One would have enjoyed Hollywood flicks that are inspired from natural calamities. Slowly the trend seems to be catching on our Bollwyood too. Mahesh Bhatt’s ‘Tum Mile’ takes a calamity that hit Mumbai in 2005 monsoons and tries to recreate the horror that the deluge brought with it.

With the help of Futureworks’s creative team and VFX shots, director Kunal Deshmukh has attempted to recreate the memories of those dark damp days. The opening shot of the movie and another scene opener speaks volume – in the sense of the creative work and the essence of the movie as well.

Says Abhishek De, the film's Visual Effects Creative Director (FUTUREWORKS), “Kunal has a very astute eye. It was important for the visual effects to look as though they were shot on real location on that rampageous day 26thJuly’05 in the middle of actual weather conditions. He didn’t want the film to take on a gimmicky visual-effects look.”

In keeping with that philosophy, Abhishek shot lot of reference still photographs and footages for the two major visual-effects shots. Extensive planning and pre-production went in behind the two shots. Abhishek with his team members VFX supervisor Sriniwas Rao and Flame artist Wayne D’silva went with a hi-resolution still camera for shooting references and frames for creating the matte paintings of the Mumbai skylines.

Visual-effects post-production house Futureworks worked on the two shots set amidst the wide significant skylines of Mumbai, and worked hard on digital makeup for the city skyline and other atmospheric effects. The team had to upgrade their whole infrastructure and pipeline, besides other technical operations.

For the ‘Queens Necklace pan’ they had tracked the live-action sea plates, sourced out from different places. The team had photographed the skyline in pieces and joined in as matte paintings in excruciating detail. They also recreated the skyline with atmospheric effects of looming clouds and lightning.

The 3D team and Flames department had co-ordinated well along with the Photoshop team. Together, they efficiently worked on the textures, elements and layers of the shots. 

On the whole the entire team had a great experience working on the shots. “It was a great challenge but due to some solid planning and good referencing by the whole Futureworks team and some smart moves by Gaurav Gupta (CEO Futureworks) we overcame all hazards and hurdles ‘withstanding the storm’ and outputted fabulous looking shots,” said Abhishek.