Making of Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic by M Krishnan and S Chatterjee

The recently released VFX film Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic ( TPTM) directed by Kunal Kohli, involved a massive amount of VFX and CG work by Prasad EFX. Coordinating with the VFX team and shooting with an imaginary set is a rather difficult task. Everything needs to be verified and pre planned as every task needs to be completed on time and within the specified budget.

Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic had such complicated shots that shooting for the VFX scenes proved to be more challenging than the VFX itself. On this note, Mohan Krishnan of Prasad EFX and Director of Photography Sudeep Chatterjee kick-started the VFX study of TPTM by showing some of the scenes and songs from the film which were loaded with VFX, followed by the actual shooting of these shots on the sets.

Giving a live commentary as the scenes were being screened, the speakers explained that most of the shots were taken using chroma screens in the background, while for a few, the motion control rig was used.

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Certain scenes involved tracking, where the track was already present in the software, which made it much quicker to do the VFX. In other scenes, such as those in heaven with clouds everywhere, the entire scene was shot with blue chroma screens and no other sets or props.

One of the scenes also included the characters merging into an original black and white shot of Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi March.

In all these scenes, pre visualization was very important. "Here the pre visualization was based on many reference diagrams and photographs. For some complicated scenes, such as those with butterflies, some people on our team actually had to study the behavior of butterflies in a sanctuary. A lot of research goes into references."

After the screening, there were many questions on the creative as well as technical aspects of the making of the film. Some of the questions were:

In the footage with Gandhiji, how did you find out the specifications of the lens that it was shot on? Did you have the information or was it just by instinct?
We did not have the specifications of the lens. The present day characters were shot using our gut feeling and placed in the scene. However we sometimes take safety shots using 40 and 60 mm cameras when not sure about the lens used. Also the same magnification can be achieved by any camera, you just need to remember that if it is a distant shot the camera would have higher focal length and for a close up or intimate scene, it would be lower.

How do you decide which way to shoot any particular scene?
Because in one of the scenes I thought you had used rotoscopy when actually you had not.
Every time, we first design the shot, go to the special effects team and ask them how we can go about shooting it in the way they need. If they tell us to use chroma, we shoot it that way. You can use any software for the effects. The only important point is pre planning and pre visualization, deciding the material needed and shooting it, continuously coordinating with the VFX team and then compositing the shot in the end.

How do you manage to do the lighting when you work with virtual sets? In some places, the lights are post effects, added later on. How did you get the lighting on the characters then?
In the heaven scene, there was no set at all. It was all shot in front of the chroma screen. In such cases, we pre visualize everything. Even where the characters are touching the stars, we had actually placed bulbs on the set.

Also for every shot we took, the VFX team used to take a chrome ball picture of the set, which would give them an accurate idea of the lighting of each shot and allow them to replicate it in CG if needed.

Were you closely involved in the special effects part also after the shooting?
We had to concentrate on pre visualization and our job was to develop the shot in print. However, we kept coordinating with the VFX team and after the effects were added, they used to come to us, we color corrected them and sent them back to the artists, after which they would come back to us for the final touch up.

What was the most challenging part during the making of the film?
In the whole heaven sequence, without any set of any kind and no props, we had to combat boredom as we were more used to shooting and seeing the results immediately rather than imagining it.

What were the creative challenges that you faced when making the movie?
In the shot where Rani had the sun in her hand, we actually had to keep a lit bulb in her hand while shooting and the background had low lighting. But gradually we had to increase the lighting in the shot as the pillars in the special effects would start lighting up.

Was there something that you were not able to do as planned due to some technical limitations?
Some of the final shots we took were not very satisfying and looking back, you tend to think you could have done better. In one song in particular, where Rani is dancing in a forest, the background which is the forest was done by matte painting. We tried to decide whether it should be realistic or look a little unreal. The end result was that it didn't look either and didn't exactly fit into the scene.

And with such an enthusiastic response for an audience that was always hungry to know more, the interactive session of VFX case study of Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic concluded.