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Over 3,000 VFX shots, 250 people, nine months and one film– and a pandemic that came out of nowhere. The making of Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan had as many twists and turns as there were in the Siddharth Anand directorial, which scripted box office history upon its release in January this year.
The spy actioner not only earned acclaim for its smart writing — by Shridhar Raghavan and Abbas Tyrewala — but also for its larger-than-life set pieces– ranging from the crackling Pathaan intro scene featuring Shah Rukh Khan, a bike chase on a frozen lake, the helicopter and hummer mayhem in Dubai or the fan favourite, whistle-worthy train sequence featuring Shah Rukh and Salman.
More than 50 days after the film’s glorious run, Sherry Bharda, head of studio, yFX–Yash Raj Films’ VFX arm–tells indianexpress.com that the film’s thunderous success has validated all their efforts, planning and relentless work. “The audience is exposed to global cinema to a great extent today, and because of that,” Sherry takes a pause to finish her sentence, “They are more aware of visual effects. When they see bad visual effects, they can point it out.”
In an interview with indianexpress.com, Sherry talks about how her team led the task of mounting Pathaan as one of the biggest films of the country, translating its grand vision on paper to a visual spectacle on the big screen and reveals which action sequence was the toughest to work on.
Edited excerpts:
What’s the feeling like two months after Pathaan’s release?
The team is so enormously relieved and excited. It is back to business as usual for us, we have another big one coming up (Tiger 3), so we are already into it. The love that we got from the audience worldwide has paid off all the hard work we put in for this one.
Can you give us details about how Pathaan truly fell in place — the brief that was given, the challenges it faced?
It was shot during the pandemic which was a challenge in itself. We had done–what is essential in these large films — a lot of pre-visualisation, which is when we design the scene with the cinematographer and the director. Because of the kind of action that Sid wanted, you could not go into this unplanned. Also, we had stars who would be performing stunts live so all of this needed to be planned carefully. Then the pandemic played spoilsport. So, the big challenge on this one was, the stuff that was supposed to done live action, a lot of it had to be catered for in VFX, because of travel restrictions, you couldn’t have crowd, shooting became limited. So, all of that moved into visual effects. That was primarily the challenge. We had about nine months to complete this. There was action after action, so all of that added up.
When the pandemic derailed the original plan, was that a setback?
Absolutely, because with pre-planning, when you go into shoot it becomes about execution. Then when you bring your work into VFX, you already have a plan in mind. But in this case, there was some thinking to be done in our feet. Shots have to be readjusted, re-configured to now become VFX shots. For example, explosions, which could have been done live, was now brought into the VFX pipeline that was not previously catered for. This added to the overall complexity of the task.
How many people were on the team that worked on Pathaan?
We had 250 people. It is a small team as compared to other big VFX studios, but our talent is very strong, of people who can pull off complex sequences. The energy of the team was, in the beginning of course they were tired, they had come off of some projects and then we entered Pathaan. But the sequences that came into VFX, they all looked so dramatic, dynamic. Sid is an awesome director to have around. He was constantly on the floor. Heads of several departments worked together to make this happen. So the energy was tremendous. We also knew we had a drop-dead deadline, so we had to pull it off.
What’s your favourite set piece in the film?
I liked the Pathaan introduction. It was quite seamlessly integrated with VFX. I also liked the look of the shot when Deepika falls under water, that looked wonderful. What we did pull off well was the ice. When Sid shot this, it was quite gloomy and overcast and he wanted the frozen lake’s beautiful, blue, reflective ice. It was always the plan to make that sequence look beautiful, which meant that we had to come in and built that beautiful, deep ice… That was done in CGI.
What was the toughest set piece to work on?
It was the Dubai sequence. It was planned to be a dangerous looking, high-speed action piece. Because of the actors executing a lot of it themselves, to achieve that scale and speed of the vehicle, we had to go in and enhance that sense of speed and danger. To do that, it meant, we had to build parts of Dubai to put it in and make it seem faster, more dangerous than it was. That means matching back lighting seamlessly coming in and going out of a scene. That was challenging because we had to come in and go out of the live action to add that sense of speed.
Can you talk to us about the Shah Rukh-Salman’s train sequence?
We had a lot of fun on that sequence! We knew everybody is going to love it. It was live action, the stars did a lot of work themselves but again, to give that big scale, we had to build parts of the mountainous canyon that you see there, to get that height as the train ascends, built that gorge, and these death-defying stunts that they are doing. The planning was there. We started pre-visualisation in 2021, we had to let them follow it as a bible to shoot and then bring it back. We took about a good four-five months to pull off in VFX production.
Was that the longest you took for a scene?
This would be, yes. And the Dubai scene.
YRF has had consecutive big actioners, War, Pathaan, then there is Tiger 3 lined up. Can you talk to us about the vision?
We have an early visibility of what’s coming next. We started this VFX arm, we were a small 30-member team. We had done Sultan and knew that now every film it is going to get larger, more complicated VFX. In 2023, we are now 250 members. The aim is to achieve the scale our directors envision. We have to work smarter, more efficiently.
Our pipeline has been fairly software agnostic, so that we are able to course correct for the next big one. As YFx team, we want to interact more with our filmmakers, make sure that while they are working with us, all the early from development and pre-production, their vision gets translated to ‘look bible’– so that when we are on set, it just becomes a process. It is not thinking set. That way we are more efficient, we save time and even with a smaller team, we are able to achieve this. That’s the way we are gearing for the future.
The future has line-up of films like Tiger 3, War 2 and Tiger vs Pathaan. What do we expect from them?
Every film is going to have bigger action! More spectacular, death-defying stunts and so on. The challenge for us will be how to best realise the director’s vision. While right now, maybe we don’t have fleshed out scenes, the great part of being on that table, with these visionaries is to put together these sequences. So that VFX is helping develop complicated sequences, to enhance their vision. If VFX comes in at this early stage, which YRF now is completely aligned with, it just helps make the process easier. It just makes for more spectacular visuals.
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