Babubhai Mistry is a name not many are able to recall, even in Bollywood. The few that do are completely oblivious to Babubhais state of affairsno one seems to bother whether he is alive or not. But just a decade or two ago, he was a star in his own right. Babubhai, dubbed the trick scene director in the Hindi film industry, made it possible for Hanuman to lift the Gandhamadan Mountain and helped Hatimtai fly the magic carpet.

For over fifty years, Babubhai was the man who gave wings to the fantasies of filmmakers and viewers. With over three hundred films to his credit as director or special effects cinematographer, he was Indias premier special effects director. Many dub his most active years1940s to 1970sas the age of mythological films (or the age of special effects).

Till around the 70s, Indian and Hollywood films were more or less on the same level in terms of technology usage and output. When Babubhai made Mahabharata in the 60s, Hollywood saw the release of The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and The King of Kings.

At that time, there wasnt a major difference in the way action sequences were displayed in Hollywood and Bollywood movies. But all that changed with the emergence of George Lucas on the international scene. Lucas Star Wars in the 1970s opened the realm of possibilities with the use of robotics and computer effects.

Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, brought to life aliens in Extra Terrestrial, dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, sharks in Jaws, and alien machines in War of the Worlds. Hollywood had discovered the magic of computers and was eagerly trying to redefine the realm of possibilities. Finally, Peter Jackson went a notch higher with The Lord of the Rings trilogy; it proved what modern high-end computing could achieve. And if that was not enough, he put life in the giant ape King Kong.

Another landmark was Matrix; even mushy romances werent spared the VFX brushTitanic, Spiderman, and When Harry Met Sally had a large dosage of computerized effects. In Hollywood, visual special effects (VFX) are getting bigger by the day; every year big-budget movies are released that rely heavily on VFX to pull the audience.

In sharp contrast, Indian films lagged as filmmakers persisted with the same old techniques. The reluctance to adopt the computing platform resulted in a yawning gap between films made in Bollywood and those made in Hollywood. So, while the two were on the same level till the 70s, over the next 2-3 decades, Hollywood raised the level of movie making to such an extent that the comparison itself became laughable.

Nonetheless, Indian filmmakers seem to have finally woken up to the charms of computer-generated VFX. Gradually, more films are using VFX for a variety of reasons. Rakesh Roshan provided the initial thrust with his science-fiction thriller Koi Mil Gaya. Since then, VFX has played a role in almost all big-budget films like Dhoom, Guru, Sivaji, Jodhaa Akbar, Race, and others. VFX is coming up in a big way in India. Over the past 2-3 years, filmmakers have shown readiness to experiment and explore new possibilities. These are ominous signs for the VFX industry in India, says Merzin Tavaria, creative head (VFX/Animation), Prime Focus.

The Unseen VFX
In Hollywood films, like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Day After Tomorrow, and War of the Worlds, and others, a lot of in-your-face VFX is used. This genre of VFX-intensive and CG-driven movies is largely absent in India. Thus, while Krrish, starring Hrithik Roshan, was a superhit, many still debate whether the audience went to see Krrish, the superhero, or Hrithik Roshan doing all those magical stunts. With no real consensus, Indian filmmakers would rather pay a few more crores to a saleable star rather than investing in VFX, and hence producers and directors in India go in for a lot of unseen VFX.

Before	After
Thanks to VFX, a scene from Race shot in daylight was turned into a night scene

Unseen VFX is basically the effect that an audience is unable to decipher as computer generated. In fact, the success of VFX lies in its ability to convince the viewer otherwise.

There are a number of reasons why filmmakers are going in for this kind of VFX.

For instance, take a sequence from the film Guru in which actors Abhishek Bachchan and Mithun Chakraborty are seen talking to each other while taking a walk on Marine Drive.

As the period the director, Mani Ratnam, wanted to show in the film was the 70s, he wanted to have old Mumbai skyline in comparison to the present-day one. Showing the old skyline wouldnt have been possible anyways, and shooting the sequence on-location in Mumbai would have been hard due to a large crowd, permissions from the government, and other hurdles. The makers of the film found a simple solutionthe entire sequence was shot in Puducherry, while the team at Prime Focus manually created the old Mumbai skyline and the waterscape.

Similarly, Pankaj Khandpur, creative director, Visual Computing Labs, Tata Elxsi, talks about a similar sequence that his team had created for Rang De Basanti. In one sequence of the film, a MiG-21 was shown flying above the actors. Also, there were numerous shots of the IAF airbase in the movie. All these were created, and existed, solely in our hard drives, Khandpur says. It is this variety of unseen VFX that most filmmakers seem to be going in for nowadays.

Before	After
Dark clouds were incorporated in this shot from Saawariya by using VFX

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