VFX breakdown of Talaash

“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.

“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.

“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.

“Her vision of Talaash was clear from day one” Talaashis a perfect example of vfx being employed to enhance the overall look of the film, the vfx of the film we accomplished is difficult to notice. Although the film is not a heavy visual effects film, it did have some complex vfx work. Director, Read More">ReemaRead More

"Her vision of Talaash was clear from day one"
Talaashis a perfect example of vfx being employed to enhance the overall look of the film, the vfx of the film we accomplished is difficult to notice. Although the film is not a heavy visual effects film, it did have some complex vfx work. Director, Reema Kagti is a perfectionist like Aamir, her vision of Talaashwas clear from day one. She briefed us that whatever visual effects that would be executed, should seem photorealistic and credible. Since the genre of the film falls under the suspense/thriller bracket, we could not afford to make the visual effects look false at any given point of time.

That would only distract the audience from the plot. We started work on Talaash from January 2011, where we went through extensive meetings with the action team from London and Reema. The cars crashing scenes were crucial portions of the narrative of the film and Reema was against cannoning the cars into the sea. To augment this scene we planned the visual effects to support these one take sequences, pre-visualization and storyboards were made of the crashes, so the team could get a gist of the crashes even before they shot it. We delivered the entire VFX of the film in two months, where we have been planning this since 2011.