VFX breakdown of Talaash

One of the most crucial filmmaking facets that assist in the success of a film that goes unnoticed is the visual effects process. Reema Kagti’s latest suspense-thriller Talaash might not have entered the now infamous Rs. 100 crore club yet, Read More">but it has certainly managed to rake in an impressive Rs. 94 crores at theRead More

One of the most crucial filmmaking facets that assist in the success of a film that goes unnoticed is the visual effects process. Reema Kagti's latest suspense-thriller Talaash might not have entered the now infamous Rs. 100 crore club yet, but it has certainly managed to rake in an impressive Rs. 94 crores at the Indian box-office in its third week since its release. Pixion Studios has delivered visual effects for Talaash.

Viral Thakkar, VFX supervisor along with compositing supervisor Pankaj Kalbende, CGI supervisor Sudhir Trivedi, FX supervisor Viresh Raut, animation supervisor Shweta Raut and production head Nelson Dsouza, led a team of eighty artists to work around the clock to deliver the entire VFX portion of the film in two months time. Bollywood Hungama's Philip Bode gets Viral to talk about, making a pool look like a lake, crashing a car into the sea, working with DOP K.U Mohanan and the visual effects breakdown that brought out the essence of Talaash.

“He always maintained that he would like the VFX of the film to be simple and slick” Apart from the scenes that we augmented, we had a decent amount of cleanup and ire removal shots, Digital matte paints. A lot of digital matte paintings were made specifically for the seafront shots, Read More">where had to makeRead More

"He always maintained that he would like the VFX of the film to be simple and slick"
Apart from the scenes that we augmented, we had a decent amount of cleanup and ire removal shots, Digital matte paints. A lot of digital matte paintings were made specifically for the seafront shots, where had to make the environment look like it was shot at Worli sea face.

While on set where I worked along with K.U Mohanan, director of photography of the film, he briefed me from the time we began shooting the film which was unanimously clear. He always maintained that he would like the VFX of the film to be simple and slick. A gem of a person to work with, Mohanan sir is a master in what he does; he personally supervised all the VFX shots which really helped us in achieving the desired quality.

“We shot a lot of plates while shooting in London” We shot two underwater sequences; one was where Aamir’s son drowns in a lake and the other where Kareena comes to Aamir’s rescue. We went to the outskirts of Mumbai in Karjat and shot the lake sequence in a pool, Read More">and we shot the sequenceRead More

"We shot a lot of plates while shooting in London"
We shot two underwater sequences; one was where Aamir's son drowns in a lake and the other where Kareena comes to Aamir's rescue. We went to the outskirts of Mumbai in Karjat and shot the lake sequence in a pool, and we shot the sequence with Kareena in a controlled underwater stage in London. There were extensive amount of visual effects work involved in both the cases.

We included seabed extensions, underwater foliage, cleaning up unwanted bubbles that would appear in front of the actors faces. We shot a lot of plates while we were in London like, underwater dirt, particles, debris etc. This was all added in the post-production process, as Reema preferred shooting the actors in a clean underwater environment and adding the details later on in the post-production. With this she could control the level of visibility underwater.

“Aamir requested if it was possible to do augment it digitally” Towards the end of the film, Aamir Khan meets with an accident and the police jeep he drives tumbles into the sea. The issue which cropped up with the shot was that on impact all the doors of the car opened up, Read More">this wasRead More

"Aamir requested if it was possible to do augment it digitally"
Towards the end of the film, Aamir Khan meets with an accident and the police jeep he drives tumbles into the sea. The issue which cropped up with the shot was that on impact all the doors of the car opened up,

this was not part of the narrative of the film. With this Aamir requested if it was possible to augment the scene digitally, we went ahead and recreated CGI doors for the car and cleaned up the open doors visible in the original plates.

“We added dust, debris and sparks to enhance the impact of the car” We shot the crashing scenes at a seafront in Pondicherry, Read More">but we had to make this scene look like it was happening at Worli sea face in Mumbai. For the first crash in which the protagonists Armaan Kapoor meets with an accidentRead More

"We added dust, debris and sparks to enhance the impact of the car"
We shot the crashing scenes at a seafront in Pondicherry, but we had to make this scene look like it was happening at Worli sea face in Mumbai. For the first crash in which the protagonists Armaan Kapoor meets with an accident with his Hyundai Sonata into the sea, we took pictures of Mumbai as reference and made digital matte paints, to recreate the skyline in Pondicherry and made it look like Mumbai.

The action team rigged up a ramp for the car to plunge into the sea, so we recreated the promenade. We added CGI steps which acted as a ramp for the car to climb on; this had to be cleaned up. We modeled a CGI version of the car for one shot because it was not possible for the action team to shoot with a real car hitting the steps and plunging into the sea at a high speed. We added dust, debris and sparks to enhance the impact of the car hitting the CGI steps. The challenge was to make the car look real as it inter-cuts with other live action car shots.