Always taking things to another level is what Prime Focus strives to do. Visualizing and furnishing all genres' of films Prime Focus has done it again venturing in to the dark and horror with their heavy duty and splendid work in Raaz - The Mystery Continues. Merzin Tavaria tells us more about it. This film opened up a completely new genre of films for Visual Effects in the Indian Film Industry. It would probably be the first time that a Horror film relied so heavily on Visual Effects.
 |  | The jumper sequence
The director, Mohit Suri, wanted to show each character with a lot of wounds to make them look scary and dead. We studied the movement of each character and then decided the look. After going through a lot of concepts we at Prime Focus finally settled our final look. The look and feel was setup using photoshop. Detailed paint work was done on each wound to make them look as real as possible.
| Using Fusion's grid warp tool the wounds were warped and tracked on to the bodies so that they would follow the contours of each character's body along with their movement. The effects became difficult because of the rapid movement on the characters. Using Fusion we were able to composit and track the wounds. The complete sequence was shot in day and the requirement was night. Hence, all the shots were graded day for night and composited. The characters were selectively graded to give them a slight eerie look. Each shot was treated separately to make sure the sequence was overall very effective and scary. |  | The Bull Sequence.
This sequence was the most exciting one of all the work done on Raaz – TMC (The Mystery Continues). The scene required a group of bulls attacking Emran and Kangana's car. Shooting this from a production standpoint was impossible. Besides, getting permission to shoot with animals and the choreography of the bulls was not possible.
When the director first discussed this sequence, we jumped at it.!! It was going to be the biggest challenge on the project and extremely exciting. We studied references to make sure the model was made right. A lot of attention was given to the detail during modeling itself.
We sourced a lot of references to study the movement of the animal. Lot of footage, of the real animal, was sourced to see how the fur reacted to light. We studied its movement, muscle reactions, walk cycles, running process, interaction with live objects, complete movement of the bull from head to tail. | To make the sequence look real…we had to concentrate on its body structure, interaction to light, fur interaction to light, shadow on the ground, forest shadows on the bull, movement in various ways.
A muscle system had to be developed to control the animation and give it a realistic movement. Texturing the bull was the next task. We did have to use fur to get the look right. The whole seq was day for night. We used maya for modeling the bull and animating it. The textures were initially created and perfected in photoshop and then applied on the bull using maya. Maya fur played an important part in giving life to the bull.
A muscle system was developed to add realism to the bulls movement. Without the muscle system… the bull would look too rigid. This in a way added flow to the bulls movement and hence life. |  | Giving the whole sequence a moonlit feel and yet retain the detail on the bull was the key to making it believable. The bulls were also going to be lit by the interactive headlights.
Since the whole sequence was day for night. We shot in day, graded the footage for night and composited the headlights on the car, on all the shots where the bull would react to it or get affected by the headlights. | This setup was used by the 3D team to create light passes of light interacting on the bulls body.
We received multiple passes from 3D so that we had more than complete control while compositing the shots. Hence, these passes were then used by the compositors to make the bull sit into the shots. |  | Climax Sequence
For the climax, the main character Jackie had to look like a ghost. Getting the look right did take us some time. Every Wound on his face had to be painted in detail by the Prime Focus digital paint artists. We did paint the other characters and hence Jackie was a challenge. Hence, a lot of back and forth research went into creating his look using photoshop and references. We had to make sure that the face looked scary. He had to be from the same look and feel, however a class apart.
| His appearing and disappearing was another challenge. He had to look as if he was progressing closer to Adhiyan all through the sequence. The first shot in the sequence when Jackie appears behind adhiyan was shot initially keeping this effect in mind during post. This was the money shot of this sequence. It created an awesome impact. |  |  | Kalindi Mattepainting
The location of Kalindi was a mythical town which had to have a menacing feel. In one part of this village was the location of a factory. After doing a lot of location hunting the director decided he would opt for a vfx based solution for both these. A detailed mattepainting was created of the town of Kalindi. Extreme detail was important for this, larger than life, mattepainting. The car in this shot was our reference to scale. Every house that was painted had to be of proper scale and we did paint in a lot of houses. Compositing this shot was a challenge on its own. There was a lot of movement in the camera. Hence the composit was done in layers using Fusions 3D projection technique. After all this, attention to detail was important. A layer of fog, smoke coming out of the factory chimneys were key to adding life to this shot. Factory Mattepainting
The director could not film a factory for his film. Hence, it had to be created completely. We sourced a few elements and started compositing them together using photoshop. After a look for the structure was set, we realized that this had to be a night shot. Hence the whole painting went into treatment of day for night. Painstaking attention to detail was added. Digital Artists worked tirelessly on this mattepainting as it was a challenge for them itself.
Creating the factory was one challenge, and giving it life was another. |  | The lights working differently, people walking, fog in the foreground and background, smoke from the chimneys, lights going on and off were just some of the elements created to make the factory look alive. We had most of our layers in photoshop, given to the compositors to play with. They went an extra few miles with this.
| Fusion particles were used to create the fog. Lights were animated at different times to give the whole shot a random feel. Particle illusion was used to create the spark and smoke elements. We wanted to give the shot a little movement and hence we used 3D projection in Fusion to give a slight parallax feel. |  | The mirror sequence
The mirror sequence was one of the most thrilling sequences of Raaz - TMC. The effect of her getting shocked by her ghost reflection in the mirror was a brainstorm. I guess this gripped the audience to the edge of their seats. We did start of this seq where kangana bends to pick something up and her reflection remains in the mirror. Later we had to add fog to the glass, created from the steam coming from the hot water. After the fog had gathered for sometime the water droplets were to be created to add realism to the mirror and shots. The steam effect and droplets were created using the particle system of Fusion.
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The major task was the hand writing to appear on the fogged glass. The writing had to match the sound. It had to be slow enough to get the eerie feel.
Finally when kangana clears the mirror, she sees her face with the scary wounds. This was the final challenge.
The wounds had to be painted in photoshop maintaining detail on each wound. They had to be in the same place where she scratches her face.
We studied her hand movement again and again to make sure the scratches were placed right. |  |  | After achieving this look we tracked and grid warped this onto her face using Fusion.
Then layer by layer all the effects of the fog , the writing on the mirror and then her cleaning the glass with her hand to reveal her reflection were composited.
Totally the Prime Focus vfx team executed over 500 shots on Raaz - TMC using our different facilities in Mumbai & Hyderabad. All in all it was a thrilling experience working on this film. I am glad the film is being appreciated. The other good thing is that till now no one has mentioned the vfx or the cg bulls. Thats what I like the best.
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