensitive Amitabh Bachchan
starrer dealing with progeria. There were close to 400 shots in the
film where the make-up needed to be digitally touched up frame by frame
to create a seamless look of Auro’s head matching the skin tone of the
prosthetic with the real skin tone. Extensive rotoscoping was carried
out on these shots followed by color correction to get the final
seamless look. The unconventional and realistic storyline necessitated
extensive VFX use mainly for a lot of prosthetic makeup augmentation on
Auro and an array of TV news channel PIPs. The VFX team designed the
look for the various news channels including logos, ticker bands and
breaking news. They were then composited on to various screens across
all types of locations, mainly homes, offices and business
establishments. The look for various television screens like LCD
panels, CRTs and older televisions were kept in mind when the various
looks were assigned. VFX was used to present the three looks the film
encompassed—the past, which revolves around Abhishek
Bachchan’s and Vidya Balan’s love story, for which a nice romantic feel
was given; the present, which had to be a little bleached and
desaturated; and the climax sequence, which was a highly
emotional shot in the hospital, for which the palette was set to cold
and soft.
4.
Tum Mile—Benchmark of Bollywood
Deluge
Mukesh Bhatt’s Tum Mile takes a calamity that hit Mumbai
during the 2005 monsoons and tries to recreate the horror that the July
26 deluge brought with it. The protagonists played by Emraan Hashmi and
Soha Ali Khan are stuck in the deluge, as is the whole of city and
through their eyes the film tries to convey what Mumbaikars went
through when time ceased to move. According to Abhishek De of
FutureWorks, it was important for the VFX to look as though they were
shot on real location on that rampageous day in the middle of actual
weather conditions and not take on a gimmicky visual-effects look. The
production team used a hi-resolution still camera for shooting
references and frames for creating the matte paintings of the Mumbai
skylines. By shooting in digital hi-resolution format, they could
capture a lot of actual life like details; to support the hi-resolution
matte paintings with the number of atmospheric and particle effect
layers, the studio then had to work on the latest Flame machines. The
skyline was recreated with atmospheric effects of looming clouds and
lightning and for tracking the studio used boujou, PF track, flaming
tracker and a proprietary photogrammetry toolset. Mumbai’s deluge story
failed to move Mumbai or the rest of India (probably the simultaneous
release with 2012 affected it), but it became the VFX benchmark for
Bollywood disaster movie.
5.
Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani–Ghazab
FX For Ajab Prem
Riding high on its box office success, this Ranbir – Katrina
starrer got excellent response for its hilarious script, the
performances and its entertaining and lively jokes. But being more than
just staple Bollywood masala, the flick had some extraordinary VFX
executed by Prime Focus. Sequences like the spinning effects, set
extensions, chroma key shots, the laddoo sequence, electrocution shots
and water coming out of Ranbir’s mouth and ears blend
seamlessly with the film and add a little more value to the feel of the
movie. The shot where Katrina holds Lilliput in her hand was shot in
two different layers. Layer one was Katrina picking up a hanger, while
the second layer consisted of the actor rigged with wires flying in the
air. Later both these layers were merged, the wire and hanger were
cleaned-up and the background was replaced with a matte painting. The
scene where Ranbir-Katrina’s gang travels in Goa on a car was
actually shot in a studio against a chroma background. The task was to
key out the net which Katrina was wearing. Apart from compositing,
motion blur was also added to the background to give a seamless look
and feel to the background and the shot. In another shot, when the
villains fell in a pool, Katrina puts an electric wire in the pool and
all of them get electric shocks. The VFX team added CG sparks over the
body of actors which made the electrocution look real.
6.
Delhi 6—Merging Chandni Chowk
with Times Square
Rakeysh OmPrakash Mehra’s Delhi-6 might have failed to woo the audience
at the box office, but if one were to talk about the VFX work in the
movie–done by a couple of Indian studios, Prasad EFX of
Chennai and Prana Studios of Mumbai–the effort is really commendable.
The terrace shots of Delhi 6 were shot in the Jaipur sets. The biggest
challenge for Prasad EFX in this was extending the genetic terraces,
building the geo landmarks of the area like the Jama Masjid, Red Fort
and the Hindu temple with their respective geographical positions. The
VFX supervisor Craig Mumma created a 360 degree Delhi geo environment
in 3D with the Delhi terrace photographs. Then the shots were tracked
and geos were placed in their respective positions. About 164 terrace
extension shots were executed by EFX for this film. The heaven sequence
shots were designed on the basis of the real Delhi terrace with
heavenly white look. Prana Studios worked on about 50-odd shots,
primarily the New York sequences. The inside Taj Mahal sequence was
actually shot in green matte owing to permission issues and was later
composited with the actual Taj and manipulated backgrounders. The
entire cow birth sequence was shot in green matte. The challenge
involved 3D tracking of these shots, matching static BG plates. The
Prasad EFX team stitched the Bgs in 3D, composited the environment and
matched them to the shots.
