“redchillies.vfx”team has delivered 1500 VFX shots for Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express.This Shahrukh Khan starrer movie that grossed 410 crores and has become highest grosser in Indian Cinema.
The team created many seamless complex CGI transitions complimenting the scenes and storyline of the film. So what was Rohit Shetty’s vision for the VFX of Chennai Express? Keitan Yadav, COO of redchillies.vfx shares with Animation Xpress.com, “Rohit’s vision for the movie was to make the film look stunningly beautiful, rich & vibrant with breathtaking scenery, skies and colors.”
“He wanted natural pleasant feel with very distinct feel to two villages. With magic hour environment at places and full open blue skies during journey the experience was enhanced. A lot of beautification has gone into songs like “Chipak Chipak ke” and “Titli”, informs Keitan.
Haresh Hingorani (Harry), Chief Creative Officer, redchillies.vfx, adds here, “Rohit wanted us to instill mood transitions, instead of direct cuts or dissolves between shots. We then pre-visualized these sequences, and designed the transition to enhance the storyline, which has come out extremely good and being appreciated by the audience.”
The render time for certain VFX shots in the movie went up to 10-15 hours per frame as many shots were worked on 4K resolution and quite complex due to vegetation and waterbodies added.
Another sequence where tranquil beauty of a setup was enhanced is train coming to a stop at a waterfall. Landscape enhancement along with waterfall took this scene to a different level. This was shot during the dry season with mostly dry vegetation and very less waterfall due to off monsoon time.
Adding more Harry continues, “Here the waterfall was enhanced and 70% of greenery re-created in CGI, which took around 2 months to finish. One more shot was the 360 degree chopper shot in which around 80 percent of shot was created in CGI; the shot was stabilized, we added greenery and flowing streams to make the shot look spectacular.”
Also, the team created set extensions for vidamba village “We received a footage having 30 percent of houses and the rest had to be generated with CGI.” Highlights Harry.
The prime challenge for the artists was to create heavy transitions seamlessly and realistically. It took around four months for the team to work on the different sequences of the movie.
Gradual transitions of journey progressing through the day made the train sequences more exciting, which were completely shot against green screen in a studio.
Where TC arrives – a walk through in compartments is fast and enticing as TC is seen as a savior for the moment. Later as Rahul is held captive and is forced to travel to “Kumban gaon” revelation of lush green exciting vast terrain kept the mood in transition.
Transition of a camera pulling out of the moving train through the window and rising high had multiple layers. This took lot of effort and artistic fineness to seamlessly integrate into one move combining live and CGI elements seamlessly.
Puran Gurung, Visual Effects Supervisor at redchillies.vfx adds, “Taking the audience through journey, time has been very meticulously orchestrated using vfx techniques, be it morning to evening or even Night approaching in a countryside.
Climax of the film had a hand to hand combat where props used were dangerous for actors, adding vfx helped keep the fight natural, it also has a burning stove being tossed around and finally concluding into a huge blast.
“Scenic shots like the train pulls in to a station in early morning; to transitions like the day turning into evening via mobile phone; to a transition where the train enters a tunnel in the evening and the headlight of the trains transforms into a beautiful full moon revealing the landscape at night where the train is passing over a bridge on the river are some more master shots created by redchillies.vfx using visual effects skills.” asserts Keitan.
The redchillies.vfx team received interesting reviews on entire movie as people are grateful for showing India so beautiful and never before seen scenery