Makuta VFX's Pete Draper discusses Working with S.S. Rajamouli, RRR Director

 It is the final product of director S.S. Rajamouli's dazzling usage of computer-generated effects the RRRis on its path to becoming the most acclaimed Indian blockbuster in 2022. Beginning with the violent CGI fly-in Eega (2012) and continuing through the fantastical scenery of Baahubali (2015-2017) as well as the revolutionary war of the jungle cat in RRR, Rajamouli has overseen some of the most stunningly artistic films in the 20th century. He was able to accomplish this with the help of Makuta VFX, who have worked on every Rajamouli film in some capacity prior to Magadheera(2009). I talked to Makuta the Division Manager of Makuta VFX and Chief Tech Director Pete Draper, about his move to England to Hyderabad as well as the process involved in setting up an VFX store in India and how it's doing Rajamouli's epic films.


FilmmakerWhat are your experiences in the field of visual effects? how did it lead to your move to England in England to Hyderabad and the formation of Makuta VFX?


DraperI was always a fascination with computers. I'm 47 years old, which means, I was raised with an Commodore VIC-20. When I was 8 years old, I'd be doing lots of programming. I even was able to creating my Konami Track & Field game on the VIC-20. I eventually went to college and studying IT initially. I was a mess that first year because I was pretty drunk of the time. I got transferred to Engineering IT over the following three years.


One of my housemates took a design class and this gave me the opportunity to learn about 3D animation. Around 1990, I watched an original show with MTV, Liquid Television. It included Stick Figure Theatreon it, and they also had Aeon Flux and they showed small CG animation demonstrations. One was known as Grinning Evil Death Grinning Evil Death(1990) directed by a man named Mike McKenna [co-directed with Bob Sabistonand Bob Sabiston], who was an undergraduate at MIT. The kid discovers an unopened ring in a bowl of cereal, pulls it out, becomes the superhero of his dreams with no powers whatsoever and sets out to battle this huge CG bug that is destroying the city. It was a blend that combines 2D cells and 3D animation [CG] and it made me think, "Wow, this is actually practical now." I went to the computer science labs, and asked "Can I test this? Are these systems available at a number of SGI machines?" And they said, "No, but you could use the version that comes with 3D Studio"--DOS version two or three, whichever it was. So, I picked up the book, learned how to use it, and then went through the remainder of my class, and got an exemption and got a slide show: very basic fly-throughs of student union building spinny logos sort of crap.


I completed my degree and was offered an entry-level job at the multimedia studio, which was initially focused on online learning. In 2000, I changed businesses and eventually worked in documentaries and television. The decision to move to India was an accident--never planned to move to India, but I'll be honest. I was offered a job while I was an independent contractor in the year 2008, inspired by my cell-based animations I'd created that involved flying through the brain. The director Kamalakannan R.C. was looking for the title sequence for a film that had an aesthetic similar to that of G hajini 2008 - sort of remake Mementowhich I made it for them. At that point, he contacted me via Skype and said, "I've got this feature that I've got in mind Magadheera 2009Magadheera, 2009. The filming is currently underway and we've got this huge complex episode scheduled to be shot in the coming year. I'm worried that the VFX studio isn't going to be able to deliver the quality." I told him, "Show me their pipeline and inputs. What are your inputs? which outputs do you have?." He told me, and I replied "Oh. Shit! This is the way you go about it." [cracks knuckles and mimics typing]." Radio silence for around an hour, then next day, he said: "...yeah that's great, do you want to visit India?" It's November I'm booked to travel until mid-February, so I'm not able to come as soon as he'd like. He asked to visit the following week. I flew out on February 14, Valentine's Day, landed in Hyderabad and immediately went to a location called Ramoji Film City which is the largest cinema city of the nation. I was jet lag to the max and much larger than I am currently sweating like I've been out of the sauna.


FilmmakerThis is your first experience in India?


DraperMy debut experience, I was in a rage over the course of the night. Then it hit me that you're living on the other side of the globe in 11 years. What's going on? What is the reason you are here? Oh, yeah: money. I had my first experience in Magadheera then returned to the UK. The thought was, "OK, finished, no issues." I was back to the UK for about four days when I received a telephone call saying: "The director was happy with your work. Do you want to come back to do something more?" So, I returned, and wrapping Magadheera.


