Tag Archives: visual effects

Fantasy, Genre, Historic, Rating, Reviews, Tamil Movies, Wait for DVD/TV

Puli Review

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Puli Review – Puli is a Tamil fantasy adventure movie released in 2015. Many years ago a superior race known as Vedhalam had won wars over the human race in India and ruled them. The atrocities of their general  in the kingdom caused misery to people’s life. Circumstances lead an adopted son of a village chief to take on the might of the Vedhalam race.

There has been enough negative trolling on Puli review on the social media. This increased my curiosity to watch Puli and understand why it could have gone so bad. This review is my take on Puli and an unbiased opinion.

Director Chimbu Deven had treated us with periodic movie Imsai Arasan 23 am Pulikesi. He has now experimented with periodic fantasy movie. Post the era of Vittalacharya there has not been any successful attempt in Tamil Cinema on any fantasy adventure. Even if it had been it has not become wildly successful. Most of the Tamil filmmakers stayed out of this genre for quite some time. The financial budget and relevance of such stories in the modern era should have been the fear.

Vijay and Chimbu Deven should be lauded for going beyond the usual mass masala movie to create a fantasy adventure. It is definitely a welcome change to Tamil Cinema. However where the movie has gone bad is in the script writing department. The plot was in place which has similarities to 1948 classic Vedhala Ulagam starring T.R Mahalingam directed by A.V Meiyappan, Pa. Neelakantan and M.V Raman. Many of the trollers in social media may not have been aware of such a movie which was a mass entertainer of its time and beats many of the fantasy movie stories that are out there in the west.

In the movie Puli the writers have fallen prey to push mass masala film elements which seem out of place. The dual between Sudeep and Viay is one of the important portions of the movie. Sudeep says,  “Intha kottaikke Thalapathy naan thaan” and Vijay replies “Intha kottaikkuthane…” looks very cliched and out of place for the movie. The film is filled with such cliches throughout including the dance numbers that doesn’t fit the genre of the movie barring one song which happens in the Kingdom.

The first half of the movie is long and boring. I felt why did I come for this movie. The scenes were too disconnected, the artists eye line match was out of place in many occasions. This is sure to test your patience and by the time the interval block comes it would have disconnected the audience from the movie. The second half of the movie which seems to be the actual story which the director wanted to convey is sure to engage you in a much better fashion. Thanks to the characterisation of Sudeep and Sridevi who help in making the movie watchable. If someone walked into the movie hall just for the second half they might be wondering why people are upset about the movie. Shruthi Haasan and Hansika are just used for glamor quotient. The songs are more jarring to the years than being pleasant.

The big plus for the movie is the production design by T. Muthuraj. He has aesthetically created some of the sets which looks grand and help you connect to the movie. Also, the VFX department has worked hard to add more grandeur to Muthuraj’s set.

High Points: A fantasy adventure genre for Tamil Cinema, Sridevi’s performance, Muthuraj’s production design, Mannavane Mannavane song choreography, Talking birds, frog, Lilliputs would entice kids.

Low Points: Screenplay is a big let down, Cliched mass elements in the movie, Songs and choreography, Title of the movie doesn’t fit in well, There should have been much more creativity in differentiating Vedhalam race and human race, Long and boring first half.

In 2002 Rajinikanth tried a different genre in Baba and it failed when it released in theaters, but later the home audiences enjoyed watching the movie on their TV sets once it was edited and all expectations died down. Vijay’s Puli is one such movie. When it comes on TV hopefully with some of the cliches edited the home audience would like it.

Overall Puli is a wannabe fantasy adventure movie that works in parts in the second half. A better script writing would have helped it to appeal to the audience. Still it is not as bad a movie as it is being trolled about, it could be watched when played on TV.

Wait for DVD/TV

Friday Fundas

Chroma Key – How to make Superman fly the sky

Chroma Key – How to make Superman fly in the sky

In the previous Friday Fundas section I mentioned Cinema is a magical medium and how optical illusion can create perceived reality with techniques like Forced Perspective. One of the readers had asked an interesting question on how scenes similar to Kumbakarna and the tiny soldiers, Gulliver and Lilliputs are made. While some of the scenes may be forced perspective but the scenes which involve the Lilliputs walk over the giant body of Gulliver is covered by what is known as the Chroma Key Compositing or Chroma Keying Technique. This also popularly called as the Green Screen effect or the Blue screen effect.

The basic of Chroma Key is overlapping two images and make them merge with each other. Let us consider the flying action of Superman and the image of sky behind him. As images are built of pixels you would want to replace the background from the image of superman in flying action with that of the image of the sky. In order to achieve it you would want to make any pixels around Superman transparent. Well Chroma Keying is the technique to do that. The technique involves choosing certain color range of pixels and making it transparent.

A shot from Man of Steel using Chroma Keying
A shot from Man of Steel using Chroma Keying

In the initial days this was done using a blue screen at the background and then blue color was made transparent to merge with another frame to make it look like they are happening in the same space. It should be noted that no other character or object in the first scene should have blue color. As Superman has a blue costume instead of a blue screen a green screen could be used. In the modern days a green screen is used prevalently as the image sensors in digital video cameras are more sensitive to green there by allocating more pixels to green channel.

Prior to the digital era Chroma Key was also performed on the films. It was popularly referred to as Matte technique. The technique is as old as 1930s. The scene comprises of two scenes one the foreground shot and the other the background shot. The background of the foreground shot when taken would be a blue screen. Now the camera color negative of this shot was printed onto a high contrast black and white film using either a filter or the black and white film to limit the blue color. The resultant film produced transparent color wherever it found blue. The end result is the foreground object with a transparent background. This is called the “Female matte”. This was now copied onto the high contrast negative of the background scene which is called the “Male matte”. The end result is the negative of the film with both these scenes merged with each other.

