Deconstructing the ‘VFX’ of Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai

With Once upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara being a sequel to the cult gangster flick Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, many ardent fans awaited eagerly for its release and Milan did deliver the film with vigor. One of the largest post-production studios in India, Read More">Reliance MediaWorks Studios was roped in to execute theRead More

With Once upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara being a sequel to the cult gangster flick Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, many ardent fans awaited eagerly for its release and Milan did deliver the film with vigor. One of the largest post-production studios in India, Reliance MediaWorks Studios was roped in to execute the VFX of the film - Sanjiv Naik the VFX supervisor of the film along with VFX head Prasad Sutar and VFX supervisor Ranadheer Reddy, manned a force of 40 artists to augment 600 shots digitally within a month's time. Talking about the VFX production pipeline made for the film, Sanjiv says, "Considering that we also worked on Chennai Express concurrently, it was requisite that we divide the team in halves, since we had already worked on Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai, it was easier to understand what was needed for the sequel. Milan was pretty cool with giving us enough space to breathe; he gave us the authority to make certain calls on set that were necessary for the visual effects process. With the rapport we shared with our previous venture together, he knew the kind of work we churned out and would approve the augmented shots after the render phase. Bollywood Hungama's Philip Bode gets Sanjiv Naik to talk about hiding modern day vehicles, remaking the infamous Sharjah stadium, bringing back the '80s and delivering the visual effects (VFX) process to one of the most anticipated films this year OUATIMD.

“Since we shot the film using RED and ARRI Alexa’s RAW format, the onset lab technician would check the scans, Read More">backup and prove us the data. The technician would also check for shots that were under or overexposed. We converted the ‘Raw’ formats here at Reliance MediaWorks using our Baselight DI suite. With digital formatsRead More

"Since we shot the film using RED and ARRI Alexa's RAW format, the onset lab technician would check the scans, backup and prove us the data. The technician would also check for shots that were under or overexposed. We converted the 'Raw' formats here at Reliance MediaWorks using our Baselight DI suite. With digital formats taking over Indian cinema, I don't believe there are any major issues with using them."

“The VFX involved was technically quite challenging since there were quite a few chroma shots. We had to scrutinize each and every shot to match the framing edges, with the background and the foreground as the same lenses have been used. With some shots we could not get the look we wanted, Read More">for which weRead More

"The VFX involved was technically quite challenging since there were quite a few chroma shots. We had to scrutinize each and every shot to match the framing edges, with the background and the foreground as the same lenses have been used. With some shots we could not get the look we wanted, for which we altered some of those backgrounds shots using Nuke 3D Projection, renowned compositing software. In order to form some of the CG elements in the film such as the ship and stadium, we ran an art contest for this where-in Milan finalized the version which we worked upon."

“One of the most difficult scenes to augment digitally was towards the end of the film, Read More">when Shoaib is sitting wounded and dejected in the cargo deck of a ship. The shots with the ship with the containers onboard were all modeled in 3D using Maya. In this last scene Milan wanted to show thatRead More

"One of the most difficult scenes to augment digitally was towards the end of the film, when Shoaib is sitting wounded and dejected in the cargo deck of a ship. The shots with the ship with the containers onboard were all modeled in 3D using Maya. In this last scene Milan wanted to show that we are zooming out of the ship, 20,000 feet outwards to reveal the word, 'Mumbai'. Although while shooting the effect shows the camera pulling out by only 30 feet, this was a wide angle 2000 frame shot which was very challenging - since it was over a 1.2 minute long shot. We had 15 days to accomplish this VFX, and all the models were high-polygonal based which took 5 days to render in itself. Textures of the ship were applied using Maya and the compositing bit took its time since it was a very heavy shot. Everything seen in the last shot was VFX, except for the interiors with Akshay sitting which was captured on a set. This took a lot of time to match move using Boujou, considering the amount of distance involved."

“The scene where a cricket match was being played in the movie at Sharjah UAE was completely remade digitally. Even the traffic around it was recreated to emulate and ’80s era type look, Read More">there were no live action plates fused for this sequence at all. We built the entire stadium in 3D with a high-polygonalRead More

"The scene where a cricket match was being played in the movie at Sharjah UAE was completely remade digitally. Even the traffic around it was recreated to emulate and '80s era type look, there were no live action plates fused for this sequence at all. We built the entire stadium in 3D with a high-polygonal modeling method using Maya. Z-Brush was employed to provide realistic textures to the models, where-in we later rendered the finalized version using a Mental Ray rendering application. To further enhance the details and credibility to the scene, Photoshop was used for matte paintings in the backgrounds as well. The scene also shows a car sequence, with the lead character Shoaib Khan being played by Akshay Kumar in Muscat, although the principal photography was shot in Mumbai against chroma backgrounds. Our VFX head Prasad Sutar and Ranadheer Reddy went to Muscat in order to procure the interior and exterior live action plates, which we used to replace the chroma backgrounds. For the night time sequences, we transposed the chroma backgrounds with some of the live action plates we procured from certain sections of south Mumbai such as Colaba Causeway, Ballard Pier etc.