4 min readSep 13, 2013 05:36 AM IST
Nearly a decade ago,when a single technical error stalled the shooting of an elaborate action sequence for hours,keeping stars such as Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar waiting on the sets of David Dhawan’s Mujhse Shaadi Karogi,Merzin Tavaria earned the ire of producer Sajid Nadiadwala. Planned well in advance to ensure smooth execution,it was no ordinary action scene. Tavaria and his team at Prime Focus were executing their first “motion control” which involved a film crane with a computer. It could navigate its way into angles and positions of the action scene,which wouldn’t have been possible manually and the scene involving
six Akshays fighting one Salman required it.
“Later we found out that it was plugged into the wrong power outlet,” says Tavaria with a chuckle,Co-Founder and Chief Creative Director of Prime Focus. That sequence was shot in Goregaon Filmcity,a wide overview of which is visible from his room at the Prime Focus headquarters in Mumbai.
Over the years,the company that is best described as a “visual entertainment services firm,” has grown by leaps and bounds,from being pioneers in the Hindi film industry to a major international studio. Today,it functions as an international studio with an enviable list of films such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,The Watchmen,Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Avatar. Prime Focus was founded by Namit Malhotra,who is also the Chairman. Prakash Kurup and Huzefa Lokhandwala are the co-founders and creative director of its advertising department.
“We are not just part of post production any more,we are involved at every step of the film,” says Tavaria. From providing state-of-the art filmmaking equipment to visual effects,animation and conversion to 3D,the company offers all kinds of inventive visual services. It initiated the industry into the digital methods of non-linear editing from its days of laborious physical editing on film reels. By the early 2000s,Bollywood films empowered with snappy digital cuts,were beginning to look sleeker. Tavaria marks Boney Kapoor’s Khushi and Qayamat,as films that employed the new devices churned out by his company at that time.
“Earlier,if you find out that a segment of your footage is burnt out a bit,and there are not enough details on the shadows,you couldn’t do anything. Today with photoshop being used in something as basic as your daughter’s photo,it has become a standard procedure in the visual medium,” he says.
Tavaria is just back after a sitting with director Robert Rodriguez for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,probably the company’s most prestigious project till date. It is the first time a homegrown visual effects company is engaged on this scale. The entire film (adapted from the graphic novel),will be shot on green screen,and created by computer. “Even internationally we are at the front,interacting with directors and visual effects supervisors from the outset,” says 39-year old Tavaria,who taught animation and VFX at one of Mumbai’s colleges before he joined the company in the late ’90s.
While its contributions are most “visible” in films with heavy visual effects like an Avatar or Ra.One,they are used extensively in “out-of-the-ordinary” realistic films in equal measure. There are many recent examples from Himmatwala,Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Phata Poster Nikla Hero to Dhoom 3. Tavaria works in tandem with the director to lend a visual consistency to the film. “Visual effects are unsung heroes of the movie. They are the magic behind the screen that are not allowed to come in front,” he says.
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Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Guzaarish,saw the use of a CG created house to show the exterior of Hrithik Roshan’s mansion in the Goa countryside. “We soon realised that it’s best to create it in CG if we have to go closest to his vision of it,” says Tavaria,who names Black and Saawariya as films that benefited from a refined visual tone.
