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.

Shootout At Wadala

The most awaited trailer of the movie Shootout At Wadala released last week to a terrific response and even i was amazed at the performance and body of john abraham like everyone else....I was in mumbai the time they were shooting this cinema and i got to know some interesting info...The movie was shot mainly with the Arri Alexa Camera by D.O.P Sameer Arya and Sanjay F Gupta. I am not sure they used an external recorder for Arriraw format like gemini or codex. They also shot with the RED Epic Camera for the slow motion (probably the max. 300fps in 2K) shots and there are a ton of those shots in the trailer. I guess the camera rental companies were Prime Focus and Just video rental company from Mumbai. The Digital Intermediate and Visual Effects works are done by Futureworks Studios. All i am waiting is for the movie releasing on May 1 2013. Hope to see it in a 2K screen. And here is the trailer i've been talking about :
Watch it in Full HD

The Humble Intro

Aaha....Finally the blog is up...! a timepass venture just to share the happenings of digital cinema in india. All of the readers if any must know that age of film has been died and the introduction of cameras like RED,Alexa have made ways for film like digital affordable cinema. Will try to keep up the blog as best as i can.