Prime Focus, the global media and entertainment industry services leader, is wooing audiences with its stunning visual effects in ‘Kick’, Salman Khan’s latest action thriller. The creative services provider has delivered around 1000 visual effects (VFX) shots, over a span of 90 days. Besides VFX, Prime Focus has also provided flawless Digital Intermediate (DI) services and supplied a wide range of equipment for the film’s production process.
Merzin Tavaria, Co-founder and Chief Creative Director, Prime Focus, said, “As a producer, we have worked on several projects with Sajid Nadiadwala in the past, but as a director it was an absolute delight to work with him on Kick. Having worked with Sajid before really helped us to understand his vision and recreate that on-screen; it was an extremely gratifying experience for the team.”
“One of the interesting sequences was of a camera pulling out backdrop of Poland city from Dr. Shaina Mehra’s window, Jacqueline Fernandez’s character in the movie. The sequences were shot against green screen considering the actual location in terms of lighting and camera movement, our challenge was to match seamlessly with this approach and create a backdrop of Poland that had consistency in each of the shots. With a variety of plates to work with, our team created a vast cityscape with buildings, street filled with traffic and people. And finally, the team had to match-move the live camera to achieve a realistic background movement that took care of various technical aspects such as depth of field and parallax. Another important shot includes the action packed robbery sequences which involved heavy custom layered compositing, the whole idea was to keep the VFX as seamless as possible, subtly blending in unnoticed – we wanted the VFX to be totally undetectable.” said Reupal Rawal, Prime Focus’ VFX Supervisor.
For the introduction shot of the character ‘Devil’, it was very important to create an impactful and power packed scene. To achieve this, the team did extensive compositing work on the shot and enhanced it with CG elements such as dust and shattering glass, for a real feel. In addition, extremely impactful CG was delivered to enhance the overall look of the scenes that included Salman Khan’s famous jump from the Palace of Culture and Science, a skyscraper in Warsaw, Poland.
Being a Salman Khan movie, it was very important that the film is a visual experience. To achieve that Prime Focus’ Sr. Colorist, Ashirwad Hadkar maintained consistency in the look to add that extra zing to the overall feel of the film. The movie has many catchy songs, each with a unique treatment. The team set a refreshing, upbeat, glossy and colorful tone that corresponds perfectly with the theme of the songs.