The name Neeraj Pandey resonates with the sleeper hit of 2008 – A Wednesday – starring Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah, where a common man informs the Mumbai police that he has placed five bombs in locations throughout the city and has programmed them to explode simultaneously within four hours unless the commissioner Rathod gives in to his demands and releases four militants.
The director/writer has gone onto direct two feature films post this crime-drama-mystery, which also won him the Indira Gandhi Award for Best First Film of a Director at the 56th National Film Awards.
AnimationXpress.com recently got an opportunity to catch-up with the filmmaker along with the VFX house – Riva VFX & Animation – to really understand what went into the delivery of this ‘Baby’ starring Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Danny Denzongpa, Kay Kay Menon and Rana Daggubati.
“A Wednesday was big on content but low on budget, whereas Special 26 was a different challenge, though more fun to make. As a production house we always desire to experiment with the kind of stories we tell and thus Baby came about,” explains Neeraj.
This project was very close to the success of PK for Riva and the team didn’t even have time to breathe. “We have delivered 900 shots in just under a month, and we made it a point to maintain great quality. Neeraj wanted the film to really do justice to all the action sequences and we have received some great feedback from all quarters for our work,” exults Riva VFX & Animation creative director VFX Viral Thakkar.
The four major VFX sequences in Baby were: The escape of Kay Kay Menon from the Police van at Marine Drive; the blast in the old mill where Akshay Kumar escapes near the interval; the day for night sequences at Abu Dhabi and finally the background beautifications in Nepal along with lot of miscellaneous shots for the film.
Viral reveals: “The day for night was one of the most difficult shots because we had many layers to composite and it was extremely time consuming. If you pay attention, every alternate shot in the movie is a VFX shot. The Marine Drive shot was 14 minutes long; the day for night in Abu Dhabi was 17 minutes long; apart from this the whole film had nearly 90 minutes of VFX shots.”
Since the project was to be delivered in such short time duration, the team really faced an uphill task. “The major challenge for the project was the time; there was also a lot of miscellaneous work out of the 900 shots delivered in 28 days, so apart from the major sequences we took every shot on a reel basis. The major challenge was managing the team and also sticking to the timeline, we worked for 25 days and 25 nights on the project is what I can say,” explains VFX supervisor on Baby Prashanth Thakur.
Neeraj believes that the film industry is still growing in terms of understanding the use of VFX, “Every aspect of filmmaking needs to be given proper impetus; the problem is when we do some really great work it goes unnoticed to the untrained eye, but when we goof up then it sticks out as a sore thumb. More and more people are becoming aware of the importance of the use of visual effects in films nowadays and that’s a healthy sign,” he adds.
Being a live action movie, the idea was to keep it very real and using CGI becomes tricky. “We used Google Earth for the geography of the place, while working on the marine drive shots. We began modeling and took many photographs for reference before creating textures. We took nearly two weeks to deliver all the CG shots using Maya for animation and 3ds Max for all the effects,” expounds CG supervisor on Baby, Sudhir Trivedi.
The studio is trying its best to deliver some really great work for the best of the filmmakers in the industry and wishes to continue delivering some path breaking work in the coming days as well. “I am trying to really keep everything very photo real, even the blast sequence was something that we are really proud of, we shot many plates and completely recreated the hole in the wall, even the camera moving towards the wall and the effects are executed on 3ds Max. The way Neeraj supported us was very encouraging and we were coordinating really well and completely in-sync with each other on the film,” ends Viral.
Since, we had some time to further chat with Neeraj on films; here is what he has to say:
On audience acceptance for films, “We don’t need to change the audience as they don’t need to understand the nuances of filmmaking. Our job is to tell them a story, using these tools and we should be giving them the entire package. Since they are spending their hard earned money, they should enjoy it as well.”
On contemporaries whose work he enjoys, “I really appreciate SS Rajamouli’s work as he truly understands content and technology and is not only pushing but burning the envelope.”
And finally the animation and VFX space, “The animation and VFX industry has a lot of young storytellers doing some exciting stuff, it tends to scare away studios since the cost of production and delivery time is high, but it’s a very creative and great storytelling medium. I believe the cycle of animation movies will come back into reckoning once again and I would love to make one myself; it’s been in my to-do list and would definitely do it as it gives a lot more creative liberty to the filmmaker.”