Vickey Lalwani (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 23, 2014)

The highlight of any Salman Khan film is definitely the moment when he takes his shirt off to flaunt his six/eight/twelve-pack abs. Boys across the country are pumping iron in the hope of getting a body like his. So, last Friday, when a video was uploaded suggesting that the actor's much-coveted pack was in fact computer generated, not surprisingly, it went viral. Buzz is, it was leaked from Tata Elxsi, the company who had 'corrected' the flaw in Salman's shirtless scene in Ek Tha Tiger. Apparently a disgruntled employee, who had recently got pink-slipped from the company, uploaded the 'grudge' video.

Investigations confirmed that Sallu did go under the knife, if only on-screen. An insider from Tata Elxsi (name withheld on request) informed Mirror, "Salman was shocked that the film's director, Kabir Khan, had edited out his shirtless shot. The actor called up the producer and said that if it wasn't incorporated, his fans would be disappointed and Brand Salman would take a beating. And that was the reason why the computer graphics came into play."

The video goes on to say and we quote verbatim: "A certain section of the video clearly shows that his six-pack abs are computer generated. Salman does have a flat tummy but it is not chiselled enough for the packs to stand out.What with Salman's health issues? We understand that maintaining an actual six-packs could prove unhealthy for him. But this revelation makes us doubt everything we see on the big screen these days."

Merzin Tavaria, the VFX director of Prime Focus which also specialises in computer generated special effects, points out that today several Bollywood films revolve around superheroes and their death-defying stunts. "While earlier this technology was only used in Hollywood films, today there is immense scope for it in Hindi cinema as well," he asserts.

One of his colleagues, on condition of anonymity, adds, "Several actors sign films without listening to the script. They only want to jump around or fly.

Consequently, the emphasis is on special effects and not the story. And when the hero is larger-than- life it's essential that he looks good in reel life."

Ketan Mehta, owner of Maya Digital Studio, admits that he has never got so much work in his life. "Today, we can do anything, we can remove wrinkles, eye bags, blackheads. We can make a fat man look slim and vice-versa. Do you know that the costume which you saw SRK wearing in RA was not the one which he shot in? The one he shot in was not as attractive," says Mehta.

A senior official from SRK's Red Chillies Studio, on request of anonymity said, "We specialise in VFX, we don't deal much in computer graphics."

DOCTORED

♦ During Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Rani Mukerji developed rashes on her face from the cold. But on screen, her complexion is clean and clear.

♦ An errant pimple was removed from Anushka Sharma's face in Band Baaja Baarat.

♦ The sun behind Ajay Devgn when he runs in Singham was created by CG.

Master of digital after-effects, Merzin Tavaria, who played a key role in converting the Oscar-winning Gravity from 2D to 3D, sheds light on the world of visual and special effects
Nilesh Rao (MID-DAY; May 7, 2014)

How did you end up in this profession?
I have always been a movie buff since my college days and interested in games and graphics. I wanted to do something related to computers and took up a course in graphics. My fellow student, Namit Malhotra, who is the owner of Prime Focus, floated the idea of setting up an editing studio then. About four years later, we started doing special effects.

What was your breakthrough point?
We started with popular TV shows and then ventured into commercials. At one point of time, I was handling projects for tele serials and films as well as commercials. I would go to a theatre and find the ads on which I had worked were playing back-to-back. I remember we had just one-and-a-half months to work on Harry Potter, Green Lantern, Transformers and a couple of Hindi films besides a South Indian one.

What are the pre-requisites for this profession?
One has to be patient as well as passionate and have a basic understanding of technology and softwares being used. You also have to be hardworking. This industry is growing by leaps and bounds. Employment opportunities are opening up in a big way.

Gravity was a visual treat. How challenging was the project? 
There were crazy shots. Another team in London team was working on the project. It was completed within 1.5 to two years. We converted around 30 minutes of the film from 2D to 3D.

What has been the most challenging project till date?
The definition of challenging keeps changing every minute! Working on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film have been quite a challenge. Same goes for Aamir Khan’s Ghajini, not so much for its visual effects but because he is a perfectionist. Then there was Avatar and Clash Of The Titans. Right now, we are working on Sin City 2 as a whole. We are coordinating with the teams in Vancouver. Every year you get one or two projects which suck your blood but the result is always gratifying.

Where does Indian filmmakers’ sensibility stand in terms of special effects?
In 1976, when Hollywood was venturing into space and making Star Wars, we were moving back to the village with Sholay. That was the divide then and it exists now too. There is tremendous potential in the visual effects and animation genres here but they need to be fully exploited.

