Prime focus has delivered 1108 VFX shots and DI for the movie- ‘Players ‘. The movie has been directed by the Director duo Abbas-Mustan. Prime focus focused on maintaining a glamorous and sleek look while the grading required the glossy effect.
‘Players’ is based on the 2003 Hollywood blockbuster – The Italian Job. In ‘Players’, a gang of robbers led by Charlie (Abhishek Bachchan) pull off a perfect plan of robbing gold worth $10 billion from a running train, only to be double crossed by one of his own gang member. The movie is perfect mix of action, comedy & drama and has oodles of glamour.
Abbas Burmawalla said, “It is our fourth collaboration with Prime Focus. We were truly impressed by the way Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director and his team was involved from the pre-production stage itself, which helped enhance the story-telling of the movie ‘Players’”.
One of the most important and challenging sequence in the movie was the train Sequence, which brings an entire twist to the story. The Prime Focus team planned the sequence from the pre-production stage itself. Talking about the train sequence, DOP Ravi Yadav said, “For such a challenging shot, Prime Focus presented seamless and convincing VFX shots in a short span. Involving Prime Focus helped me to improve the intensity and magnitude of the sequence to a great extent.”
In the sequence, the entire train scene was shot in a static boogie, so guards watching the movement outside the window was entirely shot against chroma and later on moving footage of the Russian background was composited, tracked and rotoed. To create the foggy effect or illusion on the windows of the train, 3D dynamics and matte painting was used and then the entire illusion was composited to make the shot as seamless as possible.
“Very seldom does a single sequence require 305 VFX shots. The scale by itself reflects the complexities involved to deliver a sequence of this magnitude. Our team has added all possible graphical elements to make this sequence as believable as it has turned out”, said Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director and Co-Founder, Prime Focus. “Since we planned the shoot keeping in mind the requirements of post and by utilizing our own internal pipeline, we were able to flawlessly deliver this sequence in 15 days.” continued Merzin.
The train is tracked through a satellite on numerous computers for its security. The monitor inserts having different motion graphics was individually designed and tracked for each computer screen in order to make it seamless with the story line of the movie. The shot when the train passes through a tunnel was completely computer generated, matte painted, tracked and 3D projected. To add glitter to the $10 billion worth gold, each and every individual gold slab was rotoed separately.
“Considering safety hazards, VFX was majorly used for most of shots in this scene. The team used the footage which was originally shot for each character in chroma, rotoed each character and then composited the moving footage of the background. To make the scene as believable, moving reflections and pace were added to the moving background.” said Mahesh Baria, Senior VFX Supervisor. Mahesh Baria continued, “Towards the end of this shot, Charlie and his team member Spider break into a fight. In this particular sequence, since most of the shots were under water, we had to add water bubbles. To make the shot look even more realistic and action packed, a lot of blast enhancements, rig removal, chroma and clean up shots were involved as well. In addition, camera shakes and frame-by-frame roto followed by tracking was carried out to make the shot look believable and authentic.”
Besides the shot mentioned above, there is a shot where Charlie and two of his other team members are driving cars parallel to the train in an underground rail system, to eventually drive it in front of the train engine. For this scene, the underground rail system and cars had to be made completely in CG. Another sequence shows Spider’s house laden with interactive touch screens. For each screen, different moving shots were shot separately and later on the moving backgrounds were composited and computer generated on the screen to make the shot look flawless. Finally, for the climax sequence, car multiplication, matte painting, compositing and transition shots were involved as the director duo wanted to show a massive traffic jam.
Since the first part of the movie was shot in Goa and Russia, the look that was required to achieve in DI was warm yellow and desat respectively. However, the climax needed to be glossy as it was shot in New Zealand.
Commenting on the project, Rohan Desai, DI Head and Chief Colorist, Prime Focus said “One of the biggest challenges and the most difficult sequence of the entire movie was the train sequence in Russia. Since the entire sequence was shot while it was snowing, and the weather – freezing, a persistent look had to be maintained while grading. Keeping in mind the glamorous look of the movie, the snow was treated with finesse. Post the train sequence, a desat look was maintained for the fight sequence.”
“Since the movie is an action packed movie, we enhanced the original colors to make the movie look sleek, stylish and glossy”, said Colorist, Harmeet (Sunny) Singh. “A very warm and glossy look was given to the song- ‘Ho Gayi Tun’ to make it the most glamorous song of the movie. Extensive work was done to make each character look glamorous and stylish in consistence with the movie.”
One of the other challenges was to match and grade shots from multiple setup cameras and the 5D camera.
connect@animationxpress.com