Tata Elxsi creates visual effects for 'New York'

Bangalore : Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of Tata Elxsi Ltd and a leader in the animation and visual communications industry today announced that it has rendered unique visual effects for Bollywood’s most recent offering ‘New York’.

Commenting on the project, Mr. Pankaj Khandpur, Creative Director, Visual Computing Labs, Tata Elxsi said, “We are venturing into an era where technology is no longer a limitation to bringing magic onto the screen. VCL has combined creativity and technology to create situations in ‘New York’ that do not exist in real life. The talented and dedicated team at VCL executed more than 300 shots in the movie. The complex shots were meticulously planned and executed to cast the magic of visual effects in one of the most awaited movies of the year. ‘New York’ has received a tremendous response from all audiences and is fast gaining critical acclaim both in India and worldwide. Clearly, the role of VFX in Indian cinema and television is increasingly being felt today as craftsmen try every possible trick to stand out from the rest of the pack.”

The opening credits of “New York” have a very distinct and artistic style where VCL created line drawings of New York City skylines which were matched to live aerial shots.

The World Trade Centre twin towers were created in about 5 shots to show a period before the 9x11 terror attacks. The challenge was to match the perspective, animation, lighting on a shot by shot basis.

In another scene a wide angle shot of a warehouse was meant to be shown blown up by explosives. The original scene was shot on a location in the US. In Mumbai a scale model of the ware house was created and rigged with explosives which went off in a well planned pyrotechnique procedure. Later on in VFX this exploding layer was matched in compositing with appropriate perspective and colour correction to make it look like the warehouse that actually exploded.

In a particular scene, sabotage on the location of a construction site has been shown wherein a heavy duty construction crane breaks apart and falls down as if it was an accident. VCL used CGI to create this scene along with live action shots.

The maximum amount of work was involved around populating the number of buildings and city views which crossed over 150 shots, especially in the climax. All the New York 'backgrounds' created had to be perfectly matched to the location foregrounds.