Mumbai based Pixion studios has delivered 160 VFX shots for Farhan Akhtar starrer blockbuster ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ on a tight schedule of 65 days. This challenging task was accomplished by a team of 100+ enthusiastic artists.
Appreciating the work carried out by Pixion, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Director of the movie, states, “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is a cinematic experience which will transport us to a period which was most important in Milkha Singh’s life 1947-1960. We not only had to recreate history like the partition of India, but also major sporting events like the Olympics, Asian and Commonwealth Games. This was a formidable visual challenge, to recreate period. The team at Pixion led by Viral Thakkar took it on as challenge and delivered the goods, which not only me but I am sure every cinema loving person will be proud of.”
Overall VFX on this movie was spearheaded by VFX Head- Viral Thakkar along with Sudhir Trivedi- CG supervisor, Kinchit Desai – VFX Producer and Compositing supervisor, Prashant Thakur, who managed to suitably put together some complex and appealing sequences. The VFX sequences handled by Pixion consisted of the Lahore race sequence, Chandigarh Station Sequence, Skipping Sequence of Farhan Akhtar, Ladak sequence along with a lineup of assorted VFX shots like circling around the Bridge, Dakota planes, Burning Paper Sequence and more.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala about the film, Kinchit, VFX Producer, Pixion, shares, “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ is really close to our heart! Working with Rakeshji was a great experience and I believe that it was the trust of Rakeshji due to which we could bring out the VFX.”
The skipping sequence which was a tricky one for Pixion as they were asked to bring out a complete 360 CG view of Ladakh. Kinchit adds, “We had to show the transformation of Farhan Akhtar which we successfully brought out with morphing. The sequence needed lot of reworking due to heavy CG background transitions, but we cracked it well.”
Kinchit indicates that working on Lahore race VFX sequence having 120 VFX shots, was also challenging as it was the climax shot and everything had to look right. “This sequence was our main concern. For this one we created CG crowds along with replacing and transforming the modern building structures with the vintage one,” says Kinchit. For making this sequence realistic and with old world charm, Pixion carried out extensive research by watching actual race videos of Milkha Singh, which greatly helped them in developing the look and feel of the environment.
“Working on a locked camera is easy but tricky when it comes to working on a foreground shot where a character is running as we need to take care of minute details of each frame and instill the VFX without the original footage losing its charm,” shares Kinchit.
Coming to the tent sequence, the team here created extensive CG tents for portraying the look and feel of a refugee camp. In this sequence, the team made use of cloth simulation on tents which was adopted for showing a proper interaction with the live action environment. Sudhir Trivedi, CG Supervisor on the film informs, “The footage that we received had around 20 tents. Here, we tracked the shot, but faced problems in tracking as there were immense distortions in the footage.”
“For the bridge sequence, we had to portray a 1960’s look and feel for which we researched varied photographs of the old times and created the entire landscape and extended CG Bridge, created water interaction with the landscape and applied cloth simulation for the dupatta,” shares Sudhir.
The Chandigarh Train Sequence possessed a series of challenges which included a transition from live action to CG and back to the live action frame, which the team points out as a 2500 frame shot having 500 frames of CG landscape. “As the director had shot two plates, one in the train and another one the roof, it became difficult to work with a CG camera, but we cracked it by adding a CG Camera with the live action camera and also created a complete CG landscape that you can see outside the train along with making additional CG Bogies. The team made used of Nuke for massive 3D projection along with using FUME FX for the smoke interaction with other elements.”
Another noteworthy sequence delivered by Pixion is the one where they’ve picked a real footage of Milkha Singh receiving an accolade and replaced Milkha with Farhan Akhtar. Sudhir further explains, “We matched the movement of Farhan Akhtar with Milkha Singh’s movement by performing color correction, tracking and stabilizing the shot.”
The Compositing of the VFX Shots was taken care off by Compositing Supervisor Prashant Thakur, who along with his team accomplished the task within 2 months time span.
Prashant on his experience “It was a pleasure working on Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.With a crunchy deadline and that to finishing 11 sequences which were given to us was a task, so we planned the entire workflow and targeted complex shots first.”
He points out that working on CG stadium, train shots,Lahore race and bridge sequence were challenging on the composting front.