I dealt directly with two individuals: Kamalakannan and Adel Adili--originally from Isfahan in Iran and now living situated in UK. We concluded, "We work well together. Let's make an organization. Let's take the approach we took in this particular movie to get the project in place and then find the right companies to collaborate with, and then create a film from this." The idea didn't work since studios were doing lots of capture and release. They'd sign up for one film, and when that was finished, they'd go to their next project. We considered, "Let's get some private investment." We found ourselves in contact to Dasaradha Gude, who used to be the chairman for AMD India and now runs around seven companies. Also, the Director S.S. Rajamouli's cousin is Raja Koduri, who used to work for AMD as well as Apple. This means we've got large graphic and support for the backend from these individuals. Rajamouli joined as a director for Makuta VFX on papers for two consecutive years in order to give us a foothold into the game. As soon as we began working for Eega the project, he decided to withdraw from the project. It was a great thing, I am grateful to him for it.


I had a thought that I'd be moving between the UK and IndiaI thought I'd be able to travel between the UK and India. Then my time in India became more and more until I had to move all the things at the house I was living during my time in England to my dad's and mom's house. The stuff is still there!


FilmmakerWhat are your relationship and with S.S. Rajamouli?


DraperWhen your involvement is intense, it doesn't simply contact him, you also communicate with the entire family. when you eat with him, and you're integrated into their whole dynamic. The first time I eat with him I'm eating with his wife, his daughter, and his son. They treat you as an individual. I was at his house this morning and we enjoyed an enjoyable beverage, chin-wag and all the other things. Twelve more years on, and I've had this great energy.


RRR was much simpler because it was on the same page. We've come to understand about his mentality and how he is prone to approach certain issues in relation to lighting, composition and framing, as well as action reactions, timing, empathy. This is also due to the VFX Supervisor Srinivas Mohan, who oversaw the entire production process for RRR however, even so we'll get some input from Rajamouli. When I first came to the studio to see Magadheera the film, I did not know about the actor from Adam. I didn't know who he was and what he had done prior to and how he'd done it, what his track record was, his style of directing. When I first met him, he was unable to comprehend a word I was speaking, and I could barely comprehend what that he spoke.


Then I moved to Chennai and was in charge of post-production and pipeline work, as well as everything that the studio I was brought on board to supervise was handling. I had set everything into one location for this specific film. We were primarily responsible for the city as well as the stadium when we flashback. One track, the main Ram Charan flies up wearing his cape. I'd put up all these flags, all these characters--digital doubles and such. Rajamouli was in the hotel room, where I had set up a render farm, nine system rendering inside a room. quite rebellious. He looks at a few shots and then says, "Flag here, flag here, people here, move people over, remove, add." And I'm thinking, "There's gonna be no continuity, these guys are gonna be out of place." He said, "Don't worry about it." I battled him for a week about these flags and at the end I say, "I'll just do it." It took me 15 minutes to complete the task. And he did the right thing, I was incorrect. What I was unable to understand was twofold. First, consistency is well and good but in the kind of shots the photographer was trying to get composition was the most important factor. Even the moment something did go off in the air, it wasn't a big deal in the long run as long as the arrangement was performing. It was an original song, and in songs you can edit and you can do through a lot than this type of thing.


It was a challenging journey for me to learn during the second week after arriving here. The first thought was, "Oh, great. What's the next phase going to look like?" But it worked flawlessly, up to a level where I completed everything I needed to finish in just two weeks. There are eight weeks to go. What do I do? I ended up becoming the de facto QC at every step of for this studio. If I saw even a single track slip that I would not let it go. After I left, things got a bit shaky again. The last couple of images were like "Lets get it out, Pete's not here anymore." This was one of the main reasons for me to be taken back and was seated in a room along with four other men in Hyderabad and then blasted the entire thing out in just five weeks. It's the room of death. It is still there.


The next project came in the form of Maryada Ramanna(2010) it was the remake from Our Hospitality. The producer was that same director who also ended up filming Baahubali. Then we made Eega. I have one fear that you'll be able to guess is that phobia: flying. I bloody hate flies. I'm a bit of a flier. "Eega"is about the reincarnation of a murder victim as an insect who vows to take to take revenge on the person who killed him.It's a story about a murder victim who vows to take revenge on the We were required to study fly motion and locomotion. How can you get a human who has no such thing (massages forehead muscles) to move their body so that the audience can feel a strong connection between them and a fly of everything? We enlisted one man Ed Hooks. He is a world-renowned actor and has written numerous books titled acting for animators--because animators, in essence aren't actors. We've not studied the craft or performed stage acting or anything similar to that. Finding animators who are capable of acting themselves to be able to have an actual performance as the character of their choice is not an easy task. Ed is an old school stage. He worked in US TV for decades and discovered a niche that no one else was doing. He would go to Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney and instruct animators how to express emotion and to put themselves into the position that of the characters. What happens when you freeze a frame? The character ought to be able to reveal precisely what they're thinking about at this particular moment in time.


