VFX Krayon Pictures Brings Out VFX for Bollywood Movie ‘Lootera’ -

Krayon Pictures Brings Out VFX for Bollywood Movie ‘Lootera’

nullAfter nabbing the National Award for lauded animation film Delhi Safari, Pune Based Krayon Pictures has now brought out 360 plus VFX shots for Bollywood Movie ‘Lootera’, Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane is an adaptation of O. Henry’s The Last Leaf and circles around the love story of Varun and Pakhi played by Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha.

The VFX on the film was spearheaded by Arpan Gaglani looking after the overall VFX as the VFX Creative Director,  Anand Bhanushali, who as the VFX Technical Director made possible all the production techniques to look right in place along with Rahul Vishwakarma who was the VFX Supervisor for the film.

The team at Krayon kick started VFX on the film during Mid March this year and executed it within a span of 3.5 months by delivering the final VFX shot on 27th June.

To share more on the VFX done for the movie, the trio shares their thoughts withAnimationXpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala with Anand Bhanushali starting the conversation by sharing the vision they had for Lootera, “When we started the work, we were clear that we had to deliver the most realistic VFX that adds to the film. It’s a beautiful film by one of the best directors in the country and we had to do justice to it. Our approach was simple, we needed some good vfx people from all over India who understood the complexity of ‘Lootera’ and help us develop a team in Krayon.”

Vikramaditya briefed Arpan Gaglani about the VFX that he visioned and shared with him that no green screens were used while shooting and Krayon will have to create realistic snow, landscape and trees with snow for the second half of the movie.

Arpan shares here, “We needed to submit a test shot in 2 weeks time in which we had to show Ranveer walking in a thick snowfall, our jaws dropped, as this was our first vfx project on such a massive scale we were going to pitch for, but we made it.”

As Lootera was a classical film set in 1953, Krayon had to carry out immense element removals in the movie including electric power meters and water tanks that didn’t exist during those days. And to add to the beauty of this version of Lootera, Krayon has instilled falling snow, landscape, snow covered trees and roads filled with 2 to 3 feet of snow, which they indicate as a challenge as no chroma used during the shoot of the sequences.

Vikramaditya wanted a snowfall according to the mood and the situation in the film, which is portrayed in a scene where Ranveer is painting the leaf and Sonakshi, is staring at him.

Anand adds here, “Vikramaditya wanted the snow to be romantic, so we had to create different snow particle motion for different situations and ended up with more than 5 to 6 different types of snow.”

The other challenge, according to Anand was that the entire film was shot in real light conditions and hence the footage received by Krayon included signs of massive grains.

Adds further, “As there were no chroma screens we had to actually roto each and every character, trees and other elements in every frame which was a painstaking, time consuming process, but we cracked it well.”

Did challenges end here for Krayon? No, as they were packed with bringing out snow in the second half of the movie. They inform more on this sequence by saying, “The second half of Lootera is set in snow clad Dalhousie and there wasn’t any sign of snow during the shoot. The first time he went to shoot in Dalhousie, it snowed so much that the entire set was destroyed and when he went for a second time, Ranveer Singh injured his back. Finally, the shoot was done without snow and we had to add it.”

To bring out snow sequences, Krayon helped themselves by researching on different kinds of snow flakes, but we see a good example of team work here as Vikramaditya also gave a helping hand by sharing a lot of Dalhousie snow footages with them, which he had shot during his initial recce and two earlier aborted shoots.

Rahul Vishwakarma elaborates more on a chief challenging sequence. “The most challenging sequence from the movie would be the ‘Leaf’ Sequence. We had to create a realistic snowfall, with a lot of snow and mist from the surroundings. It had to gradually grow denser and cover up the whole space in the shot, but has to look natural at the same time, so we created CG generated elements.”

The sequence, pointed out by Rahul was also filled with difficult Rotoscopy work involved along with, Match-moving and Compositing tasks.”

The team is extremely happy with the VFX done and shares their experience of working with Vikramaditya, “It was a delight to work with Vikramaditya Motwani and the entire Phantom crew,. He has an artistic & technical vision for final result. He as director is always pushing the bar in terms of creativity, he just knows what look he wants and doesn’t compromise.”

Revealing on the latest happening at Krayon, Anand and Arpan share, “We are currently working on a TV serial around the characters of Delhi Safari and starting on the sequel as well.”

 

 

connect@animationxpress.com

VFX