VFX making of Bol Bachchan

With the narrative of the film and its characters based in Rajasthan, the action scenes were actually all shot at Film City in Mumbai, Read More">it was necessary for the team at Pixion Studios to ensure that everything encompassed a Rajasthani aura in Bol Bachchan. The surroundings and ambient structures in the scene were all madeRead More

With the narrative of the film and its characters based in Rajasthan, the action scenes were actually all shot at Film City in Mumbai, it was necessary for the team at Pixion Studios to ensure that everything encompassed a Rajasthani aura in Bol Bachchan. The surroundings and ambient structures in the scene were all made using CGI in the post-production phase.

Talking about the brief of the film, Naveen says, "Along with my team from Pixion Studios, we started working on the film in August last year with the pre-production process creating storyboards, location scouting, planning etc. During location scouting we investigated the film site, and planned out the visual effects sequences accordingly to check on how compatible the conditions are for shooting."

Rohit Shetty’s latest action comedy Bol Bachchan has managed to enter the Rs. 100 crore club in its third week giving the actor – director duo, Ajay Devgn and Rohit Shetty, a hattrick. Bol Bachchan is an official remake of the popular 1979 film, Golmaal. The movie revolves around how Abbas (Abhishek Bachchan), Read More">a financiallyRead More

Rohit Shetty's latest action comedy Bol Bachchan has managed to enter the Rs. 100 crore club in its third week giving the actor - director duo, Ajay Devgn and Rohit Shetty, a hattrick. Bol Bachchan is an official remake of the popular 1979 film, Golmaal. The movie revolves around how Abbas (Abhishek Bachchan), a financially burdened simpleton, with the help of his comrade Shastri played by Asrani, secures a decent job to provide for his sibling and himself. But unintentionally, due to bizarre state of affairs, he is compelled to hide his true identity before the villagers in Ranakpur. With this, fate takes an important twist in Abbas's life where he finds himself working for the lie-abhorrent Prithviraj played by Ajay Devgn.

One of the biggest contributing factors that aids in its narrative's success is the VFX and post-production segment, executed by the famous Pixion Studios. Headed by VFX supervisor, Naveen Paul, the Mumbai based VFX house has delivered a colossal sixty-eight minutes of visual effects sequences, in a span of five months, with a workforce of over 80 artists working around the clock to achieve the director's vision. Bollywood Hungama gets Naveen to talk about working with Rohit, the post-production process and the creative challenges that made Bol Bachchan.

A detailed schedule is produced during pre-production, to ascertain and finalize the sequences that require VFX before starting the principal photography of a film. Talking about preparation leading up to post-production Naveen says, Read More">“We take reference images of the shooting locations and then make an assessment on where exactly the action or scene would beRead More

A detailed schedule is produced during pre-production, to ascertain and finalize the sequences that require VFX before starting the principal photography of a film. Talking about preparation leading up to post-production Naveen says, "We take reference images of the shooting locations and then make an assessment on where exactly the action or scene would be filmed, accordingly depending on what the director requires, we decide to either shoot live or use visual effects to accomplish a sequence.

We shot on empty land where we recreated backgrounds that resembled Rajasthan followed by the Jama Masjid sequence, train sequence and action sequences in both the halves of the film. We created various set extensions, CGI, clean-ups, multi-plate composites using Nuke and fire replacements."

“In the Jama Masjid sequence, the mosque seen in the film is actually recreated in CGI. In this sequence, Abhishek Bachchan and Asrani were shot against chroma backgrounds where they were seen talking on a terrace. Different rounds of discussions were held on the sequences as the entire outlook of the film progressed, Read More">Rohit briefedRead More

"In the Jama Masjid sequence, the mosque seen in the film is actually recreated in CGI. In this sequence, Abhishek Bachchan and Asrani were shot against chroma backgrounds where they were seen talking on a terrace. Different rounds of discussions were held on the sequences as the entire outlook of the film progressed, Rohit briefed me on the sequences and then we shot it according to the plan chalked out. When Rohit shoots VFX sequences, they're edited as soon as they are shot and passed on to us for the post-production process", elaborates Naveen.

"To bring about the iconic Jama Masjid sequence, we went to Delhi and took pictures of the iconic mosque for our reference. In the movie, the live action elements visible were only the people moving about in the background around the mosque. We used a mix of a CGI generated model made using Maya's NURBS modeling method and projection mapping with the appropriate lighting to achieve this. There was no single approach as the sequence, the multiple plates made were then later merged and composited using Nuke."

“We made a 3D model for the cliff sequence in which a texture was projected into the model using Nuke. The textures were high-resolution images of the site itself. Chandrakant Shenoy, matte painter from Pixion Studios made various matte paintings for the set extension phase, Read More">with the action sequences we also made use of aRead More

"We made a 3D model for the cliff sequence in which a texture was projected into the model using Nuke. The textures were high-resolution images of the site itself. Chandrakant Shenoy, matte painter from Pixion Studios made various matte paintings for the set extension phase,

with the action sequences we also made use of a lot of rigid and soft body dynamics, there was nothing that we didn't do for the film. The challenge in such a project is to procure an output that was convincing and absolutely credible."