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Illusion and reality

Communication students learn how raw footage is transformed into fantastic finished visuals

PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN

LEARNING THE ROPES From Arun Gowtham

How do humans fly in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? How do aliens invade earth and talk to human beings in Koi Mil Gaya? This is the big question in the minds of awestruck moviegoers. Special effects are here to say and there seems to be no limit to creating fantasy worlds for entertainment.

Blue matting, ramping, morphing, range of plug-in... wannabe producers were all ears at the workshop on visual effects organised by the Department of Communication at PSG College of Arts and Science along with Campus Images, a college of film animation and digital arts. Visual effects producer, R. Arun Gowtham, from Bangalore, took them through a daylong session on the power of technology in bringing dreams, fantasies, and mysteries alive on the big screen.

"For beginners, Research and Development is the key. Browse animation related websites and start off with making your profile and then move on to story telling," he explained.

He presented one of his projects, Anna thangi, a Kannada film to explain techniques like matching grains, multicamera effect, morphing, adding colour to the background, manipulating the crowd (from 20 to 100) and costume matching. With graphics, one can create and bring to life people, buildings, animals, monsters and aliens.

About the `Google effect' he says: " It's simple. We cheated. We created a 4 k resolution image, zoomed in and zoomed out to get the effect." While working on shots involving `double roles', the sequences of the second character is shot with a mat and then matched with the background of the first character. "Everything depends on the shot complexity. Even a minor error can spoil the final output," he adds. Gowtham says that Tamil movies like Jeans and Aalavandhan are examples of the power of graphics. The visual effects supervisor acts as the director for visual effects sequences. The 3D modellers at the visual effects studio model objects, characters and props as per the requirement. The final step is the rendering process where all these are put together to get the final look and feel. In case of animation, lip sync with the visual is important, as is the co-ordination with the cameramen for lighting calculations in the case of complex shots, etc. "In colour keying, for instance, you can shoot the image of a tiger in a jungle and change the background into a busy street. In such cases, shadows, matching colours, and movement of the image should be taken care of," says Gowtham.

In movies like Lord of the Rings, miniature models are created to shoot the sequence and later shown as a computer graphics image. There was also a presentation on Milo, the motion control camera used for functions like frozen movement integration, time code triggering, synchronisation jigs, speed ramping and multiple morphing. Recent albums of pop stars — Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears were shown to explain such technologies.

Ujjwal, a visual communication student of the college presented her creation Kalia- the crow.

K.JESHI

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