Prime Focus’ VFX: The magic behind 8×10 Tasveer

Imagine this: Akshay Kumar jumping from more than 100 feet height in a lake. Akshay Kumar fighting with his doppelganger, Read More">as real as if there were two Akshays on this earth. Imagine a kid falling from a mountain where the height of the mountain in itself is enough to scare the bravest souls. Directed byRead More

Imagine this: Akshay Kumar jumping from more than 100 feet height in a lake. Akshay Kumar fighting with his doppelganger, as real as if there were two Akshays on this earth. Imagine a kid falling from a mountain where the height of the mountain in itself is enough to scare the bravest souls.

Directed by maverick director Nagesh Kukunoor, Akshay Kumar starrer 8 X 10 Tasveer has lot of things, an unusual premise and an innovative concept, good stunts and some no-frills action.

But how does it work? How are such stunts possible? That's a lot of questions. Setting new benchmarks in visual effects, Mumbai based vfx house Prime Focus did it all.

8 X 10 Tasveer cannot be labelled as a vfx heavy film but it still has quite a few extraordinary shots. Hats off to the Prime Focus Visual Effects team led by Creative Head & Vfx Supervisor Merzin Tavaria and Vfx Supervisor Reupal Rawal who did some laudable work. Their work not only added the effects, but also boosted the story line.

Sharing about her experience, Reupal shared, "Tasveer has been one of the toughest films in terms of creatives and deliveries. The most important ones being the boat sequence, Akshay's dream sequence, and the double roles. Other than that there were Chroma photographs, chroma windows, pips and digital screens along with which there was heavy roto, wire removal and clean up related work,"

"It was a big challenge to pull out over 500 shots in less than 15 days. I must say that this was only possible because of the hard work and commitment of the team at Prime Focus that we pulled it off," she added.

In a special VFX showcase series by Bollywood Hungama, we bring you an exclusive behind-the-scenes shot by shot explanation which will take you on an enriching vfx ride courtesy Prime Focus and Percept Picture Company.

The ‘Tasveer’ shot: The most interesting part, if you have seen the movie, is the numerous times the “Tasveer” (the photograph of four guys) is shown. In reality this photograph is not real but a piece of chroma paper, which has been replaced later. The reason? In shots where Akshay holds the picture, Read More">lots ofRead More

The 'Tasveer' shot:
The most interesting part, if you have seen the movie, is the numerous times the "Tasveer" (the photograph of four guys) is shown. In reality this photograph is not real but a piece of chroma paper, which has been replaced later. The reason? In shots where Akshay holds the picture, lots of effects take action in the picture, which would have been tough if it would have been a hard copy.

Chroma has been used not only in shots involving vfx but also others. Explains Merzin, "We wanted to maintain the look of the picture through out the movie. This helps us to make the production easy as when we actually use a hard copy of a picture a lot of light and glare comes on it which ruins the actual look of the image. When you are adding effects, it also becomes challenging to work on a hard copy and we can not get the desired out put. Also, for a technical reason, when you are shooting an image with extreme close-up, the camera might not capture an image properly which is at such an intense close-up as each lens has a minimum focus legth beyond which it cannot focus"

Akshay Jump sequence: The scene where Akshay Kumar jumps from a mountain in a lake was a rope removal sequence. While Akshay was jumping, he was tied with several wires through a crane around him. Though jumping with ropes and wires around appears simple, it is not so in reality. Says Merzin, Read More">“Wires tied aroundRead More

Akshay Jump sequence:
The scene where Akshay Kumar jumps from a mountain in a lake was a rope removal sequence. While Akshay was jumping, he was tied with several wires through a crane around him. Though jumping with ropes and wires around appears simple, it is not so in reality. Says Merzin, "Wires tied around you don't make doing stunts any easier. Jumping from such a height takes lot of guts, which not everyone has. It takes someone like an Akshay Kumar to go ahead and do that"

Read More">Akshay-Ayesha falling sequence: The scene where a car tries to chase Akshay Kumar and Ayesha Takia attempting to run over both of them is again a wire removal and compositing shot. The car running on the track was shot in a different layer and the falling Akshay and Ayesha were shot in a different layer.Read More

Akshay-Ayesha falling sequence:
The scene where a car tries to chase Akshay Kumar and Ayesha Takia attempting to run over both of them is again a wire removal and compositing shot. The car running on the track was shot in a different layer and the falling Akshay and Ayesha were shot in a different layer. Both the actors were tied up with ropes around them which reduced the danger of getting hurt. Later, both these plates were composited in a single plate which gave a seamless effect of both the layers having been shot together.

Kid Jeet falling sequence: The flashback scene towards the end of the film, where Akshay’s brother is shown falling off a mountain. The shot was actually shot in a studio with chroma background in one layer, and mountain in the other and both were composited later in a single layer.

Kid Jeet falling sequence:
The flashback scene towards the end of the film, where Akshay's brother is shown falling off a mountain. The shot was actually shot in a studio with chroma background in one layer, and mountain in the other and both were composited later in a single layer.