Tata Elxsi’s VCL division recreates history with “Gandhi my Father”

Company News

New Delhi, August 03

Tata Elxsi Ltd.’s VCL division, the Creativity and Design arm of the Tata Group, has done the pre-visualizing and VFX production for the path breaking historic movie ‘Gandhi my Father’. The film revolves around the relationship between the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi’s relationship with his eldest son, Harilal. The film stars Darshan Jariwala, Akshaye Khanna, Bhumika Chawla & Shefali Shah.

The epic period saga based in pre-independence India, demanded high amount of visual effects to be incorporated. Says Pankaj Khandpur, Creative Director,”One of the most interesting VFX projects done by VCL in 2007. What made it different from many of the VFX projects primarily was the interaction with the internationally acclaimed DOP David Macdonald, an extremely talented artist himself and a passionate cinematographer, who helped us push the curve on this one to bring it to a point where we became a seamless blend into the narrative - a presence through the film, that was intangible. As most VFX artists would agree, to step into and out of 180 mins of visual drama and not make your presence felt at all is the mark of a job well done. We thought we pretty much achieved that on this one.”

VCL was part of this project from the very beginning, which makes the CGI work that much more efficient at the post stage. A lot of the work here was period restoration stretching across India and South Africa. Some of the more interesting things we did were a couple of shots where present day Mohammed Ali Road has been made to look like it would have in the 1900's. Extensive research was done here and numerous archives, books and lithos were referred to and our artists put together sketches and designed blueprints for the look to be recreated. Then with matte paintings, some CGI models and a many plates shot separately and composited on the Flame, we put together an early 20th century Mohamed Ali Road.

Similarly, VCL had to work on a lot of restoration work at parts of Cape Town, South Africa as well as Durban port. Using CGI models and matte paintings Durban port was created to facilitate shots of Harilal's voyage to and from Durban to India. Additionally an entire CGI environment was created with a 3D model of a ship, sky and water for the longshots of the steamer's voyage on the ocean.

“VCL also treated live action footage to give it the old newsreel look and feel - this included adding dust and scratches and varying playing speeds to fit in seamlessly with the existing archive footage,” added Pankaj.

For further information please contact:

Bhaskar Dutt, Head – Marketing

Visual Computing Labs, A division of Tata Elxsi Ltd.

Tel: +91 22 26822142

Mobile: +91 98671 64977

Email: bhaskar@tataelxsi.co.in