The Conan Chronicles

Reliance MediaWorks,the film and entertainment services company of parent company Reliance Group,has worked on the film’s complex visual sequences and also rendered it in 3D. This can be seen as a significant development since this is one of the few times that an entire Western movie has been creatively led and developed by an Indian company. The project was led by Reliance MediaWorks’ VFX team in London and executed by the company’s team in Mumbai. It has created 133 VFX shots that include CG effects,digital matte painting and compositing at its Mumbai office while another 33 shots were made in the UK.

Tushar Kewlani,Head – 3D,Reliance MediaWorks said that working with no constraints and having creative freedom were some of the perks of working on Conan The Barbarian. “Initially,we received a brief to do certain looks for some of the main characters of the film. We prepared five to six shots and sent it across to the makers. They liked our work and the time-frame in which it was delivered. We got the offer to work on the film’s VFX and 3D shortly after,” he said.

The company’s work on films like The King’s Speech and The Conspirator helped the film grab the offer. The team could also preview most of its work on standard 2K projection systems available at its disposal to tackle niggles and work on 3D. Kewlani said he was thankful for the infrastructure network of his company. “The amount of data and simulation and the volume of tools required for a project like this is incredible. We racked up a total of over 100 terabytes of data on the movie compared to about 10 terabytes used by a Hindi film,” he said.

He said that the creative freedom and responsibility given to the Reliance MediaWorks team was a refreshing change from working on other films. “Usually,we work with a brief. You take it from the client and execute it within a given time frame. So working on Conan.. was great because it liberated us from these hurdles. The film was also shot in a particular way because of which most of the post-production work was undertaken by the VFX supervisor rather than the editor,” Kewlani said.

Abhinav Sah,VFX Supervisor joins the conversation and gives a detailed account of how the project was executed. “We initially spent 20 to 25 days just doing research and development on the film and its script. It was possible because we knew what our timelines were. We had almost four months to work on it so we divided the work into different projects,” he said. This is quite different from how the Hindi film industry works where one never knows when the deadline will creep up,Sah said. “Here,filmmakers look at finishing editing and visual effects together in a month without considering the different technicalities involved,” he said.

Sah said that the VFX team was involved right from the pre-production stage for Conan.. and that made it easy to work on the film’s shots. “The amount of preparation,planning and time management that they do on each project is really great. Everybody from the pre-production to production to post-production sits in on meetings together. You have to adopt the gorilla approach while working in Hollywood,which is solving problems as they come rather than employing the jugaad (fixing problems by any means possible) methods of our film industry,” he said.

It was a tough task for the team from Mumbai to work on a Hollywood film,especially since the West’s technical brilliance and mastery over the filmmaking craft is unsurpassed. Converting the film in 3D only exacerbated the problem. Incredibly,the duo said that they were also worried for their marriages simultaneously. “Since we do not have the expertise required for a film of such a scale,we had to take recourse to the Internet. We used to work on the shots in office by day and research on our laptops by night for next day’s work. We also had to hide our work from our wives because of the non-disclosure agreement we had signed,” Kewlani recalled laughing.

Sah and Kewlani are unanimous that the sand warrior sequence was the most difficult shots to execute. In it,a female warrior blows dust at the hero,which gets transformed to warriors made of dust who cannot be killed. “We tried hard to make the transformation look threatening rather than comical. It also required a lot of action and stunt work. Also,we had to maintain the kinetic motion of the shot to show that the warriors cannot be killed in a normal fashion,” Sah explained.

According to the team,the more minute the detail,the tougher it is to create it on a computer. Thus,the sand and dust flowing from the warrior’s palm before transforming itself into a monster required detailed work. The sequence not only had to follow its physical attributes to look believable but also had to adhere to the script’s VFX requirements.

In another sequence,the team recreated the entire medieval city where the movie plays out and sent it for approval. However,they were told to change one building that was not blending with the shot. After inspecting closely,the team found that it was the only building that had not been retouched with CG from the original shot. “We were told that our recreated sets were much better than what they had shot,” Kewlani chuckled.

A 3D shot that shows actor Jason Momoa reprise Schwarzenegger’s role also took a lot of time to render. The scene starts with Momoa in the far background of the shot and tracks him while he comes closer to the camera. To maintain the 3D impact of the scene,the team had to recreate the shot keeping the extraordinary 500 frames per second speed of film. “We also had to rework Momoa’s leg because it was not looking athletic enough,” Kewlani said. Sah quietly leans in and says “chicken leg” before the duo break into chuckles.

The team also had to create digital doubles for certain actors for some of the more elaborate action sequences. This involved replacing stunt actors and recreating the fight environment to make it look more realistic. “There are some complete CG shots which look absolutely real with matte painting. Also,the technical and wire work used in Hollywood is very advanced. The action sequences follow more realistic physics and are done with finesse. All of this helps to create better content in the final cut for us,” Sah said. For a few of the shots,the camera and lens information received was sketchy that was worked on later.

The team is enthused with the response they have received for their work so far. They say that the producers have asked them to work on their next movie as well. “Obviously,we can’t wait that long though,” Naresh Malik,COO,Creative Services said. Apart from Conan The Barbarian,the company’s work can also be seen in the forthcoming Shark Night 3D.