After a long wait, the epic science fiction film ‘Avatar 2’ i.e. ‘Avatar: The Way OF Water’ entered the Rs 300 crore club in India in a total of 15 days. He achieved this figure as per expectation or rather sooner than expected. On the 18th day, the total collection of the film in India was Rs 342 crores and the world wide collection was around Rs 12000 crores. But we are not going to talk much about how much the film earned or how many records it broke; We are going to talk about technology here.
Who is the real hero of this film? Obviously James Cameron. Why not, he is the director of this film and it is said about films that they are the director’s media. On top of that, he is the co-producer of this film and is also a co-writer on the story and screenplay. He has created the characters of the film. Overall this is James’s creation. But, but still if we say that the real hero of the film is someone else, then what would you say?
The real heroes of the film are VFX, CGI and SFX techniques. There is no doubt that these are just tools which James has used very beautifully. Not only did they use it, but they also waited for the technology to arrive, a long wait – ‘jo maza intezaar mein hai woh vastle yaar mein kahan’ kind of wait. The first movie of the franchise ‘Avatar’ was released on 18 December 2009, while the second movie hit the silver screen after thirteen years on 16 December 2022. The first movie also did not take shape easily. Initial work on it started in 1994, which took the shape of a film in 2009. Some people say ‘Dreams are never yours’, wrongly they say that the production of ‘Avatar’ series is actually a dream come true.
It so happened that James’s mother actually saw a strange twelve feet tall woman in her dream. He told James about his dream and James inculcated his mother’s dream in his creative mind and ‘Avatar’ came out in the form of this creative idea. Before this, Cameron had made the legend movie ‘Titanic’ in 1997. , which also received four Oscars including Best Film and Best Director. Apart from this, production and direction of ‘The Terminator’ series is also in Cameron’s account.
Back to ‘Avatar’, let’s talk a little practically. Taking a decision is one thing, bringing it to fruition is another. Well, James Cameron had the passion needed for this. Due to this, James had prepared the first draft of 80 pages in 1994 itself. But what happens just because of passion, when James decided to bring his dream to the celluloid screen, the ground reality slammed his dream upside down. But we have to admit that everything happens only through passion. When Cameron realized that the technology needed to make his dream a reality did not yet exist, he decided to wait. Took it with the belief that the necessary technology useful for it was bound to arrive, and it did. That means the fruits of patience are sweet, proved once again. Those techniques were VFX, CGI and VFX.
What’s the matter with VFX and CGI?
Let us know whose names these are. Normally we face two or four of these troubles every day. We watch TV news every day. We see that the anchor is telling the weather condition and scenes of rain, storm are playing on the screen behind, it seems as if the anchor herself is present at the spot and telling us the situation there. This can be called rough VFX or CGI technology. VFX means visual effects and CGI means computer generated imaginary.
Let’s go a little deeper. A small-time producer is making a documentary. This documentary is to be made on a memorial of martyrs. The monument is located at a distance of thousand kilometers. For the documentary, it is necessary to shoot the monument and after taking it there, the anchor’s narration also has to be shot. The budget is not enough to take the anchor and the entire crew to the memorial. But it is also very important for the anchor to roam around the monument and do commentary. There is no money in my aunt. What to do? How to do? One way is to make an exact replica of the monument, use it and get narration done through an anchor. But here also the problem is that making a replica is expensive, making an exact copy is much more expensive. Even after that it is not necessary that the real look comes.
In such a situation, VFX and CGI emerge as Robin Hood. Without taking the anchor and his team, they create such a scene as if the anchor is standing in front of the monument and giving information about it. Whereas all that has been done is that the footage of the empty monument has been sought by sending a single cameraman and if the budget is too low, the already available footage can be taken for use. Here, standing in front of the green screen background in the studio, the anchor is talking about the memorial as if she is standing in front of the memorial itself. Later in post-production, with the help of editing software, the green screen is removed and shots of the monument are inserted there. Later it is mixed and given its final form. Seeing the final form, the viewer feels as if the scenes have been shot at the memorial. These amazing visual effects and computer generated imagery do wonders.
‘Avatar’ and many other Hollywood films use this technique. The basic method is definitely the same but there is a huge difference in the technique. Not all visuals are the same, nor are their results the same. The matter is such that the more sugar you add, the sweeter the dish will be.
New technology, money saving and great work
Let’s try to learn in detail about VFX, CGI and SFX techniques. Because the purpose of this article is not to understand or explain it in technical depth, hence broad information. Using this technology definitely saves time and money. Even dangerous and impossible scenes can be created easily. Be it dinosaurs that died out years ago or aliens fighting a war in space. Such unimaginable and flying machines that one can almost feel numb after seeing them. The thrilling scenes of the sinking of ‘Titanic’ or the scenes of ‘Avengers’ and ‘Avatar’ and ‘Avatar’ 2. All these visual effects and their companions CGI and SFX are amazing.
Same technology used in Baahubali and robot also
Be it the very beautiful and captivating scenery or the dangerous action scenes. Or the creatures born from imagination are created by combining one or two of these techniques. You remember ‘Mowgli’, it is a marvel of computer graphics. Remember the boy and the lion from ‘Life of Pi’, who are traveling on the same boat in the sea. There was a small teddy bear in it which we saw as a lion.
If we talk about Indian films based on these techniques, the name of ‘Baahubali’ comes to mind first, it was because of these techniques that this film was able to become such a grand and larger than life image. But this was not the first, be it ‘Krrish’, ‘Ra One’ or ‘Robot’, they were made in India only. ‘Makkhi’ also comes to my mind. This technique has been used openly in many popular films of the South. Be it the scene of an accident, or a bomb blast, or a tsunami, flood, storm, jumping from the roof, flying, car blast etc., such scenes which cannot be made in real or are very expensive, are shown with the help of these. .
Many people consider VFX and SFX to be the same, but it is not so. VFSX means visual effects (computer generated visual effects) are actually added in editing after the shoot. While SFX effects are done before the shoot, prosthetic makeup plays a huge role in it. Bahubali is an example of VFX whereas Amitabh’s look in the film ‘Paa’ was created with SFX. Similarly, Shahrukh Khan’s dwarf form in Zero. Let us tell you that the technique used in the background of green (sometimes blue) screen is called chroma.
Let us know Bollywood’s reaction on Avatar 2. Ram Gopal Varma says in a positive sense, ‘It would be a crime to call it a film, because it is like an experience. Mind-blowing action and gorgeous visuals. Jai Mehta, co-director of ‘Scam 1992’, says, ‘I have never seen such a visual spectacle on screen before. ‘Avatar’ has done to me today what ‘Jurassic Park’ did to me in my childhood. Akshay Kumar said after watching ‘Avatar – The Way of Water’, no word can be used less than ‘fantastic’ for this film. James Cameron, salute to your genius craft.