Which is your favourite film?
Godfather. I also enjoyed Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Rock On. There are many Hollywood films where the story is a big, fat chocolate cake and visual effects are the icing on it. Many characters who do not exist during the shoot, are created through visual effects. 3D or stereo is a part of it. You take every frame of the movie and add depth and volume, giving it an immersive touch.

Ankur Pathak (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 12, 2014)

Alfonso Cuaron’s Sandra Bullock-George Clooney starrer space drama Gravity, which has recieved 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, was partly shot in 3D, but chunks of it was converted to the format from 2D by Prime Focus India.

To make the space spectacle look as astounding as it does, about 400 technicians from the Indian branch of Prime Focus, a company that specialises in rendering visual effects, animation and 3D-conversion, worked in tandem with teams from London and Los Angeles.

Before it came on board, Cuaron asked the team here to do test-runs, and impressed by the results, Prime Focus was aboard the space mission. It helped that the VFX firm enjoyed tremendous goodwill in LA circles, having worked on the visuals of Avatar and on the 3D conversion of Clash of the Titans in a record-time of eight weeks.

Says Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director, “Gravity was a major challenge as its visual treatment is unlike any other film you’ve seen. Although Maya 3D is generally used, we developed a software called View-D, which not only enhanced the conversion process, but also accelerated it.”

Working with technicians based in LA and London meant juggling multiple time-zones. But rather than it being a hindrance, the team made optimum use of it. “We would get a detailed update from Framestore, London, which did most of the visual effects. This included the number of shots to be converted, the treatment, and also the sense of distance that had to be created between the foreground and the background. While they’d sleep, over 100 programmers worked on it and packed it off to LA, before these guys woke up and punched in a feedback.”

The final output of this relentless research, complex coordination and constant sharing of programming data concluded to extravagant results. “The long, unbroken, floating camera-shots which Cuaron worked on translated spectacularly well in space, and led to us producing the longest continuous shot that we believe has ever been converted – 15,531 frames, or 10 minutes 47 seconds of screen-time,” he proudly says.

Tavaria says the film is a big leap for several Indian technicians as it breaks the West’s stereotype of India just being a hub of cheap labour. “Gravity and the other films we’ve worked on prove that we’ve artistic merit and creative capabilities, not only technical prowess,” he says, adding, “Our next big project is Sin City 2. Watch out for it.”

Till a few years ago, visual effects ( VFX) was used largely by Hollywood and a handful of big- budget Hindi films. But after the recession, 2013 saw a steady rise of VFX in Bollywood. SHAKTI SHETTY tries to understand why it has now become the ultimate technology for all kinds of Hindi movies
Shakti Shetty (MID-DAY; December 22, 2013)

It's easier to identify computer-generated imagery (CGI) when a movie belongs to the fantasy genre. But then, what about those scenes in a film which appear totally natural, but aren’t? For example, in Aashiqui 2 , actor Shraddha Kapoor is shown facing a roaring crowd at a concert. During the actual shoot, the whole stadium was empty and she was standing alone in front of the microphone.

Similarly, the bridge scene in Gori Tere Pyaar Mein shows a gently flowing river when, in reality, the water body was far from enchanting. Ditto with the sea adjoining Diu Fort into which the three boys from Kai Po Che jumped. It appeared greener than it actually was.

Nothing is what it seems in cinema. If one digs a bit deeper, the deception is far more intriguing.

And this mystique has a lot to do with visual FX (visual effects or VFX, as it’s called) generally applied in the post- production phase. Forget technologically advanced endeavours like Avatar or The Hobbit , even low-budget movies owe a lot to the magic of VFX nowadays. In layman terms, it has become the ultimate Photoshop for moving pictures.

There’s hardly any film that rolls out of Bollywood without being subjected to VFX. In Bollywood, except for rarities like RA.One or the more recent Krrish 3, VFX is rarely a design element in the narrative process. So the economics boils down to necessity and thus provides scope for special effects on a smaller but broader scale.

Before VFX came along, Digital Intermediate (DI) was the big thing. However, the general perception about that motion picture finishing process was that it was gimmicky. But that was then. As of now DI has become a standard format: every movie goes through a DI process.

