On the first episode of the podcast ‘Technically Speaking’ by The Plot Head Media, Mr. Jaykar Arudra, the VFX supervisor for films like Venom, Tron, and Bombay Velvet, talks about multifarious aspects of a VFX artist’s life. His latest work includes Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva.
He shares his experience and says, “Experience has been phenomenal. And one thing is, the team had been putting out teasers, motion posters, songs, and stuff. I have seen a lot of messages on youtube where people said ‘you’re showing like so much!’. I just want to say that there’s so much more that people have not seen and will witness in the theatres. It is just going to be amazing I feel.”
Ayan Mukherjee attended an LA workshop in 2015 to understand the VFX for a movie properly. Me Jaykar Arudra speaks about working with the director and creating the fire bits in the movie. He says, “Ayan comes with his phenomenal knowledge of filmmaking. My process of sitting with him and the team and really talking about what our process is going to be. In the beginning, we put out one video of Brahmastra which talks about how we started off with Ranbir doing these fireball tests and stuff like that. And CG fire of course is one of the most complexes. Fire and water are very complex in CG. Being able to create believable and controllable fire is quite a thing.”
We all know Ayan Mukherjee’s imagination is pleasing. Supporting the same, the VFX supervisor points out how Ayan’s creativity enhanced the fire scenes in the movie.
“Realistic fire looks beautiful when you actually see it but in films when you put it, it can get a little boring after a certain time. Ayan then came up with this brilliant thing like ‘let’s add some magic into the fire.’“
He talks about the result of the VFX of Brahmastra, especially the fire scenes. He adds, “Our fire if you see, I don’t know how much justice it does or how detailed you can see it on a computer or mobile screens but when you see it in the theatre, you would actually see a lot of small fine particles they have added into the fire which you call the cosmic particles. So, it’s almost like whatever fire has its own amber along with that there are cosmic particles which show you the third dimension of cosmos.”
It takes a hefty amount of hard work for a VFX scene to look natural on screen. Mr. Jaykar Arudra talks about how they managed to make Shiva’s fire believable. Shiva’s fire is a significant element of the film, he shares his foremost experiments with fire on the sets of Brahmastra.
“Initially we were doing a lot of real fire tests. Real fire one shooting is there is just no control on that. You can’t go beyond a certain point. And it’s like lots of smoke. I was telling Ayan that we cannot shoot with so much smoke. Because we wanted Shiva’s fire to be divine, more magical and stuff.”
Ayan Mukherjee’s vision to give Indian cinema its first Astral Universe was a dream. It is only the great team working behind the film that made everything work out. Especially, the VFX team that molded the movie into an incredible piece of art.
Watch the full video on Youtube.
Thinking of becoming a VFX artist? Make sure you check out our last week’s column on It’s High Time — Cinema Top Dogs v/s VFX Artists
