Stalin S., Sr. VFX Supervisor, has won the NANDI Award in “Best Visual Effects” category for Telugu Feature Film Varudu. The Award, constituted by Andhra Pradesh State Government, is the most prominent award for Telugu Films, Theatre, and Television. VARUDU, directed by Gunasekhar, and produced by D.V.V. Danayya, was also dubbed into Malayalam and released as Varan.
AnimationXpress.com’s Farhatnaz Ansari interviewed Stalin S., Senior VFX Supervisor of Varudu wherein he spoke about receiving the Nandi Award for Best Visual Effects, the work involved in the film, his team at Vensat, and more…
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How do you feel about winning the Nandi Award for Varudu?
Last week we’ve received the most prestigious Nandi Award for Best Visual Effects for Feature Film ‘Varudu’ from the AP government. First of all we want to thank the AP government for presenting us such a wonderful and prestigious Award. We felt very happy after receiving the award from the government and we’re proud holding such a highly valuable award along with veteran indian actors, directors, cinematographers, stunt choreographers and film producers, etc..
How were you approached for this project?
For this Project, Mr. Gunasekar, Director of Varudu approached our Vensat Center Head Alagarsamy for creating spectacular VFX works for his dream project. The major highlighted scene for this movie required south indian beautiful village scene with wide range of flower garden and in climax he need to show the huge chimney towers located near this beautiful village. Based on Director’s request we started working on first stage of pre production, searching world best spectacular locations images, that included storyboard, color sketches, pre-visualization (animatics), Lighting Test, Location Design, etc for the entire film’s VFX sequences”, Alagarsamy added.
Once the storyboard & animatics were approved by the Director, I and my team went for location hunts to shoot reference footages for creating spectacular magic hour Visuals for this project.
What is the concept of the film Varudu?
In ‘Varudu’, the director visualized a concept that shows the beauty of a traditional, olden day’s south indian marriage ceremony. The marriage happens in the middle of the flower garden with golden hues of sky, revealing light rays. Same in the end director requested the huge massive power plant chimney, located near the same village. We got an opportunity to execute more than 25 minutes of VFX work almost all the scenes against blue screen and then converted the overall sequence as if shot in an outdoor environment in day as well as night.
What kind of work was involved in this project?
My Team consisting of CG VFX, MattePainting, Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, lighting & Digital Compositing departments did an excellent job without compromising the creative & quality outputs. For every sequence we created high details and best quality 3D models like Flower garden, Huge Chimney, Environments, etc. For this film we’ve executed more than 900 shots, out of which 80% of the shots were camera movement shots.
And how did you manage to create the CG flowers?
This flower sequences are the major scenes in this movie, because the movie starts with the story of 100 years south indian marriages. Today it is very hard find such beautiful villages with flower garden even outdoor shooting is impossible because of climate & frequent light variations. Based on complication Director requested us to create entire Beautiful village along huge covered with flower garden. I got an opportunity to take responsible for onsite supervising for this entire flower sequences and I spend morethan 25 day of blue matte shooting and it happens inside Ramoji studio, Hyd.While shooting Pandal set (marriage) against blue matte for flower garden sequence, initially we kept some real flower pots to use as reference for matching lighting, texture and perspective but when we use wide angle lens the flower details were lost and they looked blurred, so we immediately decided to go for CG flowers creations with high quality 3D mesh and multiplied more than a lakh 3D flower models matching with live footages.Each and every 3D flower having more than lakh polycounts, hence we can go for more close-ups it helps the DOP to shoot without any restrictions. We did taken care of high detail beautiful flower, textured, shining, glitter & harmony for entire marriage sequences.
Can you explain the VFX work done to create the 2 huge chimneys for this project?
As I mentioned earlier, the climax scene director required two huge chimneys located near the village which had to look old and damaged, myself & my team CG supervisor, mattepainter created a concept, look & feel of Huge chimney once we’re happy we uploaded director for final approval, I’m really proud to say – Dir immediately approved without any single corrections finally started creating 3D CG chimney. Later our internal onsite supervisor Srinivasan.P gone for finishing the blue matte shooting. Based on our concept, National Awrad winning Art director Mr. Ashok Kumar erected huge sets in the studio which were 10 to 15 feet in height. But as per the movie chimney required morethan 100 feet So we created two chimneys in CG that were 100 feet in height & 30 feet in width. For this, we maintained the exact perspective, proportions, color tone (to give that old & rusty look) and lighting as compared to the real one we have created in the studio. In the sequence, where the chimneys collapse, our team has done excellent dynamics to bring in the realistic look and feel.
You also supervised the color grading of the film?
After completing our part of Location hunts, Onsite shooting, Digital 3D Creation, we did entire scene Digital compositing including marriage to end climax. Once we received final approval from the director, I got a call from director to supervise the color tone for entire film’s Visual Effects Sequences. He clarifies to me we’re discussing form initial shooting starts about the concept, style & tone of this film, we need to achieve that pls don’t compromise and make it spectacular tone to look more real for all our vfx sequences. As per Dir request I rush to DI work and co ordinate with colorist to achieve quality. I really appreciate the colorist did the amazing work for this movie. And also I felt very happy to take this opportunity because of my previous record (my theme tone I did for the movie “Athadu” won Nandi award 2006,) and lot of movies received multiple Awards that I did Digtal Grading, especially for DI (Digital Grading also my passion and I did more than 30 feature films Digital Grading in the past 10 years).
What other projects have you also worked on?
VenSat Team has also worked on major motion pictures like The HELP (2012 Oscar-Winning film), Harry Potter and the deathly hallows Part 7A, Part 7B, Narnia- Voyage of the Dawn Treader, RA.ONE, Bodyguard, Dabbang, ROBO (Enthiran), Dookudu, Rakcha, the American film Land of the Astronauts, and other international features.
Anything else you would like to add?
Again the credit for this Award goes to my entire team who put effort & supports me always to achieve, and also for their creativity, innovation, and their skill to Visualize and execute projects successfully.