Mumbai based Geon Studios has delivered VFX for the recently released Tamil movie ‘Unnaipol Oruvan‘ and Telugu movie ‘Eenadu‘, both of which are remakes of 2008 Bollywood film ‘A Wednesday‘. Both the versions have southern superstar Kamal Hassan in the lead role, while Mohanlal and Venkatesh have played the cop in the Tamil and Telugu version respectively. Produced under the banner Raajkamal International and UTV Motion Pictures the movie has been directed by Chakri Toleti.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com Visual Effects Producer, Asmita Bharrati shared, “The story was a serious thriller and the visual enhancements were strictly used to add to the tempo of story telling. Even a small mistake from us could have easily been interpreted into a comic situation. We were to keep pace with Kamalji‘s performance; Chakri‘s fast paced story telling and Manoj Soni‘s thrilling camera work! So, we took utmost care in making it so invisible.
A total of 400+ VFX shots were worked upon for the movie and a team of 30 artists from Geon completed the work in a tight schedule of 6 weeks under Visual Effects Supervision of N Madhu Sudhanan. A few of the shots were also farmed out to Jupiter Animation, Chennai for both the movies, while some shots of the Telugu version were executed at EFX, Mumbai”.
The work involved in the films included extensive 3D camera tracking along with a lot of compositing work as there were many live plates to be composited. There were also CG shots and many digital matte paintings involved.
N Madhu Sudhanan, VFX Supervisor shared that Manoj Soni, the cinematographer, had handled the RED camera in an extraordinary fashion and that it was quite challenging to keep pace with him to match his movements. The use of jimmy jib for some of the shots on high places of building had been challenging to do visual enhancements. Due to strong winds, the gadgets used at the shoot, were not steady and so there were shots that were tracked in a few hours while some took days.
“Kamalji has been around for 50 years, entertaining us and going stronger. I am very lucky having worked with him in three films. Many people know him as a legendary actor, but we technicians know what a great technician and a perfectionist he is,” added N Madhu.