26/11 - Movie

Well... Know a lot of things about this feature since i worked on it for almost 9 months and then left the project.. :)
RGV started shooting this before the release of department and before the shooting of bhoot returns 3d. He is a crazy and intelligent man i would say.
Movie was shot with a wide range of camera systems : Red Epic , Red Scarlet , Canon 5D Mark 3 , Canon 5D Mark 2, Canon 7D, Canon 60D, Panasonic Lumix GH2, Gopro Hero 1 and 2. pretty much all run and gun digital systems.
Completely edited on Premiere Pro CS6 ( i guess it's first mainstream bollywood movie to be edited on cs6 )
Visual effects fully completed on Nuke and AfterEffects
D.I done at Prime Focus with Baselight and footages conformed with Autodesk Smoke
Dailies for Red camera's done through RedCine_X Pro by myself :)
Shot Sync Sound for almost all portions featuring Nana Patekar

Visual effects and Editing Facility : FXS ( Fx School)Mumbai
Camera Rental : Just Video for Red Epic and FX School for all other camera's

Releasing March 1 almost after a year . See it in 2K Digital Screen

Theatrical Trailer

 

The Alexa's ... Upgraded

Well... Seems Arri and Codex has fused their products into one and has upgraded the former's digital cinema camera solution - The Arri Alexa camera's to the new Arri Alexa XR and XT. Now old alexa users will be allowed to upgrade ( dont know whether for free :) ) their model's to xr model's which will feature an internal codex onboard capture drive that will capture ARRIRAW data into the 512 gig drive upto 120 fps 2.8k Res.

 Read all about it at arri-alexa-xr-and-xt

Now that's cool thought by arri but still they are yet to come up with any camera shooting above 3k digital in this age when Red has already released their first screengrabs from the new Red Dragon which shoots 6k at a staggering 86 fps. Still i keep fingers crossed for the 4k arri that's long due...

To the alexa owners in india... primarily prime focus and anand cine service.. have a good time upgrading your camera's... Upcoming features shot on Arri Alexa in India :
Ek Thi Daayan (Arriraw on Codex)
Shootout at Wadala (mix of alexa and epic)
Nikhil Advani's D-Day (Arriraw on Gemini recorder)
Dhoom 3 (Arriraw on Codex)
Anurag Kashyap's Ugly
Selvaraghavan's Raja Rani

well... there are a lot more....  anyways waiting to watch kai po che this weekend... :)

more and more...!

Well.... its been some days since the last post... the reason being simple... i dont know what's happening actually... Indian film industry is quite reserved on the techie side of their films... rarely camera's used,technology used comes to the media actually... i hope it will change for good when i'm back in the industry again..:p
anyways... the digital cinema industry is flourishing day by day in india...no two opinions on that... This feb released david, any body can dance which were shot on the red epic's and bhatt's latest in murder series most likely shot with alexa's... next week rock on director abhishek kapoor's kai po che will grace theatre's and it was shot by a newcomer d.o.p ayan goswami on the red epic.... and ace cinematographer and only a.s.c member in india santosh shivan tweeted that his upcoming period drama 'Ceylon' was filmed completely on red epic and red scarlet.... i seriously have plans to rope him as the d.o.p for my first movie...:)

also just watch this video directed by 'David Fincher' featuring justin timberlake shot on 6 red epic monochrome black and white camera's.... well.... with money in hands you can't stop any fincher..

David

Director Bejoy Nambiar's previous flick 'Shaitan' was something special for me. I appeared in one of the film's audience reaction promo's shouting it was awesome without even seeing the movie...:)...anyways that's part of viacom 18's promotion plans...no blames for the director...Now about his second and one of the most anticipated titles of the year 'DAVID' .

Since 'Shaitan' also was a digital film significantly shot on RED One MX ;some bits on Canon 7D and Weisscam for the slo mo scenes, david also follows the same path. David is to my fullest knowledge shot on the better Red Epic by three different cinematographers Sanu John Varughese: who shot the b/w portions of the movie featuring Neil Nithin Mukesh ; P.S Vinod who shot Vinay Virmani/Jeeva portions in Hindi & Tamil respectively and Rathnavelu who shot Vikram's portions. The 300 FPS max.frame rate in the Epic has been extensively used in the three stories from whatever seen from the trailer. The action director's of the movie javed bhai and aejaz bhai are particularly fond of that and i know since i worked with them for  rgv's upcoming 26/11 movie. The Camera's i guess came primarily from Prime Focus and from Just Video + other vendors if any. The whole digital cinema workflow designed and executed by my fellow friend Gopal Balaji.

