Prime Focus stirs up VFX and DI for Cocktail

The DI team had to pay particular attention to achieving a sleek and glossy feel for the movie while maintaining an extremely glamorous look. The overall look was set by the DI Head and Chief Colorist Rohan Desai. Talking about the challenges with the digital intermediate process, Rohan says, “While grading Cocktail, Read More">I aimed toRead More

The DI team had to pay particular attention to achieving a sleek and glossy feel for the movie while maintaining an extremely glamorous look. The overall look was set by the DI Head and Chief Colorist Rohan Desai. Talking about the challenges with the digital intermediate process, Rohan says, "While grading Cocktail, I aimed to create a look that an individual loves to see in an international movie and does not expect in a typical Indian movie. As the movie is set in an urban scenario with a storyline that keeps the audience glued to know 'what happens next', I had to match the grading to keep up with the aesthetic appeal of the film. With the artistic guidance from the director and DOP, I was able to achieve the required look for Cocktail. Talking about the experience of working on the movie, Govardhan Vigraham said, "It has been a great experience working on Cocktail. In my opinion, one of the best parts about working on the movie was the association with their creative team and DOP Anil Mehta, who guided us at all phases. In general, it has been quite rewarding for the entire team as we eagerly await our chance to work again with Illuminati Films and director Homi Adajania."

One of the most intriguing and challenging sequences was creating a London backdrop. Director of Photography (DOP) Anil Mehta shot the sequences against chroma backgrounds as if it were the actual location in terms of lighting and camera movement, Read More">so the visual effects had to match seamlessly with this approach. The challenge was to createRead More

One of the most intriguing and challenging sequences was creating a London backdrop. Director of Photography (DOP) Anil Mehta shot the sequences against chroma backgrounds as if it were the actual location in terms of lighting and camera movement, so the visual effects had to match seamlessly with this approach. The challenge was to create a backdrop of London that worked well for each of the shots. Working with multiple plates, the team created a cityscape with buildings and bustling streets full of traffic and people. The team match-moved the live camera to achieve a highly realistic background movement that took care of various technical aspects such as depth of field and parallax.

In the movie making business, visual effects is employed when reality cannot mimic fiction and Prime Focus has certainly utilized its creative arm well to augment the VFX in Saif Ali Khan’s latest, Cocktail. With over 431 VFX shots, Read More">the fifty member team working across Prime Focus’s Mumbai and Hyderabad facility delivered the VFX forRead More

In the movie making business, visual effects is employed when reality cannot mimic fiction and Prime Focus has certainly utilized its creative arm well to augment the VFX in Saif Ali Khan's latest, Cocktail. With over 431 VFX shots, the fifty member team working across Prime Focus's Mumbai and Hyderabad facility delivered the VFX for the film in just 60 days. Talking about the project, Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director says, "Cocktail is our fourth collaboration with Illuminati Films, and the second this year after Agent Vinod. However, the treatment for these movies is completely different, because Cocktail is a romantic comedy. Our efforts were focused on complementing the narrative of the film while at the same time enriching the comic sense. The idea was to use VFX to bring out the beauty of the shots and to make them look real." Bollywood Hungama gets Govardhan Vigraham, VFX supervisor of the film to take us on a behind the scenes visual effects making that stirred up the scrumptious, Cocktail.

Talking about these shots, Govardhan says, “While shooting the movie, Anil sir had a particular vision which was very evident in the shots. The lighting, framing, camera movement, Read More">etc. We had to ensure that we delivered the ‘look’ that he had set for the movie. Anil spent considerable time with us with setting up variousRead More

Talking about these shots, Govardhan says, "While shooting the movie, Anil sir had a particular vision which was very evident in the shots. The lighting, framing, camera movement, etc. We had to ensure that we delivered the 'look' that he had set for the movie. Anil spent considerable time with us with setting up various parameters, like the exact composition of the London backdrop and the tones for day, evening, and night." The scene, in which Meera is looking out of the window at the slow moving traffic in London, is a good example of this shot. While the camera tracks back slowly to reveal the entire room. In order to make the simple shot look stunning, the team added a range of realistic elements such as reflections and scratches on the glass, transparent curtains and an accurate resemblance of street lighting.

The movie also involved many VFX-heavy sequences; one of which was Veronica’s accident sequence. In this particular sequence, a heavily intoxicated Veronica is standing in the middle of the road and is hit by a speeding car. With the impact, she is flung in the air before crashing to the ground, Read More">as the car goesRead More

The movie also involved many VFX-heavy sequences; one of which was Veronica's accident sequence. In this particular sequence, a heavily intoxicated Veronica is standing in the middle of the road and is hit by a speeding car. With the impact, she is flung in the air before crashing to the ground, as the car goes past her. Considering the safety hazards inherent in shooting this scene, the director wanted to use VFX. To produce the effect that augmented the accident sequence, Govardhan says, "As we had multiple plates, we used a CG tweaking tool in Nuke to achieve a rag-doll simulation, of the actress being flung in the air. We had the passing car and Deepika's shot in separate layers, we tweaked the live action footage, in which we showed the victim being flung in the air. We did not use any 3D character mesh to achieve this, we used a warping technique from Nuke, this technique allows us to project a map on a 2D mesh generated onto the live composite which made it possible."