In contrast, VFX requires allocating funds smartly. Besides, why would a cinematographer shoot in the night for three weeks and increase the production cost when he or she can use visual effects to get the same effects without compromising on any aspect? Prime Focus, one of the key players in the field, makes life easier during a time-crunch. This year, the company played a significant role in successful films such as Aashiqui 2, Kai Po Che and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Currently working on Salman Khan’s Jai Ho, its co- founder and chief creative director Merzin Tavaria throws light on the rise of visual effects with respect to cost. “In Bollywood, 2008- 2009 saw some movies such as Ghajini, Raaz 2 and Chandni Chowk to China embrace VFX like never before. But it fizzled out with the global recession. As a result, smaller movies such as Aamir and Dev D started to bloom. For VFX, it was an interesting trend because we later noticed that the ratio comparison between small as well as big- budget movies is almost the same.” Compared to Hindi filmmakers, their southern counterparts are more innovative vis-à-vis VFX. For them, it is a creative tool for innovative storytelling as evident from blockbusters such as Robot, Eega (Makkhi) and Magadheera. Turns out they have not let their imagination suffer due to budgetary restrictions.

But money isn’t always the issue. Approach is.

Vamsi Ayyagari, general manager of Moving Picture Company, points out the misconception. “It is a mistaken belief that VFX is expensive. Yes, it may comprise 20 per cent or even 50 per cent of a movie budget but in such cases, the film can’t be made without VFX. Moreover, it saves money that otherwise will be spent on other elements of filmmaking,” says the Bangalore-based professional who has earlier worked on Koi Mil Gaya, Aladin and Where the Wild Things Are. Both filmmaking and VFX, are creative processes that require streamlining and foresight.

Reliance MediaWorks knows a thing or two about both. It recently delivered a whopping 750-plus shots for the Imran Khan-Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer Gori Tere Pyaar Mein and was in a position to help shape the overall aesthetics of the film set in a rustic part of Gujarat. The aforementioned bridge forms a crucial element in the storyline. The structure was a textured computer-generated representation of a real bridge. It had to be highly detailed as a large number of close-up shots were supposed to be filmed on the bridge. For the river, various shots of a lake were taken which were then given depth and magnitude using the VFX technology.
Venkatesh Roddam, CEO of Reliance MediaWorks, adds, “Most of the VFX in the film is not even visible. However, the elements that have been created as part of the VFX for the movie play an essential role in the plot, thereby making the task of handling the VFX that much more creatively challenging and significant.” For the film’s director Punit Malhotra, the marriage between the storyline and the technology available at hand mattered the most. “Neither does the storyline indicate special effects nor is that highlighted in the communication. So, the transition of the VFX into the frames had to be seamless and almost invisible for the viewer.”

Alert: Bumps ahead

When there are so many advantages of a technology, wouldn’t there be some demerits as well? Tavaria affirms and belts out a few. “VFX is a cinematic trick so we don’t like to reveal what we do. But at the same time, its strength has become its weakness. We like to exceed expectations but sometimes, there’s no need to alter anything. Also, it’s often misunderstood that visual effects is a part of post-production when it’s actually a part of filmmaking in general. VFX ought to come in at the beginning of the film when the script of the movie is being penned, which is not the case yet,” he elaborates.

Ayyagari, too, sheds light on what needs to improve with respect to global competition. He maintains that VFX has always been a low- margin business and excessive undercutting has stunted the industry’s growth. “Also, Indian companies need to work on design, quality and execution. In future, technological innovations such as Performance Capture and Cloud Computing will be differentiators and such tools will help tell bigger stories. However, the domestic Indian VFX Industry has to start respecting itself.”

What the future holds According to Keitan Yadav, CEO of Red Chillies VFX and Harry Hingorani, creative director, VFX will only see growth in Hindi film industry. He explains, “One of the main reasons for increasing use of VFX in Bollywood is that writers, producers and directors are increasingly touching upon new genre and stories which are impossible to make without extensive involvement of VFX professionals. Krrish 3 is a testimony to the increasing use of VFX in Bollywood where almost every shot in the film utilised VFX to make the movie visually stunning and appealing. With the help of a talent pool, at a fraction of Hollywood budgets, Bollywood is bound to use it extensively.” Pankaj Khandpur, creative director of Tata Elxsi — Visual Computing Labs, echoes similar sentiments. “Over the last few years, one change that we have observed is the mindset of filmmakers and their openness to experiment with new VFX technology. They are now writing stories that integrate VFX in the creative process from the script stage itself. What also helps is that we get involved in the project right from the script stage. This has enabled us to use some of the most cutting- edge and path-breaking VFX technology for our recent projects such as Dhoom 3, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Ek Tha Tiger ,” he says.

Despite the endless possibilities ahead, the rise of VFX is a noteworthy change in Hindi cinema.

But going by the experts in the field, it requires the combined mastery of mind and art — and musn’t be treated like just another step in the assembly line of filmmaking.