One of the key challenges in this technique was camera movement. The camera movement used when shooting the foreground should be used exactly the same way while shooting the background scene. Later techniques were developed to automate this process to move the camera exactly the same way.

Well next time you see Superman fly or Batman jump across buildings you would remember there is always a Chroma Key behind it.

Related Posts: Forced Perspective | Bullet Time | Friday Fundas Archive

English Movies, Genre, Guest Post, Guest Reviews, Must Watch, Rating, Reviews, SciFi

Guest Review: Interstellar

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Guest Review: Interstellar

This review of Interstellar is a guest review by one of my friends Amar Singh. 

About the Guest Author:  Amar Singh is a 
Research Scholar from Department of English, BHU
Working with Prof. Anita Singh on the topic titled, “Hyperrealism and Christopher Nolan’s Cinematic Texts.”

“A real magician tries to invent something new, that other magicians are gonna scratch their heads over.”

This line said by Alfred Borden (played by Christian Bale) in The Prestige (2006) pretty much sums up what the brand Christopher Nolan is all about. His new instalment, Interstellar, is now in the theatres and man o man, what a ride it is! If one has to capsule the story of Interstellar, it would read something like this; this is basically the story of Cooper and his bond with his daughter Murph that surpasses the limits of the universe. The plot of the movie has been based in the future where the climate of earth is deteriorating at a rapid pace. The only chance for human beings to survive is to find a new abode in some other galaxy where they can start life afresh. This daunting task is laid upon Cooper, to pilot the spaceship Endurance, which will go through a warmhole discovered near Saturn and hunt for a new earth. But the story is not as simple as it reads. There are so many elements, so many concepts that Nolan has introduced (and that is what we expect from a director who has made Memento and Inception): theory of relativity, warmhole, blackhole, time and gravity as other dimensions, and so on; that it becomes an uneasy and adventurous ride for us as it is for Cooper and his crew. But behind all these heavy concepts, there is the strong emotion of love that becomes the main thrust of this movie.

If one goes through Nolan’s movies from the beginning, there is a gradual development of an enlightening process of his protagonists that one can trace in his films, which is directly proportional to his advancement as a director. He is one of the brightest students of cinema who is trying to learn new lessons with every movie he is making. And one thing that has become his signature style is the way he is obsessed with the concept of time and how it affects us on different levels and how we fit ourselves in its not-so-linear movement. In Interstellar, he has gone way ahead of his previous movies in dealing with such high concepts which one has to brainstorm with repeated viewings to understand them. And I have not even talked about the visuals yet. Oh, what an experience it was! If there are flaws in the movie (there are a few), all of them will be subsided with the grandiose of the visuals. Just invest yourself in his world; you will come out with a never felt before riveting experience.

In the movie, when Cooper is dropped into a fifth dimension from where he gains access to time and gravity as physical entity, which he uses further to convey messages to his daughter, the very scene becomes so intense and emotional that one can go through the psyche of Nolan himself. The concept of filmmakers as someone who have an access to parallel times (which they gain through their camera) have been repeated quite a few times in different movies (Hugo and Inception are among such examples), but this movie becomes so personal for Nolan that in that very scene, we can see the struggle of a maker to look for and give directions to his greatest creation, his daughter, so that she may be safe and secure.

If you love cinema, go watch Interstellar. Whether you’ll like it or hate it, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that you will remember the experience for days and will indulge in the dialogues related with this movie. This is where cinema comes at its best, and this is what we call a true cinematic experience.

Can Skip it, Fantasy, Genre, Rating, Reviews, Romance, Tamil Movies

Irandaam Ulagam

Irandaam Ulagam – is a Romance and Fantasy Tamil movie released in 2013.  The story happens in parallel across two planets Earth and an unknown planet. The unknown planet is inhabited by people who are like humans and still ruled by Kings. There is greed, fear, slavery and war spread over the race and there is absence of Love. The divine mother in the race believes a true love would bring in peace and build culture to the race. Meanwhile in Earth a medical student and a mathematician fall in love. At one point of time the two worlds connect and there is an opportunity to establish true love to the extra-terrestrial race. Was true love established, did it bring in order to their world is the rest of the plot.

Have you ever woken from a dream and thought how strange it was? That is the feeling you would get after watching Irandaam Ulagam. It is a never seen story line and canvas for Tamil Cinema. Selvaraghavan should be lauded for thinking of such a story line and putting in efforts to bring it on screen. Where the movie falters is in the screenplay and dialogues. You talk about true, divine love and hear dialogues of what you would hear in movies like 7G Rainbow Colony, Kadhal Kondaen it kind of creates a clichéd product output. He could have completely avoided that for this movie as it did not fit the bill. The movie doesn’t let you engage with it for long as too many things are happening on screen that is ethereal in nature. It is hard to make films of such demanding visual effects and still make it commercially viable for Tamil Cinema. Unfortunately that is harsh reality and our film makers are caught in this dilemma currently. To make this work, pre-production as a discipline should get well established in the industry to pre-plan and prototype good enough output that is convincing to the audience. This movie has done that to a good extent but they have missed out big time on casting, make up and detailing. Till this is got right there will be a disconnect. Overall the movie has taken the same route as what Baba took, its struggle to tell a compelling message to the audience vs trying to force in commercial elements into it. If you are willing to keep the distractions away and able to see the actual message that has been told and appreciate the efforts of a film maker to bring his dream on to the screen then you should definitely watch this once if not you can skip it.

Note: Please read the review completely before taking a call

Can Skip it – unless you are willing look beyond the on screen performances for the deep message in the movie.