We flew him to the other side and had a three-day meeting. Rajamouli arrived, handed him an outline of the script and asked, "Tell me what you think." Ed was, "OK, I will. This isn't necessary and you don't require this." He just tore it up and then Rajamouli took it all to heart. He took everything that Ed stated and then made tweaks and corrections. However, some of the things we Westerners believe will aid in the development of plot, or that we perceive asunnecessary in a screenplay are crucial in this context since the audience different. The audience will be able to see physics go out of the window and that's normal. They would like the characters to appear greater than life. They want that they will be awe-inspiring. One of them, Balakrishna, there's a image of him in the 2003 film Palanati Brahmanaidu sitting on top of a train. He's basically as a conductor [holds his hands in the manner of conductors] and then the train moving towards him disappears from the track. The public is used to this kind of thing. Have you ever seen an Indian premier live?


FilmmakerI've watched clips but never in real life.


DraperIt's the carnival. It's insane and truly amazing. Eega --originally in the year 2000, it was the Canon 7D had just come out. We were going to shoot this using the 7D, then post-work it for four months later, we would get the film made and shoot the next one big and that would become Baahubali. The film Eegaended in becoming larger and larger. In the end, we got more funding, and other producers were involved and there was co-production with two other companies. more funds were poured into it, and the cameras were getting larger and better. In the beginning, we had planned to opt for the Alexa however there were an issue regarding the de-Bayer at the time. We decided to revisit and shot the film on film.


We were sat around the table thinking about how We need to frighten the hell out of this man. What are we able to do? What kind of shit could be put through this man and what could we do that isn't ludicrous? Then we think, "No, let's go crazy. What's the best way to make the fly lift the gun powder basket?" And one guy says, "He trains for it". Then they're like "Let's create an impromptu monte. Rocky amazing." There are all kinds of gagswere the point. One of the most famous responses I recall seeing at the premier was that the hero dies. In the next sequence, naturally it's the moment the fly pops out from the shell. The entire crowd was psyched for this CG character emerging.


FilmmakerIs it the very first completely CG sequence you made for Rajamouli?


Draper: Yes. There were flyovers, establishers and such. This was the first major event we worked with him, or any director we've collaborated with here. Everyone's afraid to try it out since there's a model for business in place that will ensure the marketability. The hero will give an amount of income The director's name going to generate a certain amount of income, and the composer of music will provide a certain amount of money. There's a place for that. The particular film, Nani wasn't a massive star at the time. The film ended after just 20 minutes. Then, there were three major names involved to the film: director Sudeep (who played the role of the villain) that was known as a well-known name in Karnataka in the south and Keeravani the cousin of Rajamouli, who composes and the only other person in the film. The main hero attraction has been snuffed out. Therefore, Makuta is basically an attempt to fill that void.


FilmmakerYou spoke of The Hospitality prior to that. A few of the scenes that appear in Eegacould originate from silent comedy. Do you know whether Rajamouli is a fan of that type of slapstick?


DraperI've watched his DVD collection, and I'm sure it's a must. Buster Keaton, Chaplin--loves the old school is a fan of the classics. Plus, there are modern ones, such as Steve Martin. One of his top films, should I recall accurately was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.


Filmmaker It seems that I haveread how getting the finished design of the fly approved by Eega required an extended time. Do you believe that?


DraperOriginally this film scheduled to release at the time of Christmas, but we wrapped the actual fly in the week of the 22nd. The design went through a lot of versions The first one was too spiky on hair, or too stiff and then it started becoming ever more soft. There was a bit of artistic license by adding the eyebrow's furrow on just two shots: one when he was able to get the powder of the gun and is kicks it back, and the other where he's crouching and hovering just in time to shoot himself into the air to the ground for the first time. The rest of the else was just body language. Then we actually got Nani to take on a series of tests for performance by putting an object over his head. I said, "Give us anger, give us anger!"


FilmmakerThere is no need to use motion-capture?


DraperNo It was the entire Key Frame Animation. The transposition wouldn't have been necessary. We're making a lot of observations of how fly's move. We also build things in a procedural way: go from point A to B and land, launch on the ground, and then grab it all within two frames. Motion blurs will determine the motion and make it look as realistic as it can be. It was fun to use the rig. There were so many animators and rigs. We had one rig, a Houdini rig as well as the Maya rig as well as the Max Rig, depending on the artist working. Then, the rig was rendered in Max and then composited in Fusion as well as Nuke. It was impossible to choose at that point in time since we started working on the fly in January, and then it was each day until release. Fortunately, by this point the majority of work was already completed with the fly, which was buzzing in wide shots, so it's not necessary to take close-up shots. Anything that you could see the fly close-ups was shot between the months of January and July in that year.


FilmmakerHow will the flow alter when you switch to something that is on an massive scale similar to Baahubali?


