‘Dhoom Tana’ in Om Shanti Om presented Deepika Padukone with the actors of the yesteryears. We got Red Chillies’ VFX team to explain the process.

Stage 1
The team had to locate the original footage of the films they had short listed. The three song sequences appeared in Amrapali (1966, Sunil Dutt and Vyjayantimala), Saccha Jhutha (1970, Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz) and Jay-Vijay (1977, Jeetendra and Jayashree T). Not always in the best condition, the original footage had to be scanned, carefully restored and cleaned up to the best possible quality on the computers.

Stage 2
Keeping in mind, the set of the films, the camera angles and the lighting, Deepika Padukone was shot in present dressed in similar costumes as the yesteryear actresses to further enhance that ‘70’s look. She pretended to dance with the actors by romancing an imaginary hero.

Stage 3
The original actresses, i.e. Vyjanthimala, Mumtaz and Jayashree T. were removed from the sequences. All this of course, was done with the help of the Red Chillies’ VFX (visual effects) team. Sequences where the camera was moving and the actors were in contact were specially chosen, so as to provide opportunity for Deepika to dance along with them as opposed to posing. Things to note were the eye contact between the actors, physical touch, lighting continuity, perspective matching, skin tones matching, color matching, etc.

Stage 4
Deepika’s footage was pasted in place of the actual actresses’ footage. The technical term for this is ‘compositing’. Thus, it seems that she has been locked in the same frame as legends, Sunil Dutt, Rajesh Khanna and Jeetendra. The song truly was a treat to watch. And now some of our wonder and amazement has been satisfied. Keitan Yadav, COO of Red Chillies VFX asserted that the idea was to give a feel of the era and is glad that they seemed to have succeeded.

He adds that “there are about 200 additional shots in the film where VFX is used like the snow-flakes in the globe, SRK and Deepika turning real and dancing in the globe, the Mother India fire sequence, Shantipriya’s death sequence and the climax sequence.”

Image Courtesy: 'The Making of Om Shanti Om' published by Om Books International