One of the most eagerly awaited films this year, Farhan Akhtar’s Don starring Shah Rukh Khan features a lot of high end VFX and DI work. While the VFX for the film is being done by Red Chillies VFX, the Digital Intermediate for the same is currently underway and in its last lap at Mumbai based Pixion.
Speaking to Animation Xpress.com, Pixion Technical Head Neil Sadwelker who is also the co editor for the movie shared, “Though we have worked on quite a few International movies, in terms of sheer scale and popularity Don is the most prominent movie we have ever worked on at Pixion. It is a really big film for us”
Mohanan, the Director of Photography for Don and Paul Bern the Digital Intermediate chief at Pixion elaborated on the DI work being done. “I have been working as a cinematographer for the past five years and have done scores of ad films. I realize the pros and cons of DI. Though we haven’t yet completed the DI, I am very happy with the coloring so far. Also, some of the flashback scenes have been treated in a very special way thanks to the DI” shared Mohanan.
DI head and chief colorist at Pixion, Paul Bern shared “Even before we actually began work on the film, we did a lot of experiments where we gave a lot of different looks and styles to the film, printed them out and previewed them on the big screen. Finally we decided to go for a very filmic look”
“Some scenes of Don have been shot over four to five days with different cameras and angles. In all, the film has more than 2,500 edits which is quite a huge number for any movie. Matching and maintaining the look of the film was possible because of the DI process” he added.
Throwing light on the infrastructure at Pixion, technical head Neil Sadwelker shared, “Besides our strong in house technical & creative expertise we also have the infrastructure muscle to compliment it. We are amongst the few DI houses in India that can hold an entire movie, at one go. Our Online capacity for grading is 17 Terrabytes and Near line storage is 60 Terrabytes”
Even as Don gets readied for release, the next Bollywood movie that Pixion is doing the DI for is Honeymoon Travels and on Shunya which has been completely shot on HDV. The studio is also working on the VFX and DI for a couple of UK productions.