DraperA majority of the work was normal, and the method we'd been working on not always with him, but also with other directors ever since we first formed. We were aware of how long and what the structure and timing was going to be. When you're playing songs, there's more to play for the same time--more cuts and setups, gags, tiny interludes you'll have to complete.


The biggest work we saw to do on Baahubali comprised two parts. The first included Mahishmathi city. The city's palaces and everything else was inspired by the design of the set Sabu Cyril had been working on. We exchanged ideas with him, who knows how many times, and also took the concept designs that had been created by a different Studio, Firefly. We had to go through a lot of versions of the layouts that , until they finally started creating the set. We bought a LiDAR and we laser-scanned the entire item, and then built on the data. Then , you are like: "Right, that's final." This was basically an entire set, then light the thing up, and then use different angles based on the moment of day, then connect the set. It's a breeze, happy days.


The more complicated thing was the waterfall, whichwas] mostly achieved usingDummy particles, or non-computational fluids. I had a man visit Niagara Falls and shoot plates in various angles. It was winter and the falls were completely frozen. We took the image of Niagara and took that form there and the same shape in the other, then blending them and placing them on particles facing each other. Overlap and transform the image from this to that. Then, stick all of that together and you get an eddy. It doesn't require computational flows. Think of it as an ordinary PlayStation 2 game, which is precisely the way we did it with a lot of shots.


FilmmakerHow can different scenes are assigned to every VFX house in a production as complicated as Baahubali?


DraperAnother director of visual effects was tasked with assigning task to various studios. They'd have a preference on who was responsible for what, based on their understanding of the strengths of each studio. MPC is an example. MPC will be able to do a lot of animal-related work, since they're famous for it due to Jungle Book and Lion King. Makuta is likely to get lots of work for extension, and as well as set work because we've completed a lot of it, and we've got the process down, particularly in the area of scanning and supervising. Scanline, absolutely the leader in the world in the field of fluid work. Therefore, they know and knew exactly the studio they should use to work with, the capacity as well as how much work the studios are able to do in the timeframe available and if they're capable of handling the demands of this.


FilmmakerWhat do you think of discussing about how you worked on Rajamouli's latest RRR? RRR?


DraperWe have shot around 740 frames, according to my understanding which is the largest amount an studio has ever done for this film. There's a lot of our names in the trailer. This is what I would say at this point.


FilmmakerHow far in advance are you being introduced to Rajamouli projects, generally, watching the set and script designs and set designs, etc. ?


Draper: It depends. It was for Baahubali,very early. In the case of Eega It was extremely early. In the RRR, somebody else was responsible for the project. The primary supervisor of visual effects Srinivas was responsible for all this internally first, before bringing us in, unless there was something that they required our direct input: "There's this space, we need this to happen, give us your ideas on what you think this is going to be." There are a few similar environments within the RRR.


FilmmakerHow are they Rajamouli for suggestions?


DraperWe are able to spit out concepts. It's a wild procedure. Filmmaking is a collaboration and he's among those directors who are open to it. 99.9 percent of the time, he's aware precisely what he's looking for However, he's always willing for suggestions when it's something that can improve the enjoyment of viewers for the particular beat that's whether it's a visual or a timing action.


That whole rampart in Baahubali When everyone goes to smash all the arrow machines The original idea was that they would fall, boop, or as in [places finger on straight upwards and downwardsto straighten it up and down. I'm thinking, "I'm not doing that. Let me show you a different version." We were off, and we started smashing objects and performing Rag doll simulations. And Rajamouli says, "Pete, you're going to splash me with brain splatter. Don't donate blood to me and you'll be awarded an Certificate [cleared for public display, however only available to adults." I promised that I would not give him blood and that's the reason they have decided to add to the.


Another was the scene of the statue breaking into pieces during Baahubali The End. The original plan was that Rajamouli was hoping to run straight through the passageway that Nassar was standing, but as you can imagine that the corridor is there and the statue is here and it's not hitting geographically. Rajamouli is like, "Oh, just cheat and sneak it into. Nobody will notice." I replied, "They'll know! Somebody will show up with a bloody tape measurement and the same folks who calculate that From Point A to Point B and the leap on the falls, and he'd be dead." (Why did he not die? Because the film couldn't be made.) "So it's a given that the public will have to be able to figure this out. Let's take Rana's head as bowling ball. "[Rana Daggubati portrays evil King Bhallaladeva. " I explained it to him, and Rana is behind me saying "Do it. Make my head bowling ball. That would be awesome!" We blocked a preview of it and showed it to him . Rajamouli was thinking, "Yep, that's great. Let's try it." That's the way we went about it. Ideas are passed around to make things look cool.



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