7 Oscars and counting: Namit Malhotra, CEO of VFX firm DNEG on what goes into creating magic on screen

Before this year’s Academy Awards, the British VFX firm DNEG had already notched up six Oscars for their special effects work on films like Interstellar, Inception and Blade Runner 2049. They have now added a seventh Oscar with their brilliant work on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. The film, based on the eponymous science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, has been widely praised for its distinctive visual style — and the special effects were an integral part of that.

In a Zoom interview, Namit Malhotra, chairman and CEO of DNEG, shares some insights about the process of putting together an average big-studio Hollywood movie’s special effects; and the many ways in which visual effects techniques are changing the way filmmakers think about their craft.

“It’s a very detailed process,” Malhotra says, “and it can take 6-18 months, depending upon the type of project. And it goes back to the very first process of filmmaking, which is scriptwriting. The script becomes the foundation for designing or creating the world you finally see in the film, so there’s a lot of art there. A concept artist sits down with the director and makes their rendition, which we work off — obviously, for the people designing the visual effects, those images can be much more useful than words describing the same thing.”

Namit Malhotra

In the “pre-visualisation” step of the process, as Malhotra describes, a rough animated sequence of the final scene is created. All the other department heads, including, and especially, the director, can see this pre-visualisation and offer their inputs. Once this sequence is locked, the process of producing the visual effects can begin — that’s where the ‘visual effects supervisor’ starts working with the director on-set. Whether it’s practical effects or digital effects, the supervisor works closely with the director to get the sequence just right. Which is why at the Oscars, it came as a surprise to many when Villenueve was not nominated in the Best Director category, despite Dune being nominated in every single technical category. 

There are also more specific kinds of problem-solving involved when it comes to visual effects. “There are specialists for every aspect,” Malhotra says. “Let’s say you are shooting a big car chase sequence. So there will be someone to design the look of the car, somebody else will figure out the precise physics of a heavy car tumbling off a cliff — their job is to make it look as authentic and scientifically accurate as possible.”  

When you talk about special effects to the average film viewer — there’s a widespread misconception that everybody everywhere relies heavily on ‘green screens’ when it comes to visual effects, that is actors pretending that the green screen is actually the eventual digital background. The assumption is that all of this is remote and fixed in post-production, that the visual effects team is thus at a distance from the on-ground shoot location. 

‘Interstellar’ was one of the first movies to do away with the green screen to a large extent.

This is simply not true anymore, especially over the past 7-8 years. Malhotra says. “If you look at Interstellar, one of the movies we won an Oscar for, you’ll see that it was one of the first movies to do away with the green screen, to a large extent. We had these big, high-quality digital projectors that were projecting different kinds of backdrops. In the scene where the main characters are flying through the ‘wormhole’, they’re actually looking at the world outside and you can see the wonder and amazement on their faces.” 

As Malhotra explains, DNEG had put together the digital backdrops before that scene was shot, which allowed director Christopher Nolan to put together a ‘hybrid shot’ of sorts. Something similar was also used by DNEG for the space exploration movie First Man, which also won an Oscar. More recently, Disney shows like The Mandalorian have used a variation of this to great effect. What these techniques allow the director to do is simple — it gives them leeway to use more natural surroundings and landscapes. You can see this ‘hybridity’ in action in all of the rooftop sequences in the recently released The Batman, for instance. 

DNEG recently worked on S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR and in the years ahead, will work on some other Indian movies as well, including Ayan Mukerji’s much-hyped superhero film Brahmastra, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Amitabh Bachchan. According to Malhotra, there have been certain fundamental changes in the way Indian filmmakers use special effects. “Earlier, special effects were used almost always as a ‘quick fix’,” he says. “If the director (and this was true with directors in Hollywood and elsewhere as well) was not happy with the way a shot turned out, or if they thought a particular scene was very difficult to shoot practically, they would shoot an approximation and then ask the visual effects department to fix it in post-production. Now, people are writing scripts with certain kinds of special effects in mind. It’s no longer a quick fix or an afterthought. It’s an integral part of the storytelling and the approach is much more coordinated.”

DNEG recently worked on S.S. Rajamouli’s ‘RRR’.

Everybody has that one film which they saw in their youth, which completely changed their conception of what was achievable onscreen in terms of visuals. For me (and for many other millennials) that film was James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). Malhotra told us how that ‘it’ moment happened for him. “I always wanted to be a director, you know,” Malhotra explained. “The film that I would say changed my mind was Jurassic Park (1993). I was just amazed when I saw the film. Forget ‘how did they do it?’, I was thinking ‘how did they even think about this?’ The fact that they could think about creating this world where there are dinosaurs roaming around… it creates such a strong connection, a feeling of intrigue among the audience. I remember, as a kid, going back to the theatre and watching it a second time just to try and understand how they could have possibly put it together.” 

After Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump (1994) became the next film which the young Malhotra was deeply impressed by. Not only do the film’s war sequences involve impressive special effects, there are several scenes where the protagonist is ‘inserted’ in actual historical footage, typically pivotal moments in American history (like a famous scene where Gump meets President John F. Kennedy). “I came from a very Bollywood background,” Malhotra says. “Before the multiplex era began, there were few halls in Mumbai where you could expect to see films like Forrest Gump or Jurassic Park. But both of these films got me very excited about visual effects and how they could be used in very different ways — as the means to create a ‘wow’ moment or a spectacle, or as the means to a kind of integrated storytelling.”

Going by RRR, DNEG’s style and technique work pretty well with Indian films as well (and RRR is every bit a masala film, it has to be said). In the years ahead, we can expect to see the best filmmakers in the world (including Indian ones) knocking on Malhotra’s door. 

The writer is working on his first book of non-fiction.