Can you spot the difference between a real and a reel tiger? But we are certain after watching the movie ‘Roar – Tigers of Sunderbans’ you will be in a dilemma whether the tigers in the feature were real felines or just awesome CGI creatures, for this the credit goes to the founder of Anibrain Studio, Jesh Krishna Murthy and his team who have spent more than three years on their first Bollywood project.
The film has been directed by Kamal Sadanah known for his role in ‘Bekhudi’ opposite Kajol and produced by Abis Rizvi. The movie revolves around a group of commandos who venture deep into the deadly jungle of the Sundarbans. To ensure that the cast look and behave like real commandos, both Abis Rizvi and Kamal roped in an army veteran to train them in all aspects, from mannerisms to the art of warfare as well.
In a telephonic conversation with AnimationXpress.com’s Niyati Handa, Jesh Krishna Murthy revealed the true story behind the roaring tigers of Sunderbans.
Excerpts:-
This is your first Bollywood movie in terms of providing VFX and CG, how was it different from working on a Hollywood project? Was budget a constraint?
Yes this is our first Bollywood film but Anibrain has been doing Hollywood movies over the past nine years, so we are very clear on how a film should be approached and the effects should be done. For us, both the director and producer understood at an early stage what all was required to pull this off, even though the budget was a constraint as against a Hollywood project the makers gave us a lot of freedom and we were able to create what was required and we all are now proud of it. Planning is also very important when it comes to big budget VFX films and we are happy that we met all our targets.
What hurdles did you face while executing the VFX for ‘Roar’? Please elaborate.
When you have low budgets you always tend to face hurdles or challenges. The biggest challenge was creating a CGI tiger for lot of shots. It was a complex thing to do, but still we managed to achieve everything without burning a hole in our pockets. Creating a Tiger was really difficult to do; as the creature has lots of fur and other complex aspects to its anatomy.
Every day we see dogs and cats on streets and tigers in videos so we do have a clear picture in mind on how they all look like, but our job was to convince the audience to believe that it was not a fake tiger that they got to witness on the big screen; and that became very challenging, it was not an easy job to do. We spent almost a year in developing this tiger in terms of putting muscles, fur, how would he animate, how would he react because if it would have animated even marginally incorrectly, anyone would have managed to guess it easily. Then we had this shot where there were millions of bees on a person, basically all was equally difficult. Later stages like rendering also became an issue; rendering it with the right lighting was required to be done individually.
What softwares and techniques were used to create such VFX? Tigers, today is a very sensitive topic, how did you manage to hire tigers for your project?
We have used standard softwares like Maya, Nuke, Adobe Photoshop and Pixar’s Renderman for the project; and in terms of techniques we did try to do lots of innovations and everyday was a task as we used to find different ways of doing every bit of it. Things like fur on the tiger’s body, hundreds of snakes etc. all were created with these softwares.
You can hire tigers which are in work with the humane society of America in LA, You can work with Animal welfare board and they send people to make sure that the shoot is happening properly and the animals are not harmed or abused in any way. There are shots in the film where we have used real tigers; but for certain scenes where the real tiger couldn’t be used we used CGI.
How many artists worked on the project and how many VFX shots were required for this movie? What kind of composites and effects has been used in the film?
In total 300 artists have worked on this movie and it involves 800 VFX shots. Visual effects is a team effort and requires lot of people and it’s very hard to work without anyone of them.
There is one sequence in the film where a boat goes through the mist, so when I started talking to Kamal Sadanah about that particular shot we thought of doing something very different and organic for it. For this we created some small tanks in the studio itself and choreographed dry ice through them and shot it keeping various camera angles in mind, then we composited it until the shot looked as realistic as possible without it feeling like some silly CGI mist. Here pre-production played a very crucial part. More than 45 minutes of the film uses CGI, thus it had to be very well done.
Today when you go back and look at the projects you had worked on earlier, what’s the first thing that strikes your mind?
Whenever I go back and look at my earlier projects, I always feel that things could have been done better. As an artist one is never totally satisfied with one’s work. You always strive for more. We could have always improved things but at the same time I am very proud of this movie Roar, no one has done a complex project like this before in India in terms of visual effects. We have got flamingos, snakes, various birds, crocodiles, and various other creatures possible. It was a difficult show and I am proud of it.
With the story of the movie revolving around tiger of Sunderbans, don’t you feel people will draw parallels to the CG tiger in ‘Life of Pie’?
To be very honest I would still say that in terms of VFX we are still growing and learning so I won’t be arrogant and say ‘You know what we have made the best tiger in the industry’ because it is not true. But I feel it’s good enough to tell a story. We have made a tiger that will work for us. We have never worked on a creature like this in the past. We still have miles to go, in order to master the art of visual storytelling through effects.
What preparation did you undertake in advance to ensure deadlines were met on project landmarks?
The film is coming out now but all the VFX were ready by July itself. As a studio we are very much organised and we don’t mess around with release dates. We will never take up any project which we can’t deliver on time. I have been involved with this movie over the last three years, I went through the script and while I was reading it, most of the things that needed VFX were discussed then itself.
What’s your take on Indian VFX? According to you what is that one thing which Hollywood can learn from Bollywood and vice-versa?
Indian VFX is definitely evolving, but I feel there is still lack of good talent. 9 years ago we didn’t have too many good artists but now we can manage things. With Bollywood’s standard and requirements on the rise, it’s only going to help studios like us do more work and also evolve. VFX is something which requires time and proper finishing, along with good skills. In next 5 years you will see huge improvement in this field. One thing that Bollywood should learn from Hollywood is organization. Delivery has to be consistent along with good quality of work. Whereas Hollywood is concerned I would suggest that they should plan everything to death as things keep changing so they should be more flexible and balanced. India is a diverse country, we have different society and culture, and we work and behave differently, so I think we should just celebrate our differences.
What’s your strategy to bag new projects in this already overcrowded industry with giants like Prime Focus and Reliance MediaWorks around?
I don’t feel it’s over crowded; it’s not like a telecom sector where 50 companies are fighting for the same thing. At the same time I feel there is room for everybody, each of us bring a different skill set to the table; and there are enough projects. We produce so many films in India, so there is scope for every studio to contribute to it. In case of Roar every studio actually put their hands up, but we took the challenge and decided to work on it.