700 Visual Dhamaal of Pixion

Double Dhamaal the sequal of 2007's original version Dhamaal was released on 24 June 2011. The film was directed by Indra Kumar starring Sanjay Dutt, Mallika Sherawat and Arshad Warsi on lead roles. Double Dhamaal was produced by Ashok Thakeria and Indra Kumar and was distributed by Maruti International and Reliance Entertainment.

The film was shot in Mumbai and Macau and has an extensive usage of CGI and VFX. Specialized in delivering cutting edge VFX and DI, Mumbai based Pixion have delivered above 700 VFX shots for this film. With Double Dhamaal, the challenge is to blend CG elements with live action to a comedy classic!

Pixion has ripped off about 60 minute of live footage to add VFX elements using about 80 artists dedicated to the project and delivered it successfully within a span of 3 Months. The major work involved creating a realistic CG environment of Mumbai and Macau city, multiple composites, crowd manipulation, rotoscopy, matte painting and camera match move.

Naveen Paul the VFX supervisor of the movie said, “Double Dhamaal has about 20 minutes of green matte sequence. There are many outdoor sequences that are shot in Mumbai but portrayed as Macau in the movie. There were lot of Multiplate composites, crowd multiplication and CG elements in the movie. As an on set supervisor, we ensured hassle free execution and noted down lens info, Camera height, Camera angle, Camera Move etc. In fact for every VFX sequence, the look was first created and shared with the director. With the support of well renowned DOP, Mr. Aseem Bajaj we have been able to deliver successfully the directors visualised thoughts”.

Ranadheer Reddy, Associate VFX supervisor, said, “I accompanied Double Dhamaal team to Macau and Hong Kong for onset VFX supervision. I had taken Macau city photographs for reference to create CG Macau backdrop of day and night, this helped us to generate the real environment.

Viral Thakkar, CG Head said, “There was extensive use of CGI and we had to create Mumbai and Macau buildings as a background for the chroma sequences. This was achieved by creating CG models of the building in 3D and matte paints and sometimes a combination of both. We had to maintain everything as real, like the perspective of the plane, horizon, depth, lighting and texturing of the buildings etc. Apart from these, there were outdoor sequences shot in Mumbai which were changed to Macau locations."

Other contributors to the high quality VFX and DI are Pankaj Kalbande (Comp supervisor), Chandrakanth Shenoy (matte painter), Sarika Ali (compositing Lead), Sudhir Tripathi ( CG Lead), Swapnil Dhawre ( Production Manager ), Paul Byrne (DI Colourist) and Abhishek Goel (DI Line Producer)