7.
Aladin—Genie’s Khwaish Creation
Story of Aladin is legendary and the characters of Genie and Jasmine
known worldwide. Film maker Sujoy Ghosh lets his imagination run wild
and spins a tale that ends up relating the past, present and future of
these characters. No wonder, Amitabh Bachchan turns out to be true rock
star in this VFX-filled entertainer (over 1600 VFX shots), though it
could not cause enough movement in the turnstiles. The magic
elements of the film are obvious important VFX shots but the sets are
made many times larger by the use of invisible work, difficult to spot
for lay viewers. The visuals created by Charles Darby are quite unique
in Bollywood annals, especially the ones where Big B is shown repenting
about his misdeed followed by lightning taking away his powers. The
flashback sequence is extremely well done too while reminding of ‘fall
in the deep’ as evidenced in the Hollywood flick Journey To The Center
Of The Earth. Most of the film is shot against a green wall which makes
Aladin quite heavy on VFX with the imaginary world of ‘Khwaish’ create
by EyeQube Studios giving a visual appeal to the film. The entire shot
of Genie appearing was generated in CG. The special moments includes a
donkey’s head replacing that of Riteish’s, his
guitar turning into a frog and he being thrown in the air either after
turning into a balloon or due to electrocution.
8.
De Dana Dan—Creating The Flooding Hole
Visual effects were needed for a key scene in Priyadarshan’s De Dena
Dan where the main characters (Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty,
Paresh Rawal, Katrina Kaif and Sameera Reddy) cause the flooding of an
entire luxury hotel (Pan Pacific Hotel), with water surging through all
levels of the tall modern structure. Since flooding a real hotel was
clearly not feasible, Red Chillies VFX decided to get their feet wet
with Houdini, using its fluid tools to add water without the fear of
drowning the production team. In the shot, the audience has a
bird’s-eye vantage point of the hotel, overlooking its modern
triangular shaped atrium. Each floor needed to be overtaken with fast
moving water complete with suitcases and hotel guests getting whisked
away in the wet mess. Much of the water also needed to cascade over the
sides of each floor. According to Harry Hingorani, VFX Production
Director at Red Chillies, the top five floors which are closest in view
were set up with multiple water layers moving at various speeds in
order to make the shot look realistic. The layers included a base water
layer, a surface foam layer and then a layer for foam at the edges as
it meets with walls and objects floating in the water. The climactic
flooding sequence was graded using the latest version of
Lustre—the software’s color-grading, keying, tracking, and
automated dust-busting tools greatly assisted the DI project flow.
9.
Blue—Raising the Bar for
Bollywood
The allegedly costliest ever Bollywood movie had little to show for
itself except amazing underwater and marine sequences in Bahamas
(leaving aside the amazingly toned body of Lara Dutta in a skimpy
bikini), thanks again to more than 1200 shots that passed through VFX
pipeline at Prime Focus. According to VFX supervisor Reupal Rawal, this
big budget visual effects wonder allowed a great deal of latitude for
aesthetic creativity in plenty of fabulous VFX shots. For the
underwater shark fight sequence, the VFX team studied the shark action
and a lot of textures and skin reaction to light. The behavioral
elements of the fish such as their dispersal when the shark and Akshay
come towards it were also considered. The shark was shot live along
with Akshay. However in one shot of the same scene Sanjay Dutt puts his
hand in the water and a shark emerges from the water almost biting his
hand off. This was achieved by generating a CG shark. The model and
texture was painstakingly detailed but the real challenge was to get
the wet feel of the skin and have the water rolling off the body of the
shark. The bike actions (both in Bangkok and Bahamas) too had a lot of
conventional wirework and some dangerous stunts which needed the help
of compositing to achieve a convincing shot. But within all that action
there were a few 100 % CG shots. One such sequence was of Zayed and the
goons riding bikes, landing on a running train and turning them. The
shots required one of the goons to actually crash right onto a moving
train and have his body slide near the camera to highlight the drama.
This shot was achieved by generating a CG double of the character.