Edited by the veteran editor Sreekar Prasad, the movie is releasing Tomorrow February 1 2013. The Color grading was done at Reliance Mediaworks Mumbai by Colorist Ken Metzker probably on Baselight.

Sincerely waiting to catch the movie this weekend in Hindi especially for the black and white story. I wished sanu john varughese got the new epic monochrome specifically designed for b/w purposes...but they did it too early :p...All the best Bejoy and Team...:)

David Theatrical Trailer - Hindi

David Theatrical Trailer - Tamil

The 4K DSLR

Yesterday my twitter feed was buzzing about the reviews of the Canon DSLR 1DC showed off by canon last year @ NAB. I've been curious about this 7D sized camera which shoots 4K @ not more than 24 fps...(for more we have red :) ) ...Philip Bloom - one of the coolest Indie filmmaker has reviewed this camera model in depth with every minute details....so not posting anything more..just the review link...head over and read..!  :

Philip Bloom's Canon 1DC Review

I seriously hope to shoot some bad ass scenes in 4k with these camera's for my first movie if ever it happens....:) not too much i guess..

some cool facts about upcoming movies 'Kadal' and 'David' in the next post....!

Vishwaroopam / Vishwaroop

DTH.....Three letters you would never forget with this film. Although the simultaneuos dth release of the kamalahassan starrer has been cancelled its been a huge boon for the film's publicity..:p...Ever since the first trailer launched i was excited to see this venture because i've been a kamal fan from .....aah i dont know....dashavatharam was the first film of him i saw in theatres(sigh)....but i quiet liked it for its treatment and storytelling rather for the poor visual effects even by bollywood or tamil standards...

Now about Viswaroopam....The bilingual movie is the first Indian movie to be mixed with Auro 3D 11.1 Sound MIX for the theatres...Unfortunately only a handful of theatres in chennai and .... support this format of sound and it calls for a little big investment for the traditional theatre owners in india who has not even upgraded their sound systems to 7.1 dolby sorround..! Auro 3D is almost similar to the Dolby Atmos sound mixing which was introduced in India with the revival of Rajni blockbuster Sivaji in 3D released on Dec.12 2012. Dolby Atmos is currently installed in Satyam Cinemas Chennai. Vishwaroopam has many helicopter/war scenes i believe should sound good with speakers above your head in Auro 3D.

RED...:) The movie according to imdb was shot on Red One MX Camera by D.O.P Sanu John Varughese who shot Karthik Kalling Karthik and the brilliant b/w portions of  Bejoy Nambiar's upcoming 'David'. The Digital Intermediate of the movie was done at Pixion studios.

Visual Effects....From whatever seen from the trailers the movie seems to have decent visual effects way better than the actor's dashavatharam. The Vfx of the film is supervised by Mr. Madhu Sudhanan who also worked as the vfx supervisor on the highly stylized ajith starrer Billa 2. He has distributed the work to many indian studios such as Srk's Red Chillies VFX, Pixion , Prasad's EFX , GeminiFX, Alien Sense,Jupiter Animation and many other small studios for Vishwaroopam....after seeing all these studio's working on one single project such as this i hope vfx doesnt protrude out and better enhance the movie's narrative..:)

Releasing day after tomorrow worldwide.......All the Best to Kamalahassan and each and every member of the Crew.

Here's the trailer+bts mixed into one....(Tamil)

 Hindi Version Trailer + BTS(behind the scenes):

 

 

Indian Post Houses

they infact rule the industry.....Most of the indian population watching films doesn't know about these guys, infact i've seen people thinking that the final film output directly comes from the camera without any post process....Anyways these guys make a film watchable even with a crap story...
Talking about post houses in India, one should start with the gemini,prasad,adlabs era of indian films. The starting of the digital era to be exact. Then came Prime Focus which rules the roost now among Indian Studios....along came pixion,futureworks,reliance mediaworks(rebranded adlabs) and a bunch of small studios with tongue twisting names...I've personally been to some of these places especially Prime Focus Mumbai. I went there for a test screening of the rgv film bhoot returns 3d which prime focus did the digital intermediate and escaped without any credit..:p. I loved that place.....that was the first time i visited a proper studio which deals with a to z of filmmaking. There is also a very affordable canteen and you get good food over there...anyways not going to praise them for everything...i shall talk about each post houses in detail later...I also visited the biggest post houses in chennai - the prasad labs and gemini imaging....both do some good quality work and some worst ever works i've seen...even i've worked in some of the worst films of 2012 (department and bhoot returns) so i dont blame anyone. There are plenty of reasons for one's work going bad to worse....many there are...i shall post about them also in detail later. As for now see what they give you...You have no other choice until i start making films...! Good Night.