my Coke experience.....

I've recently finished work on a Coke commercial. I don't generally get to work with the whole team at Pixion but on this one i got the chance to work with a bunch of 3d artists...another great flame guy and a couple of Shake compositors..The director of the commercial,Mr Ram Madhvani, is an award winning kind who knows what he wants...is so savvy that it turned out to be a pleasure working with him. He has delivered award winning films like the Happy dent one and the Xbox one and many many more.....he is extremely respected in the industry and it was a bit scary in the beginning. Scary because i didn't know if we could pull this off in the limited time we had and also keep the quality up. I was involved in the pre-prod meetings as well as on shoot. I thought ok...its a regular film with a few challenge here and there and all I'll be doing more or less is delivering some composites and it'll all be fine....but the experience was far from regular. It all started with the vfx supervisor having a rough time with the pixion gang. The drama we experienced everyday between the pixion people and The VFX supervisor...was let me say entertaining. The lady was finding it hard to achieve compatibility with the gang. And the gang would go out of their way to irritate her and give her a hard time. We didn't have the luxury of time on this one to go around irritating the person who is to make calls on time and approve stuff on behalf of the director! I intervened and since i didn't mind talking to her at all and kinda found a way to be the middle man for her. She was pleased to find at least one person to confide in, when it comes down to Pixion's various eccentric behavior....She was hard to handle, i agree, but it didn't mean that one forgets one's place in the scheme of things. she was there for work..not to make friends...but that too didn't give her the right to treat people like “her” employees...anyway....what i'm trying to say is that i am a flame guy who was supposed to deliver the film and instead of just concentrating on the work i was supposed to do...i was playing line producer on this one....it all turned out fine but i guess some people are good at certain things and some are not and i guess some people just dont want to be good at certain things and i am among the kind who doesn't enjoy line producing....trust me its great for people who love the feeling of being in control and having the heart to ask questions like “so when am i getting my shots?”...i personally enjoy my flame time....much more relaxing....more happiness wit my flame...she gives me joy...she gives me what i want when i am nice to her!!

anyway...the director had to go to Paris and before he left we had to finish the full 90 sec edit with a few bells and whistles left over, for after he left. Now what is special about this ad is that it was an all chroma shoot with a few igloo kind off houses and no otherwise exterior stuff....all backgrounds were to be put in post....very few camera moves....lots of snow, shot and the chroma wasn't the best....i can say that with conviction. The deal was that i had to show the look of the opening shot, which involved a landscape with icy mountains and a moon and a cliff...I'll upload a few static frames later....i used to work on the shot....and either email it to the VFX supervisor and she used to show it to Ram and i used to execute the changes and send it back. In approximately 2 rounds,the look got approved and i was only given fine tuning instructions. I was happy. I took a dvd of my quicktimes and went to Yash Raj Studios in andheri(w) and stood outside the gate cause the entry pass was with the VFX Supervisor. I stood there for a while and since it was a closed set...she couldn't take my calls. I told the gate man to inform her of my arrival and he was kind enough to make the phone call. After approximately 20 min..a guy came up to the gate with a blue colored pass wit a red string attached to it.....he gave it to me and i was relieved to enter the studio....all that while i felt like a struggling actor waiting for a chance to meet a director/producer at yash raj!!

I went in and saw the most quiet set I've been to in my life. Ram was the kinda guy who had such control over the set, that i couldn't help but feel amazed at that ability.....it was a good experience sitting next to him and see him work. We all need such people to enter our lives and shake it up and tell us to push ourselves just that little bit more...we shoot our sequences and i still had a little fear whether we could pull all the required shots off with quality as priority......Now another special thing about the process of delivering this ad was that by the time the director was ready with the offline, i was inserting the effects shots into the edit. Which means, before the offline presentation, we had managed to insert quite a few shots into the edit so as to give Mr.Prasoon Joshi a much better idea on how the film was going to look like. Now the critical sections were inserted in because it does get difficult for the agency person to understand the overall flow and feel of the film. Especially this kind of a film. you'll know what i mean when u see it. It was great to see Prasoon liking the edit and actually zero changes on the fx shots....we got approval on the offline stages itself....that meant a lot to us....then by the time Ram came on to online, both Flames had gotten shots ready for him to take a look at for final grading. They had planned it out in a way that Flame gets a one-light telecine and the grading would happen on flame itself....so as Ram graded the shots....i kept providing ready comps from flame and the shake gang. The whole workflow seems to workout great....the Shake guys at Pixion really helped out this project with so much enthusiasm....it was great to work with all this talent.....minor tweaks were required but overall experience was lovely. so on the day Ram was leaving for Paris...our 90 sec edit was ready..and also we had inserted our ready shots into the 60 sec cut down version too.....Mr Hritik Roshan walks in 6pm sharp. Checks out the edits...loves it...suggests some changes from his side...walks away...and we all get congratulated for a good job.....we bask in the glory....very satisfied and happy....i leave for Goa the same night for attending “the big chill”...a two day music festival....but that's a another story....stay tuned....