After Ghayal Once Again, ‘After’ has tried its hands in the recent Prakash Jha creation Jai GangaaJal. As a sequel to the 2003 film GangaaJal starring Ajay Devgn, Jai GangaaJal took a new turn as it featured the female cop – Priyanka Chopra in the lead role in theatres from 4 March, 2016. Battling out goons, challenging corrupt politicians and thrashing anyone who comes in the way of truth and justice, the empowered khaki clad woman portrays a strong character in this film following a simple script.
Like a typical Bollywood film where the ‘hero is the winner’, Jai GangaaJal displays the sole heroine as the supreme power over everything. The script was a basic one and the art of storytelling was usual too.
Directed by Prakash Jha, this film was assigned to the Mumbai based VFX studio, After. “Prakash Jha Productions has been our loyal client. We had delivered his last two film – Crazy Kukkad in 2015 and Lipstick Wale Sapne,” the team of After comments on the association with the director Prakash Jha. “He was impressed by our work during these two projects and hence entrusted us with the complete VFX as well, other than just DI for Jai GangaaJal.”
A team of 30 artists of After worked on this film for a period of one and a half month to deliver 650 VFX shots. The team then roughly took another two months to complete the entire DI. Being involved right from the shooting stage, VFX Head, Vishwas Savanur says, “Prakash Jha knew exactly what he wanted and told us to create the visual effects accordingly. That is why our work was a bit simplified because both the director and our VFX team knew exactly what to do.”
When you think of VFX, don’t always expect a superhero or a Baahubali kind of work. Films like Jai GangaaJal have subtle VFX which are minimal yet paramount. “The village shots and the creation of the village Bankepur have been entirely created using CG,” explains Vishwas. “Apart from that, there are several blasts, fire, cleanups, beautification, wire removals and PIPs in the entire film.” Also, throughout the film “a wound” has been added on the face of Prakash Jha for the character Bhola Nath Singh.
The CG village was created with reference to the drawing material that Prakash Jha himself provided. Therefore, the team of After didn’t face a tedious job of finding the reference material. Moreover, the veteran director was prominently involved in the VFX work of the film throughout. Vishwas recollects, “As soon as our team would clean a shot, set the tone, grade it in DI and send it to Prakash Jha for approval, he would respond immediately. Thus, it was a smooth flow and things moved faster.”
Under the supervision of Vishwas Savanur and Amit Jain, the team of After worked in close association with the director and had a normal deadline which was doable. Well, in terms of software, Maya was used for CG creation, RealFlow for the visual effects, Nuke for compositing and After Effects for motion graphics.
Compared to working on Ghayal Once Again, Vishwas feels that it was easier and clearer working on Jai GangaaJal as they knew precisely what was to be done. In Ghayal Once Again, they had to try out new things however at the same time he says, “Every film is a learning process. And, Prakash Jha is a wonderful man to work with; he is an artist by himself.”
As far as the village creation is concerned, it looks decent enough to match the reference material that was provided. Even though creating fire, blast sequences is an easy job, they are in sync with the overall colour pattern of the movie.
Few blasts, wire removal, fire scenes, village creation and face mark creation are some of the major VFX sequences that this film possesses. Though it is not a VFX heavy film, After has tried to add its touch in a subtle way using their USP of combination of VFX and DI giving the film a flawless look.