People Behind the Scenes: Interview with Matte Painter Chandrakant Shenoy

How do you go about creating matte paintings? I work mostly on Photoshop, for OUATIM we integrated some 3D elements in matte paintings. There could be anything that a client desires, Read More">we rely on the internet to download textures and get references. A part of this job requires us to go on location to getRead More

How do you go about creating matte paintings?
I work mostly on Photoshop, for OUATIM we integrated some 3D elements in matte paintings. There could be anything that a client desires, we rely on the internet to download textures and get references. A part of this job requires us to go on location to get an idea on how a particular set should be extended or improved. For OUATIM, we generated an actor's house in CG, I obtained a rendered frame of the house in an angle that I wanted, and enhanced the lighting, textures according to shot requirements.

How have you evolved as a matte painter?
I was lucky to have associated myself with such good and renowned artists from the industry. I have evolved with the time that I've spent with them. They've helped me to see things with more detail. As a matte painter, we present you the scene the way you would've seen it in real time. A big inspiration was Mr. Baloo Bhalerao, a senior matte painter at Pixion, as an artist we shared and critiqued our work officially and unofficially.

What kind of movies are you working on right now? Right now were working on Golmaal 3, Aakrosh, Action Replayy. We’ve just finished the recently released We Are Family. We have a few international projects in the pipeline as well. Additionally, Read More">we also finished an upcoming show that is yet to be released in LondonRead More

What kind of movies are you working on right now?
Right now were working on Golmaal 3, Aakrosh, Action Replayy. We've just finished the recently released We Are Family. We have a few international projects in the pipeline as well. Additionally, we also finished an upcoming show that is yet to be released in London called The Deep produced by BBC.

What's the best advice would you give an aspiring matte painter?
I think the best experience you can have is on field, when you work on the floors, the more you understand the technicalities of the film. Institutes I feel provide limited information in trouble shooting challenges one could face in post-production. I think one needs to be more polished when they get on field and strengthen their basics.

The first film that comes to mind is Rock On; this film had good scope of matte paintings. We made Farhan Akhtar’s house seem like it’s on the 18th floor with the skyline, with good lightning, Read More">but the scene was shot on chroma. Our VFX supervisor Prasad and I with the production team went andRead More

The first film that comes to mind is Rock On; this film had good scope of matte paintings. We made Farhan Akhtar's house seem like it's on the 18th floor with the skyline, with good lightning, but the scene was shot on chroma. Our VFX supervisor Prasad and I with the production team went and shot images of day, evening and night from different buildings around Bombay. We shot the images with a DSLR camera and then tweaked these images in our labs to enhance the look and feel of the scene. In All The Best, there were significant amounts of work involved. For some backgrounds for the film we have gone and changed them physically instead of replacing chroma backgrounds. In short, we have changed entire locations of the sets in the film. I would highlight the blast sequence in Raajneeti, to fabricate this scene possible we made storyboards which helped us with the amount of layers that were involved. There were mainly four layers which consisted of the actors, the explosion, the same cars were used and the fire plates which were enhanced. This was all VFX supervisors' genius behind the execution of the scene. For OUATIM, every shot in the film was vfx heavy, almost all the shots required matte paintings. The 'Parda' song sequence in the film was shot on chroma floors, the challenge was to portray that the shot was taking place in the night at marine drive. After we got permission we took pictures as references of marine drive in the night as well. Then we recreated the whole scene in matte paintings in the background and CGI elements were added as well.

When it comes to matte painting, how are projects handled in Pixion?
Normally when a project comes forth, we sit for dailies with our seniors and leads and watch whatever offline content we get from the clients. With these meetings we understand what shots require matte paintings, and those particular shots are discussed in depth. Occasionally, the deadlines are quite pressing where-in we are required to finish matte paints on the same day. At times artists are required to stay back and work on pending projects. We work around the clock.

Hi Chandrakant, tell us something about your background? I did my BFA in fine arts from Sir J.J. School of Arts, I specialized in painting and portraiture since college. After passing out in 1999, my first job was with Raymond’s group, Read More">which is one of the leading garment companies in India. I worked in theirRead More

Hi Chandrakant, tell us something about your background?
I did my BFA in fine arts from Sir J.J. School of Arts, I specialized in painting and portraiture since college. After passing out in 1999, my first job was with Raymond's group, which is one of the leading garment companies in India. I worked in their private museum as a curator for around two and a half years. I took care of their personal antique collections. They wanted someone from an art background, who would value the artifacts.

How did matte painting happen for you?
As an artist you survive independently or wherever you creative skill sets are used. In my case films were my calling. I got my break into films by doing animatics related to commercials for Tata Elxsi's VCL. Matte painting happened when I joined Prasad EFX studios at Chennai in 2004, I did storyboards and matte painting simultaneously. Some of the films that I worked on were Krrish, Family and a few others at Prasad EFX. After two and a half years, I joined Pixion Studios in 2007. We did a lot of exclusive work such as Rock On, Raj the Showman, All the Best, Raajneeti and our latest accord We Are Family.

Remember Shahrukh’s action scene in Don, or Hrithik’s daredevil stunts in Dhoom 2? Of course you do, Read More">but did you know behind the stars and the shots that made them stars are thousands of technical people involved in the filmmaking process that unfortunately go unnoticed. These people are the ones who make cinema as youRead More

Remember Shahrukh's action scene in Don, or Hrithik's daredevil stunts in Dhoom 2?
Of course you do, but did you know behind the stars and the shots that made them stars are thousands of technical people involved in the filmmaking process that unfortunately go unnoticed. These people are the ones who make cinema as you know it glitter.

In this exclusive series opening, we're going to introduce you to the 'People behind the Scenes'. To start with, BollywoodHungama brings to you a freewheeling chat excerpts with matte painting extraordinaire, Chandrakant Shenoy from one of India's leading post-production and leading VFX houses - Pixion.

Chandrakant, who helms from a varied industry background including textile, media and others, has worked as lead matte painter for a number of Bollywood Blockbusters. Speak to any of the top honchos at Pixion, and all they have to say about the man is the same like Pixion COO Sanjay Yashroy, "Chandrakant is an artist for whom both time and fiscal resources are of prime essence. We are fortunate to have a person like Chandrakant who outdoes himself continually."

Most of the movies that we see today have some form of computer graphics and visual effects involved in it, to make a better picture and give more depth to the story of a film. One of the most crucial parts in digital filmmaking is 'Matte painting'. Matte paintings are used when a scene requires backgrounds or set extensions that are either impossible to build or have too steep a budget for production to spend.

You may not be conscious of it, but most of the Indian and Hollywood blockbusters we see today like 300, LOTR, Avatar, Housefull, Raajneeti etc. have a great deal of matte paintings involved.