The Nagesh Kuknoor movie ‘8×10 Tasveer‘ starring Akshay Kumar which opened on April 3 has had a buzz around it long before release. And be it the promos or the posters, their design and treatment has successfully created an intrigue and curiosity factor for the film.
8X10 Tasveer has quite a lot of Visual Effects and also a very stylized and intriguing title sequence which was designed and directed by Prime Focus Creative Head, Huzefa Lokhandwala.
The title sequence is a mesmerizing montage and drifts into a story of its own. It starts and stays amidst ripples and bubbles in water, with a range of suspicious as well as innocent objects reacting to the water, warping and drifting by. Not only the objects but their mirror images too. A syringe, a gun, a toy car, a bottle of pills, a badge, … and more, these objects floating amidst intriguing photographs of Akshay (tilted, upturned, straight) which appear poignantly. The signature Tasveer breaking into hundreds of pieces (each a picture of the picture – done in CG), bubbles spraying in a stream and handcuffs, opened locks…rising as the credit rolls eventually dissolve into frame one of the movie.
In a conversation with AnimationXpress.com, Huzefa shared the thought process and technique used to create the sequence…
Excerpts…
“Nagesh and me go back a long way, we worked together on Rockford and Hyderabad Blues -2.” shares Huzefa. “The VFX of Tasveer were being done at Prime Focus and Nagesh wondered if I could be involved in the title sequence. He showed me a trade promo and the beginning of the film, which is what the title would lead into. What the title sequence of the film had to do was to subtly give a glimpse of the film even before the story began. To make the audience wonder about the sequence till each element eventually revealed it’s importance as the story actually unfolded. At the same time it had to be visually engaging as a first impression.”
Instantaneously I threw an idea at Nagesh, had our artist create a rough storyboard that looked interesting and we agreed upon the way to go.
I made a list of props that could be potentially used with the help of the assistant director as he knew the film in and out.
So was every element and prop, a hint to the story and was it chronologically placed?
“No.” Says Huzefa. “Although each element was definitely a hint to the story, I didnt want it be extremely literal. Chronology would mean revealing the film in a way and that wouldn’t have been good at all. One needs to be very careful as the title very importantly sets up the mood for the rest of the film. Also to be remembered is the fact that audience has already some notions and expectations from the film through publicity. ”
Huzefa shared that he always visualized the sequence in extreme high speed and almost macro lensing. He spoke to Vikas Sivaraman the D.O.P of the film who in consultation with the D.I. team at Prime, opted for it to be shot on 16 mm film with a photosonic camera as that would give us close to 500 frames per second worth of footage.
The monochromatic (black and white) feel was very deliberate. Only a few elements like the toy car or the jar of pills are in color to give that subtle break. The shoot took was done in a day while the CG took around seven days. During the shoot, Vikas wanted the water in the tank to be changed frequently, as he wanted to give me crystal clear images, but I didn’t mind the dirt because it added to the organic look.
We shot with a tank of water which had strategically placed mirrors reflecting the photographs and objects as they appeared. These images were then coupled with a considerable amount of CG work (2D and 3D). The gun, Akshays fragmenting face, the hand etc. to put together all of which effectively meant the entire CG, editing and compositing team working day and night for almost a week in order to meet the delivery deadline.
Talking about the sound, Huzefa shared, “I personally am a very sound person. I think it’s very important to marry picture and sound correctly. When I began editing the titles, I used a scratch track, we had already discussed with Nagesh about what the sound would be like. I used a reference track initially and then when they give me the final track, I refined the edit of the sequence to match with the sound and then they again tweaked the music and effects to enhance the final edit of the title sequence,” There were iterations and plussing all the way!
Currently, Huzefa who has also edited the first Hanuman, is completely involved with Aamir Khan Productions Delhi Belly which he is editing.
The team credits of those who worked on the Title Sequence from Prime Focus are as follows:
Design & Execution:
Huzefa Lokhandwala
Lead Compositor:
Vivian Britto
Editing & Compositing Assistance
Ankita Bhatia
Bhumika Valmike
Ritika Rai
CG Artists: »
Rohit Menon
Amit Shanbhag
Ashish Wagh
Manoj Kamble
Pankaj Jumani
Mayuri Bhayani
Yudhistir Chandan
Hemant Doke
Line Producer:
Tony Peter