Exploring Technology behind I

After watching the movie in big screen with Mersalaitten visuals, the hardwork behind each frame for the stunning look and feel, a new dimension for the eyes. All credits goes to the technicians and ofcourse the persons who involved in the making of the film.

It is always a sweet shock for the eyes by getting to know a making of the movie and how a scene become a massive one in the screen, and that too if it is a shankar movie, then its a real feast to know the details. You cant believe eyes how a normal shot turn into a spectacular one after the VFX works. Lets see the works involved in the shankar’s mega budget movie “I”.

Most of the exotic shots were taken in china which has stunning visual effects done by International house Rising Sun Pictures of Australia and the reality makeup works by Weta Workshop and on the above its all designed by V.Srinivas Mohan.

Damn sure you cant find which is real and which is CGI in this movie until the team disclose those mystry. We tried to unfold as much as possible here from the sources.

Shankar’s main focus is to keep the audience to sit back when song comes and also he make sure that people will not even take eyes out of the screen until it finishes. For that he work too much on it than the other portions and at the end, he proves himself again and again in each song in all his movies.

The Mersalaayitten song VFX was done by Rising Sun Pictures of Australia. Whole song framed like Vikram’s love for Amy by making her visualise in every objects of his imagination. VFX was done in a perfect manner that you will not relate this with Transformers though it has more or less similar concept.

For few CGI, VFX team scanned Amy fully and used Maya software for the textures. In this song, Amy takes the form from Fish, sprouts. Specially the transformation from dhobi ghat water is a complete CGI work where the shining for the soap water took lot of time to make it to the real grade.

And finally while watching in movie, it become like this..

In another transition in the song, without any sharp cuts, phone just transforms to Amy is amazing to watch.Though the transition is possible by wearing similar costume, but shankar wanted to be very realistic and so he went to CGI where it looks natural transition.

Bike transformation to Amy, taken separately via a greenmate and the bike ride in the sea shore where VFX to join them.

Body hair part which is half work by weta and half by CGI which turned out as a realistic special work.

Wide Angle flowers in the climax is a CGI work. Only one side has flowers and it has been enhanced to the other side too via VFX while seeing from a wide angle.

House where Amy being kidnapped is a CGI work along with the bridge connecting the house. House is located at Kishkindha Theme park and the team arranged a wooden broken bridge and connected it to form a full fledged bridge via CGI works.

Beast song set extension, fire enhancement, Upen electrocuted sequence all done by the Prasad EFX. Beast song make up took 5 hours to apply and 2 hours to remove which is the real challenging makeup in the film.

This song was shot in Chennai at Prasad Studio for 15 days. Beast song research itself took 3 months. They made a vast realistic sets with real sculptures they made specially for this song.

Around 1000 VFX shots where executed including the 8 transitions in the song, 30 shots at honeybee sequence, 40 shots at electric train and 50+ at beast song.

Wings and Fire were enhanced and the roof top was completely changed via VFX.

At China location, the entire background is done in CG to enhance the flowers and the colours. When the team wanted to shoot, there were no flowers, so they were shot with green background and then replaced that with flowers. The climax scene also had no flowers on location, but later added them in post works.

Hold on your breath for a second for the next shock. The entire roof top fight scene in China was entirely recreated and enhanced using CG. They placed a simple texture on plain flat surfaces on which they performed all the stunts and then they take care of the rest in post CGI works. Train fight with upen also a very crucial effort by the team which resulted in a edge of the seat fight.

Hunchback vikram character, which is the main focus in the movie has also a lot of work involved in making that sketch. Vikram hardwork has yield good results. Bubbles on his face were designed by WETA. He struggled a lot with this pose in fight sequence over the train.

Aila Aila and Ladio songs, every 30 sec a product needs to be showcased with a short creative story line which also should impress the viewers and also to show the love between the pair too in parallel.

The P.C Sreeman divulged a beguiling fact, that ‘I’ would inevitably be the last Indian movie to be shot on celluloid – making history he said, “It took over a 100 years for the evolution of film, while only 10 years for the digital cameras to occupy its place. I would need to adapt to these new times and stay ahead of the game with everyone else.

Entire shoot on location took 5 months, where as the pre-production took a year and the VFX around 8 months. At the end we can call at Shankar’s and PC Sreerams best work.