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.”