Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of TATA ELXSI Ek Tha Tiger

Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of TATA ELXSI, located in Mumbai has delivered 1300 VFX shots for YRF blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger which released last month. The Vfx was delivered using a customized pipeline designed for the complexity of these shots. Up to 60 skilled technical artists were deployed by VCL for this project, which was completed in a record six and a half month period. The entire duration of CG/VFX in the film spans over a 30 minute duration.
Presiding over the team were the Creative Director of VCL, Pankaj Khandpur and Vishal Anand, Visual Effects Supervisor at Visual Computing Labs (VCL).
Ek Tha Tiger is a romantic action thriller directed by Kabir Khan and produced by Aditya Chopra , Yash Raj Films. The movie stars Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif in the lead roles and Ranvir Shorey, Girish Karnad, Roshan Seth and Gavie Chahal in supporting roles. The movie marks the third collaboration of Kabir Khan with Yash Raj Films . This film also marks VCL’s 24th collaboration with Yash Raj Films.
Talking to AnimationXpress Ishpreet Chandock, about his experience working on Ek Tha Tiger, Pankaj Khandpur – Creative Director, VCL said,   “We started working on the movie 7-8 months before the actual shoot started, where we did a pré viz of all the sequences as it was going to be an action packed film. There is alot of action sequences in the story shot across countries, such as  Ireland, Turkey, Cuba and of course the last bit we have shot in Thailand which was supposed to be Cuba, so as it was a action oriented movie we were brought on very earlier into the scene.”
Kabir Khan, the director of the film wanted to pre viz all the action sequences before the movie went into production. So based on the director and action director’s brief we worked on the previs which was done shot by shot, sequence by sequence. We also had reference pictures of the locations it was supposed to be shot in, which  gave us a very clear and detailed idea , and helped usmake iterations with clarity.
However we had to compensate for the certain things we hadn’t thought of, for instance for the dublin shoot , for the tram sequences, we had to create a CG tram , a lot of background in CG and all the sequences around the tram as the crew were not permitted to shoot certain shots, also, the shots on top of the tram are all simulated by various ways in CG just to make the sequence look larger than life.”
“The sequences at Cuba had a simple narration compared to Dublin, but we had to work on a lot of effects on the action sequences especially the climax, for the plane sequence, a CG plane had to be  created , a lot of action also had to be simulated. So, in a nutshell we did around 1300 shots, which for such a feature film should have been around 2000 shots but we curbed it down with using a lot of CG work. Personally, this is arguably the biggest indian film which we have done so far.”
‘Ek Tha Tiger’ also marks VCL’s 24th collaboration with Yash Raj Films including films like ‘Dhoom 2’, ‘Hum Tum’,’Rab Ne Bana De Jodi’, ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’ and the count just continues.
Sharing his thoughts about this long collaboration and his experience throughout these films, Pankaj Khandpur said” It has been a wonderful experience working with Yash Raj, the 24 films done by vcl just symbolize the same. We  hope we create more magic together in the upcoming projects.”