When it comes to portraying differently-able people on screen, filmmakers are left with a tricky mission of visually augmenting a sensitive subject's narrative in good taste. Anurag Basu's latest romantic-comedy Barfi! is a great example of how it could be done with elegance. Although the film invited controversy from prying invaders, Barfi! has managed to silence its critics with being chosen as India's official entry to the Oscars next year. Barfi! is hailed as a 'whiff of fresh air' in our otherwise musty Bollywood cinema, but contributing to one of the essential factors towards the success of the movie is the ethereal VFX and post-production process. Pixion Studios was roped in to deliver the VFX and post production process for Barfi! . Prasad Sutar, VFX Supervisor- Pixion, led a team of a hundred and ten artists, to work around the clock and deliver the post-production process of the film in forty five days. Bollywood Hungama's Philip Bode takes you through the making of the VFX of Barfi! .
Since a large part of the film was shot in Chandivali in Mumbai, the VFX components included extensive set-recreation and extensions. The set extensions were an amalgamation of digital matte paintings, camera projections and CG sets fused together by skilled compositors. As for the clean-up process, since Barfi! is a period film, various elements which indicated the present day scenario, were removed and replaced with backgrounds of shots taken on location. Talking about the creative thought process and working with Anurag, Sanjiv says, "Storyboards were made and agreed upon before we executed the post-production process and Anurag was always open to our opinions. This gave us the creative freedom to execute it the way we visualized."
Read More">The bubble and the firefly scene is one of the most challenging scenes in the film. Extensive research and development was carried out by animation and lighting artists to understand the motion of a bubble and lighting patterns of a firefly. The CGI and live action plates were fused together in the compositing phase. TheRead More
The bubble and the firefly scene is one of the most challenging scenes in the film. Extensive research and development was carried out by animation and lighting artists to understand the motion of a bubble and lighting patterns of a firefly. The CGI and live action plates were fused together in the compositing phase. The team's extensive research was fruitful, when Anurag assigned a few more shots that required additional fireflies, just hours before delivering the shot. The animators had to match the bubble and firefly motion with Ranbir's visual line of focus.
The scene where the old black Ambassador gets up pushed off a cliff and goes underwater was recreated using CGI. In order for the sinking car to blend with the underwater environment, heavy compositing for the CGI car was required. The grade of this shot was matched to sync with the other shots in the sequence, which made it seamless. In addition, the maroon Chevrolet Capri that was used in most of the Darjeeling shots, was recreated in CGI as well which required a lot of match-moving and camera tracking. Finer detailing work like reflections etc. was employed as well.
The film has over 500 VFX shots which include a significant amount of CGI work, Viral Thakkar, CGI Head- Pixion lead the CG team to accomplish some difficult CGI shots such as the nose gag scene. To achieve the narrative and augment Ranbir's performance, a high detailed CGI nose was made and match moved with the live action plate. The challenge was to blend the CGI nose seamlessly with the actor's face and the skin tone. Textures were placed using the Sub-surface scattering shader (SSS) method. Multiple layers were composited and colour-corrected to get the perfect nose for the shot, since the schedule for the promotional shot was tight; the team managed to execute it in a matter of days.