Endhiran

Endhiran 

(The Robot), Rajnikanth starrer sci-fi VFX extravaganza

As a lead up to the impending extravaganza, the trailer of the Rajinikanth starrer magnum opus Endhiran was released on September 11, 2010 all over Tamil Nadu. The movie has about 2000 VFX shots that add up to around 60 scenes in the film. The majority of the VFX work has been handled by Chennai based studio Indian Artists and the animatronics for the film has been taken care of by Legacy Effects formerly known as Stan Winston Studio that has worked on movies like ‘Terminator‘ and ‘Jurassic Park‘.

Satyam Cinemas played host to the trailer release event that was held in Chennai. The trailer was released by Rajinikanth in the presence of producer and Sun Network‘s Kalanidhi Maran. The trilingual movie is set to be released on 24th Sept 2010 in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu with English subtitles.

About 12-15 different studios from around the world have lent their expertise to the film. V. Srinivas M Mohan from Indian Artists is the VFX Supervisor for the entire film and Frankie Chung and Eddy Wong are the additional VFX Supervisors. The visual effects alone for the entire movie had taken about one and half years to complete.

V. SRINIVAS M MOHAN at Legacy Effects Stanwinston Studio

Indian Artists VFX Supervisor for the film V. Srinivas M Mohan said "We have tried to collaborate with different studios from around the world as per their strengths and come out with quality work and have succeeded. We have not thought of any studio as competition and have roped in many studios from within India and also places like Hong Kong and Singapore as per their area of expertise that we needed."

The film as a whole is full of wild imagination and lot of interesting concepts. "We were not able to do lot of things over the years due to budget, but in this film we have done some of those things. We have created an entirely new pipeline for the project as it was required" added Srinivas.

Off about 60 scenes, 40 scenes were pre visualized in the preproduction stage and done in animation before going in for the shoot. The pre production for these scenes alone took about 6-7 months. "Sanath from Firefly supported us in the pre production of the scenes and the director was with the team for the 6-7 months during preproduction" shared Srinivas.

Sharing his thoughts on the way the work was done Srinivas said "There is a lot of talent across the country and I have always wanted to work in a collaborative manner in order to give quality output. It has been a great experience working for the project with various people from around the world and we have used some new technologies that have been used in films like ‘Avatar‘."

The team has used some unique technology such as the Doom Light stage scanning for detail high resolution CGI face. Based on original research led by Paul Debevec at the University of California at Berkeley and published at the 2000 SIGGRAPH conference, the Light Stage systems efficiently capture how an actor‘s face appears when lit from every possible lighting direction. From this captured imagery, specialized algorithms create realistic virtual renditions of the actor in the illumination of any location or set, faithfully reproducing the color, texture, shine, shading, and translucency of the actor‘s skin.

Endhiran is a forthcoming Tamil science fiction film directed by S. Shankar and produced by Kalanidhi Maran. The film features Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai in the lead roles with A. R. Rahman working on background score and soundtrack.

Endhiran is a typical fiction movie in which Rajinikanth plays a dual role of a scientist and a robot. The scientist Dr. Vaseegaran creates a robot with artificial intelligence and names it as Chitti, the film goes on to show how Chitti mingles with society.

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