Prime Focus delivers spectacular VFX and DI, and Cameras for Bejoy Nambiar's thriller 'Shaitan'. Shaitan is the story of five youngsters set in the urbanscape of Mumbai. Amy, Dash, KC, Zubin and Tanya are young, intelligent, good looking and 'uber cool' with no hang ups and no boundaries. They single-mindedly seek excitement until a 'moment' changes everything. An accident and their actions to cover it up lead them through a series of incidents across the roads, streets and bylanes of Mumbai and into the dark side that lurks within all of us - The Shaitan.
VFX
The climactic shot of the movie was especially challenging - a chase sequence between Inspector Mathur (Rajeev Khandelwal) and Inspector Malwankar (Raj Kumar Yadav) through the streets and bylanes of Mumbai city. The scene involves Inspector Mathur throwing a pot on Inspector Malwankar to hit him. Considering safety hazards, VFX was used for this shot. The director, Bejoy Nambiar, first shot Rajeev Khandelwal’s action of throwing a pot at Raj Kumar Yadav, minus the real pot. The Prime Focus VFX team then created a pot in 3D using references from other pots in the scene and gave it the required motion to make it look like it hits Raj Kumar Yadav. The main challenge here was to match the look and feel of the water pot to the ones present in the live shot.
Another challenging shot in the same chase sequence sees Raj Kumar Yadav hit by a truck while running away from Rajeev Khandelwal. In this shot, two separate plates were shot, one with Raj Kumar Yadav acting like he has been hit and the other of the truck alone. The VFX team merged both the layers together so that the impact looked real and convincing, and goes in sync with the narrative.
Apart from these two stand-out shots, there was a large VFX requirement throughout the movie 'Shaitan', including a number of picture-in-picture shots, and clean-up and compositing work.
DI
As Shaitan is a fast paced, youth-centric thriller, the look of the film also varies as per the narrative. While the first part of the movie was required to look very lively and vivacious, the climax required a dark and desaturated look.
For instance the song “Nasha” being the first song of the film required the look and feel to be fresh and full of life. The original colors were enhanced to make the song look more stylized and glossy. But the look and feel completely changes as we move towards the end of the movie - the dream sequence of Amrita Jayshankar (aka Amy), where she recalls her mother’s death, required a very creamy look and feel to it. This shot was especially challenging as it comes in middle of the climactic shot.
One of the other challenges was matching and grading the shots from four different cameras - namely Weisscam, Red, 7D and 5D.