Pixion adds VFX shimmer to Anees Bazmee’s Thank You

Yet again Pixion has executed the visual effects for another Bollywood blockbuster, feeding fans with its frenzied entertainment, this time for Anees Bazmee’s comedy film amusingly titled, Thank You. The film boasts of an ensemble cast of Akshay Kumar, Irrfan Khan, Suniel Shetty, Sonam Kapoor, Rimi Sen amongst others. Anees Bazmee, Read More">known for his penchantRead More

Yet again Pixion has executed the visual effects for another Bollywood blockbuster, feeding fans with its frenzied entertainment, this time for Anees Bazmee's comedy film amusingly titled, Thank You. The film boasts of an ensemble cast of Akshay Kumar, Irrfan Khan, Suniel Shetty, Sonam Kapoor, Rimi Sen amongst others. Anees Bazmee, known for his penchant for making comedy films such as Welcome and No Entry, has created the comic caper revolving around the subject of adultery, but what adds more vigour to the story and the narration in the film is the VFX accomplished by, Mumbai based Pixion Studios. The post production process of the entire movie was completed within 30 days with an amazing man force of over 110 artists working round the clock. Pixion has delivered an eye-popping 600 visual effects shots for Thank You. On working with Anees on the comedy film, Viral Thakkar head of CGI at Pixion said, "He is the kind of Director who gives a complete free hand to the Post House as far as the creative processes are concerned. The VFX in the film had to be indistinguishable; a lot of CGI extensions, matte paints and cleanups were executed." Bollywood Hungama delves behind the scenes into the VFX making of the film, where we get the quadrangle of illusionists, Viral Thakkar, Naveen Paul, Pavan Rajesh and Ranadheer Reddy of Pixion Studios to shed some light on a few VFX shots that were used in the VFX making of Thank You.

Suicide Sequence

The scene where Bobby Deol's character Raj, stops his mistress from committing suicide was actually made possible through visual effects. The balcony of the high rise building which was set to be in Canada was actually taken on a ground level set at Filmistan studios in Mumbai. "We had to make it look like its shot from the 35th floor in Canada," said Viral. The Toronto skyline seen on screen was actually a combination of matte paints, CGI cars on the motorway with a lot of animated lights to make it seamless. To achieve the final output, a staggering 13 layers were used in the scene for which the CGI elements were made using Maya (an Academy Award winning software) and the layers were merged using Nuke a well known compositing software.

King’s Introduction Scene Mukesh Tiwari plays a comic don named King in the film, and in this sequence King is introduced in the film. It was not possible for production to destroy an expensive car for the sake of a shot. In this scene, Read More">king grabs an MP5 Navy semi-automatic gun from one of hisRead More

King's Introduction Scene

Mukesh Tiwari plays a comic don named King in the film, and in this sequence King is introduced in the film. It was not possible for production to destroy an expensive car for the sake of a shot. In this scene, king grabs an MP5 Navy semi-automatic gun from one of his guard's and starts shooting the car. The team at Pixion had the task of recreating the bullet holes in the side of the car which had to be visibly credible, to achieve this scene an array of matte paintings were made, and different layers such as the lighting layer, the alpha channels and the matte paintings passes were merged in the compositing phase. The final result of the merged output was ideal for such a sequence.

Karvachauth Scene To enhance the look of this sequence Anees Bazmee wanted to change the floor completely and a lot of CGI elements were added to enhance the scene for example, Read More">the fire lamps (diyas) were made and multiplied for the scene. Even the buildings visible were generated digitally since this shot was shot againstRead More

Karvachauth Scene

To enhance the look of this sequence Anees Bazmee wanted to change the floor completely and a lot of CGI elements were added to enhance the scene for example, the fire lamps (diyas) were made and multiplied for the scene. Even the buildings visible were generated digitally since this shot was shot against a chroma background again. The sky was digitally colored and the moon was also added artificially, matte paintings were made to replace the floor digitally. The layers made for this sequence were merged later on while compositing in Nuke.

The Waterfall The shot where Sonam cries on Akshay’s shoulder at Niagara Falls was actually shot in India and the narrative was enhanced digitally as well, the waterfall was shifted from right to behind Sonam and Akshay on screen. The grass on the mountain was cropped from the area, Read More">and thus the credibility of theRead More

The Waterfall

The shot where Sonam cries on Akshay's shoulder at Niagara Falls was actually shot in India and the narrative was enhanced digitally as well, the waterfall was shifted from right to behind Sonam and Akshay on screen. The grass on the mountain was cropped from the area, and thus the credibility of the shot was achieved through innovative visual effect techniques. The water splash and ripples visible in the film was CGI as well.

The film was shot using a Super 35mm film camera, but some of the helicopter shots were taken using an HD camera. In almost every scene Rotoscopy was used for the film. Apart from the CGI and digital enhancements, an unbelievable 400 shots were digitally cleaned of wires and other unwanted objects seen in the footage. Crowd multiplications were accomplished not only for Akshay's character's introduction but for his marriage sequence towards the end as well. On having a large project at hand, Viral said, "As we have a powerful tool in our hand for compositing, Nuke has given us the advantage of its projections we made use of matte painting in many sequences of the film." Speaking about the complexity, Naveen Paul, VFX Supervisor said, "The most challenging part was to complete the project flawlessly within a very short span of time. However, we delivered the project within the specified time with the desired output."

Click here to watch the VFX making video of Thank You

Cafeteria Shot The scene where Celina, Rimi and Sonam who play the protagonists wives get together and decided to hire a detective, Read More">was shot against a chroma background in the original footage. The team at Pixion had to recreate the Toronto skyline and match it up by recreating the skyscraper buildings seen on screen. MostRead More

Cafeteria Shot

The scene where Celina, Rimi and Sonam who play the protagonists wives get together and decided to hire a detective, was shot against a chroma background in the original footage. The team at Pixion had to recreate the Toronto skyline and match it up by recreating the skyscraper buildings seen on screen. Most of the building in the scene comprised of a CGI 3D mesh model of buildings which were made using Maya.