Ashoka - The Hero - Post - Production

Pre-Production | Production | Post-production

As challenging as production was, it was a cakewalk compared to post production. The VFX team worked on a variety of different FX and 3d packages to create the effects. Once the VFX was locked, the layers were all sent to the compositing team where they were rendered for the editor.

During the edit, we took many calls, which ended up making the film better but at the same time changed the order of scenes in relation to the dialogue. This meant redoing lip-syncs for quite a few shots. The deviation from the storyboard meant that continuity changed and we also had to add new scenes, to not only stay true to continuity but also to avoid violations such as jump cuts or 180 degree rule violations.

The editor’s suggestions definitely helped make the film better but we had to add nearly 30 odd new shots and tweak countless others while we were in post production. Each of these shots would have to be re-rendered from the production studio and then sent to the compositing team which would then put it together and then ship it to the edit.

This was besides the minor corrections that showed up in regards to the VFX and the color correction. The team was literally turning around shots overnight at times. The original estimate for the edit and final renders was 90 days. However the project ended up in post production for 8 months (including sound fx and background score). It was quite a taxing time as the final edit required tremendous effort with constant improvements. This, in turn pushed the scheduling of sound effects and background music production further as well.

This was the toughest job ever done and the sheer audacity of the team given their size and resources that were available to them, to think that they could actually pull this off was commendable. While looking for animators, quite a few of the interviewees laughed the makers’ off, saying it would never happen.

The team responded to the lack of resources by being quick on their feet and taking rapid decisions on the fly. One of the smartest moves that were made was to set up the entire post production unit in one facility. This helped the team save an immense amount of time when moving large files. Besides, it also allowed the team to correct files at times almost immediately.

Ashoka the Hero has been the biggest job we have undertaken in terms of sheer size. Each shot was composited and then rendered by us. During post production, we contributed with our ideas on how to make the film even better, I think we were more a stakeholder in the process rather than simply vendors. It was immensely challenging and now having pulled it off, immensely satisfying. - Sumeet Jaiswal - VFX Director