While reports that the use of visual effects (VFX) has been minimal in 2018 are doing rounds, art director Mohandas Pallakkottil recently opened up about the process of bringing this complex vision to reality.
Maintaining that it was teamwork and the theme of the film that brought in viewers to theatres, Mohandas told The Hindu that contrary to what many viewers think, VFX was used only in a few scenes.
“Initially, producer Anto Joseph told us to rent a house and start working on miniature houses to show how I planned to show the water rushing in or seeping into the houses and the rising water levels. By then, we had selected a vacant plot in Vaikom as the main location,” he said during a chat with the media house. He also noted that budget constraints demanded that they turned to innovative practices for filming.
“Most of the frames of the flood were shot on sets put up on a 22-acre site at Maravanthuruthu in Vaikom, 30 kilometres from Kottayam. Prior to the shoot, the art director had made 45 miniatures of the entire set and showed the producers how they planned to show the deluge. That convinced the producers,” Mohandas added.
Pointing out that he used the time during the lockdown to design and fine-tune the sets for the film, Mohandas stated, “Jude and I went over each frame and finalised how each would be filmed.”
The art director also mentioned that though they wanted to complete the shooting of the airlift sequence in six days, it went on for nine days in total.
“Fourteen houses with different facades were made. So, the same house could be turned around with the help of a crane to make it look like another house. In the early part of the film, the ‘houses’ were placed outside the tank; to show the water rising, they were placed in the tank using a crane. A two-acre tank was built on the location and it was filled with water. That was where we shot the underwater scenes once we began shooting the flood,” Mohandas explained.
“There were about four different places where we had to show the water rising — the frame where Asif comes to the rescue; a scene that depicts Tovino moving in to save people; frames that show them saving lives and the place where they reach the people to safety. Each scene was shot in four different sets.”
Pointing out that one of the most difficult shots was the one that depicted Sudheesh, his wife and their injured son trapped in neck-deep water in their home, he said, “A terrifying frame shows the rush of water into their home, through doors and windows till it almost reaches the ceiling. The family is perched on a table and trying to breathe by craning their neck above the rising water level. Shot underwater, Sudheesh’s house was filled with water. Then we took the ‘house’ and put it in the tank and filled it with water to show the flood water gushing into the house through doors and windows. After that, we put it under water to show their precarious condition. We had to keep changing the homes at least 10 times to shoot those sequences. It was challenging and required tremendous effort.”
Mohandas Pallakkottil is currently busy working as the art director in the Mohanlal-starrer L2:Empuraan, the sequel of Lucifer, directed by Prithviraj Sukumaran.