Why does VFX in Indian cinema lack finesse?

Good VFX work is becoming rarer in Bollywood, with hardworking VFX houses being made to bear the brunt of a systemic problem

There’s an inherent convenience in pointing out and ridiculing instances of bad visual effects, like the recently released trailer for Om Raut’s film Adipuriush. This convenience might be blinding us to an important fact, that VFX artists are reaping what we continue to sow in the form of unreal release expectations. The central question, hence, is: Are studios willing to put their money where their special effects-critiquing mouths are?

‘As far as the VFX work is concerned, a film is never finished. It just gets released after a point in time.’ This line, from VFX artist and YouTube creator Wren Weichman’s TED talk, is an excellent distillation of the true nature of VFX work. As Weichman explains, a professional VFX artist is always aware of the fact that minuscule details in every frame of a movie can, and should, be improved further, right until the last minute. How good the final output turns out largely depends on when the said minute arrives. While some films, like Ayan Mukherjee’s Brahmastra,allow VFX teams to better their work for months and years on end, others seem to stifle them under the weight of budget cuts and tight deadlines.

More than just machine-generated

Mumbai-based film editor and VFX artist Raj Bhagat explains why the VFX work on several professional projects is often more resource-intensive than what most people think. “The first thing to know here is that it isn’t all done by computers. Computers help artists produce the required effects but it isn’t all left up to automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Real, human artists sit and work on every pixel that you see on the screen.” This thought is mirrored in Weichman’s talk where he proclaims, “It does not work like Snapchat filters. You can’t just push a button to create the kind of special effects we’re accustomed to seeing in movies.”

According to special-effects enthusiast and amateur artist Rohan Pingal, intricate, time-consuming detailing is central to good VFX work. “What audiences consider to be ‘good’ VFX are just special effects that seamlessly blend into a natural backdrop. It is the art of making the VFX invisible, which only happens when you precisely match the shadows, the lighting and a thousand different things to the live-action shots.” 

Pingal further discusses the role of a director’s stylistic vision and expectations in shaping the final VFX output on a film. “What makes the process brain-numbingly difficult is that you don’t even decide what ‘natural’ means in the context of the film. If your director decides to craft a world where light behaves differently than how it usually would, those are the rules of nature you’re working with.” 

Challenges aplenty

When a process as intense as this is made to conform to lower budgets and purely financially-driven deadlines, it is natural for cracks to appear. “The VFX industry has always been overworked and underpaid. It is common for VFX houses to go bankrupt because no one is willing to invest the time and money it takes to produce good work,” Bhagat says. He further explains how important VFX-related decisions are often taken despite opposition from directors and other key creatives on a film set. “Every director I’ve worked with has been willing to help me understand and improve the VFX work on their film. They just become helpless once the budget revisions start and the studios start pushing for an early release.”

The situation is especially bad for Indian daily soaps that, as Bhagat puts it, “offer no breathing room. Our serials, like Naagin, are made on a shoestring budget with five episodes being churned out each week. I don’t even think the Avatar guys would be able to do decent work given the circumstances.” Pingal further builds on this point by saying, “It’s important to consider the VFX budget of a film before calling the work bad. Even the most skilled artists can only do so much with stringent deadlines and skint budgets. Recent films like Bhediya that were lauded for their great VFX have partnered with international VFX houses like MPC which, of course, cost a lot of time and money.” 

Assistant and unit director Apoorv Thacker (who most recently worked on Netflix India’s Indian Predator,Season 3) explains why production houses tend to set tighter deadlines around VFX work. “A major part of a VFX’s team's work is to correct specific frames and add elements to it. This can only be done when a film is edit-locked, i.e, every frame has been supervised and approved by the director and the editor. This naturally leaves VFX teams with very less time to do their work. It becomes an occupational hazard after a point.”

As for the scanty budgets, Thacker believes it all comes down to our age-old filmmaking philosophies and practices. “We’ve only just started to use VFX regularly in our films. Most directors have little to no experience working with a full-blown special effects team, which is why they tend to ‘leave it to the technicians’. A lot of artists including Foley and VFX teams are severely underpaid because the studios don’t fully realise how much they add to a project. People need to start commenting on the VFX in our films more proactively for the studios to believe that it does make a difference.”

Is it impossible to turn out good VFX work on a budget? Bhagat and Pingal don’t seem to think so. “We have had films like Tumbbad and Churuli where artists produced excellent VFX work on tight budgets. It is all about letting a director clearly communicate their vision to the VFX team and giving them the resources to bring it to fruition.” says Bhagat. Pingal agrees, adding, “We have so many resourceful artists who can work with tight budgets and produce excellent special effects. They just need to not be hounded about reshoots, edits and release dates. VFX work is bound to take some time even in the tightest of circumstances. Considering it actual work that takes actual time is the first step towards making things better.”

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