How important is nature in our lives? Well, this movie emphasizes on the very crucial area of nature which is ‘Water’ and the VFX for this short is brought out by Crazy Cub Animations, an Animation and VFX Studio based in Delhi . Produced, Written and Directed by Mandeep Singh Aujla, the CEO & Founder of Aujla Innovation Inc. Brampton, Canada, the short was screened last month at Punjabi International Film Festival at Toronto.
AAB, which means “Water”, is a story of awakening. Humans have been using natural resources for their own benefits and some of these benefits finally end-up harming natural resources, but when nature pounces back, the results could be devastating!
AnimationXpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala caught up with Kamal Pahuja, Founder and Managing Director, Crazy Cub Animations and VFX Supervisor on the movie to know about the VFX done.
How did this project happen?
It was in February this year that Mandeep Singh Aujla Writer/Producer/Director of “AAB” gave me a call and shared about the idea and story of this short. Earlier, we had already worked for Mandeep by delivering two Tvc’s, so we knew that something interesting is coming up. The initial concept which was shared by Mandeep Singh Aujla us over the phone and later he shared the detailed story and screenplay. We started understanding the vision of “AAB”, a world without clean drinking water and immediate impact on whole team after hearing the concept and script was that we all became more responsive towards water.
Great to know about the movie premiere at PIFF, please share more?
Mandeep S. Aujla has been working in the Canadian film Industry from many years, and also is the Director of Community Relations at PIFF (Punjabi International Film Festival, Toronto, and he asked us if we have any project to showcase during the PIFF Toronto. We didn’t have anything ready but after hearing the AAB concept and story, we agreed to work on it. Mandeep asked again that would the team at Crazy Cub complete the project on the deadline so that it could be showcased at PIFF Toronto, and luckily, we were managed to finish “AAB” on time and had a successful World Premiere on this 18th May.
Tell us about the VFX work done by you in the movie and the team strength that worked on it?
In Punjabi version of the movie there were total of 106 VFX shots that we worked on. Roughly 3 minute of the movie was entirely done in CG including the ant and Fly character. Rest we brought out Chroma removal, mattes, backgrounds and color corrections, whereas the editing, sound, final work was done carried out at Mandeep @ Aujla Innovations studio in Brampton, Canada. A team of 15 Artists worked on the Punjabi version of the movie for near around 45 Days. . Right now we are working on Hindi and English version of the same, as the dialogues were separately shot for three different languages which was English, Hindi and Punjabi.
What kind of vision and approach did you follow for working on the VFX the movie?
We as a team knew right from the beginning that if we have to deliver things on time, we will have to think outside the box. So the approach for most of the scenes was Hybrid approach. We mixed 3D, 2D and real shoots and clicks to get the best possible results on time.
Could you put light on the pre-production phase?
Preproduction started immediately after we got the final script and we started storyboarding the full movie. We did the storyboarding for live shoot shots and CG shots. Interesting fact about “AAB” film is that it is remotely directed/produced by Mr. Mandeep and we used to have video conferencing through social networking to get every small details about each shot, i.e. set design, equipment’s, Camera angles, Costumes design, look and feel during the pre-production phase. Character development and backgrounds took around 3 weeks to be done and then we started animating the full CG shots.
Was bringing out VFX a challenge?
Execution of VFX actually started from storyboard level, where we decided which part will be live shot and what are the things added on post production stages. Based on this planning, shooting was done and after shooting we immediately started on chroma removal which is base step for any VFX shot. Characters and background elements were separated out. Once we had everything from CG department and matte department ready all shots were finally compiled together at composite stage. For bringing out VFX, we did observe the nature and saw couple of movies having devastation.
According to you, which is the best scene VFX scene in the entire movie and why?
We collectively feel two scenes as the best and most challenging scenes with the first one being the opening scene where we had to show the water drop traveling from clouds to the city and the next scene where Fly dies. Both these scenes possessed challenges of creating cinematically good looking scenes and yet maintaining the aesthetics of the script and director’s vision.
And the most challenging VFX point was?
Most challenging part was to show a divested city where every sign of life is finished because of lack of clean water. Mandeep wanted to point out the seriousness of the issue by making use of small elements like ant and Fly..
How was the onset experience? Can you share more about locations?
Shooting took place in the end of March. Due to hectic schedule of the artists Jasbir Jassi and Amar Noori Ji, the shooting needed to be finished in 2 days time.
Onset experience was great. It was good to work with Industry’s big names like Jasbir Jassi and Amar Noori Ji, Sardool Sikander (Music Director and Singer, has created soul touching music for “AAB”). Because the film was mainly based into a time when there is no clean water left anywhere, all shoot was done against chroma. Another fact as mentioned above that director was sitting in Brampton, Canada while filming was going here in Chattapur farms, Delhi.
Please share the overall experience about working on the movie and the credit run down?
Co- coordinating with AAB team was a great learning experience. Initial scenes took about 4-5 revisions as we were developing the final look and feel. But once the look and feel for every scene was finalized, the remaining shots were dealt with in much lesser time.
Mandeep Singh Aujla, has great trust on our team, also a strong believe that “AAB” project can done via remote direction/production in this day and age. It’s all due to his 22 years of experience in Information Technology and strong communication and trust with bestowed on me and my team. Also to mention, Sachinder Singh Pali, Assistant Director on AAB did a awesome job with help of Dushyant Dubey, Director of Photography and whole team were able to capture the heart touching moments of the short. At the end we are happy with results and great unique experience.
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Crazy Cub Animation Team Members also share their experience with us by saying:
Arun Priya Gautam [Storyboard & Matte Painting Lead] – Merging photographic images with hand painted textures was a challenge. The wide city shot has a lot of these elements blended together to create a single image. Storyboarding for a live shot was also a great learning experience. The entire look and feel was supposed to be negative and the wet environment was a tough task to create in matte. Deciding the tone required a lot of R&D. Overall it was a great experience.
Jaskaran Sondhi [Modeling and Texturing lead] – I faced many challenges during the production of Aab. The city was a big challenge. Creating multiple high resolution buildings in such a short span of time was near to impossible but with a strong pipeline, good pre-planning and execution, we were able to combine 2d and 3d elements to create a seamless city. Also fluid simulation with long simulation hours was a great challenge.
Nitin Khandelwal [Compositing Supervisor] – Working on AAB was special for me because of two reasons. First, the deadline challenge, and second the overall look and feel which was required for this short film. So we were working on a project, which could only be delivered with the help of good visual effects.
Kamal Pahuja shares his closing thoughts by saying, “Working on a project like AAB where Visual effects were the soul of story, it becomes very important to create a balance between live shot and Visual effects. As visual Effects artists one can easily get carried away. But with great direction from Mr. Mandeep Singh Aujla, we were always with the script demands and delivered a satisfactory result. Apart from this we are currently working on Tunetoon – Music based Learning Readiness & Active Parenting Program focused on Social Emotional development of young children. We are creating animation for 90 songs of roughly two minute each. You can see one here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiL-8JZxQ1I”