VFX behind City of Gold

With hits like Vaastav and Viruddh, the release of ace Marathi director Mahesh Manjrekar’s most recent venture, City Of Gold (Lalbaug Parel in Marathi) is an absolute thriller that leaves you gasping with horror that this true story has to offer. Produced by Dar Motion Pictures, Read More">the movie revolves on the plight of the city’sRead More

With hits like Vaastav and Viruddh, the release of ace Marathi director Mahesh Manjrekar's most recent venture, City Of Gold (Lalbaug Parel in Marathi) is an absolute thriller that leaves you gasping with horror that this true story has to offer. Produced by Dar Motion Pictures, the movie revolves on the plight of the city's mill workers set back in the 80's.

Although to recreate Mumbai which was set in the 80's era was by no means was an easy feat, Pixion one of Mumbai's leading post production houses has accomplished this endeavor outstandingly with some of its innovative vfx..

With a combined complexity of finishing 300 to 400 shots for both Lalbaug Parel and City Of Gold simultaneously, the films mainly consisted of thirty minutes of chroma shots with a large number of wire removals and clean-ups. This task was completed in thirty days flat with a handful of thirty five artists.

"One of the main challenges was that in the movie, there were around thirty to forty shots that involved lengthy, unconventional steadicam movements. So unlike any other movie, these shots consisted of around 2500 to 3000 frames, which are around two to almost three minutes of footage time. A lot of movements were happening in these shots, so tracking played a crucial part in executing the composite stage," explains Ranadheer Reddy, the vfx supervisor of the film.

Bollywood Hungama brings to you an exclusive insight into some of the VFX shots.

Camera Shadow

In this particular shot the team at Pixion had the task of cleaning up the shadows of the camera that were visible in the shot below.

Chroma Replacement For this shot chroma backgrounds were used and trackers were placed for the passing trains. Chandrakant Shenoy was the artist in charge of the matte paintings for the entire film; he took pictures and footages before finalizing the chroma shots.

Chroma Replacement

For this shot chroma backgrounds were used and trackers were placed for the passing trains. Chandrakant Shenoy was the artist in charge of the matte paintings for the entire film; he took pictures and footages before finalizing the chroma shots.

Crowd Multiplication To generate a massive gathering of the protesters, chroma backgrounds were replaced in this scene and the crowd was multiplied and scattered randomly in the composite phase as well.

Crowd Multiplication

To generate a massive gathering of the protesters, chroma backgrounds were replaced in this scene and the crowd was multiplied and scattered randomly in the composite phase as well.

Khetaan Mills The shot where the mill workers were protesting outside Khetaan mills was set against a chroma background, and the mob was multiplied and scattered randomly for this particular shot to achieve this effect.

Khetaan Mills

The shot where the mill workers were protesting outside Khetaan mills was set against a chroma background, and the mob was multiplied and scattered randomly for this particular shot to achieve this effect.

Window Door Chroma The chroma backdrops were replaced with Chandrakant Shenoy’ Matte paintings of the chawls in this shot, with this particular angle shot by Amit.

Window Door Chroma

The chroma backdrops were replaced with Chandrakant Shenoy' Matte paintings of the chawls in this shot, with this particular angle shot by Amit.