Horror gets visual effects touch in Bipasha Basu and Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer ‘Aatma’. Released towards the end of March, the 340 VFX shot count of the movie along with color grading was created and executed by Reliance Media works in association with Wide Frame Pictures and Suparn Verma, the writer and director of Aatma who has to his credit assorted Bollywood movies including, Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena and Acid Factory.
The movie ‘Aatma’ orbits around the protagonist Maya Verma, played by Bipasha Basu who is trying to save her daughter from the spirit of her ruthless, abusing and menacing husband Abhay, who for his unconditional, almost-bordering-on-obsession, love for his daughter comes back from the dead to take her with him.
Reliance Media works kick started work on ‘Aatma’ from mid 2012 and brought out the final VFX in late February this year. According to RMW, the vision behind carrying out VFX for Aatma was to show RMW skill sets as the movie involved extremely complex sequences and in this movie, RMW also wanted to instill VFX as a crucial part of story telling.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala about the initial thoughts on hearing the script of Aatma, NISHIT R SHETTY, VP-OPERATIONS, DIGITAL LAB, RELIANCE MEDIAWORKS, shares, “We had done some tests for this film. The test involved us to develop few concepts, which were the soul of the film. Brief from the director was so clear that our concepts were approved at the first attempt and thus, the film was awarded to us. We also share a great relationship with Mr. Kumar Mangat the producer of the film, which actually helped us to get an opportunity to work on the tests.”
The team of Reliance Media works spent a month for bringing out pre-visualization for the movie. Aatma was shot between the time frame of 60-70 days and it has taken two months to successfully complete the post production for the movie. Also, the pre-production, production and post production of the movie were happening simultaneously.
Nishit shares more on the experience of working with Suparn, Director of Aatma by saying, “Suparn Verma is a very VFX savvy director. He is aware of what is capable within visual effects. For him, ‘AATMA’ was more about the performance. In the initial brief, he used terms like-horror, magical, dark, zombie, smoke, gravity, organic etc. The VFX was more of a dressing to what he was shooting and he wanted to have that flexibility to make changes in the post production phase of the making of the film. A great deal of time was spent on very elaborate concept building and look developments.
A team force of 35 artists have worked on the movie and the complex VFX sequences of the movie comprises of the Pujari sequence, a scene where witches turn into Ravens in the graveyard and lastly the climax of the film where Nawazuddin is disintegrating into smoke and debris.
“An inspired, impactful way of directors to express themselves which resonates with their viewers comes through high end color grading, which today forms an important component in mood creation of the film, adds Santosh Pawar, DI-Colorist, RMW.
For bringing out the VFX for Aatma, the visual references were captured from international movies and series including Harry Potter series, Matrix series and Zombie movies. By studying these visual references, the team at reliance media works came up with their own version of VFX.
Emphasizing more on the technical aspects of these sequences, Nishit, asserts, “The principal photography was live in the Pujari sequence. The close up was actually the test bed for working out our technique. The first step is to build an accurate model of the subjects face. Once we had that we got camera and facial match move from the live shot. This has to be really accurate because we will be using this mesh to generate position reference or texture reference data. This is used in a projection shader to stick a projection onto a deforming surface. The mouth area was crucial as it was continuously moving up/down and the jelly looking material had to be real and interactive so that the effect looks convincing. We now take the pujari’s face and build a set of blind shapes that will transform it into the Zombie face. We had made numerous concepts until the toughest concept got approved.
Adds more, “We made use of these high resolution concepts to project it on the face without losing the identity of the character, and then needed to get the color and skin texture. A procedural shader was used to coordinate systems from Maya to animate and render these passes. And finally, we have a light pass of a face painted like the zombie but morphing from human to zombie. All of these passes were then composited together to achieve the final effect.”
Talking more about the witches turning into Raven sequence, Nishit says, “Witches turning into Ravens was again very interesting to work on. We first had to workout an approach to make it as seamless as possible. This required a smooth and quick transition of witches into a directional black smoke and Ravens coming out of the same directional black smoke with their wings leaving a trail of black smoke so that the transition from element to element gets connected. Here we have used the black smoke as a common connecting element. So using a combination of elements from the FX department and working out a transition in nuke by warping and distorting the witches to take the shape of smoke and the same technique was used to reveal Ravens from the smoke too.
Pointing out on the third complex scene, which is the climax of the movie, he informs,” The climax had Nawazuddin disintegrating into smoke. We had to show a gradual disintegration and this involved lot of detailed work. We developed a high res concept and projected it onto the characters 3D model that we made. The textures were projected onto his exposed skin. We added fumes and sparks that showed his skin cracking and black smoke coming out of his cracked skin. This again had to be interactive as his body language and reactions were helping the effect to make them look real and convincing. Finally we had to show him blasting into smoke and debris. We had a tough time rendering as many as 15 layers of particles with different simulations to finally have a random blast.
The key people behind the VFX of Aatma include, Naveen Paul, Creative Head Reliance MediaWorks, Sanjiv Naik , VFX Supervisor, Vinoth Ganesh as the VFX Production Head, Abrez Mohammed, the VFX Producer, Chandrakanth Shenoy, Heading the Matte Paint Department along with Nishant Jogdand for making art works and Concepts, Santosh Pawar, the DI Colorist who played a major role by bringing out color correction with great support from DI Line producer, Salil Deshpande.
Coming to the software technicalities, RMW has made use Adobe Photoshop for concepts and matte painting with using Maya for 3D and Nuke for compositing along with Boujou and PF Track for match moving.
Asserting more on the association with Suparn for creating the VFX, Nishit points out, “We knew we were creating something special and the director Suparn Verma was very certain that we give a world class treatment to the VFX in the film. This meant that he was quite particular about keeping the transition from reality to special effects as seamless as possible so that audiences were entirely immersed in the narrative instead of being put off by a jerky narrative that at times becomes noticeable. “Aatma” is a seamless integration of breath taking VFX, as well as amazing Colour Grading that blends the story to the experience creation. The team was great to work with. The DOP Sophie was very accepting to suggestions. Suparn Verma was conscious of the aesthetics.
Speaking on the same Suparn Verma director Aatma said, “’In terms of VFX, we have taken it to the next level. Ours is a very small budget film and still we haven’t compromised on quality and that too in a controlled budget”. There are as many as 340 VFX shots in the film but they are not in your face; they are so well integrated in the film!’ added Verma. Suparn closely supervised the entire process as it was being undertaken at Reliance Media Works.
Commenting more on the future projects and vision of RMW, Nishit says, “Out future plans include working on more challenging projects and expanding our team to cater to the ever increasing creative and technical demands of the Indian film industry. We work closely with our customers to ensure they are pushing their creative boundaries while we provide the creative tool set to their imagination. Our successes lead us to our next steps.