Brandon Routh in moments from Superman Returns

This Friday, as you watch the images of Superman Returns unfold on a big screen near you, you may find it hard to imagine an Indian hand in the willing suspension of disbelief. Yet, Mumbai?s 23-year-old digital compositor Achint Bansal?s invisible signature punctuates many a spectacular shot that all add up to herald the dramatic return of the man in blue tights.

The ocean and water effects that form an integral part of the visual design of the Bryan Singer movie was awarded to the Oscar-winning Rhythm & Hues Studio in Los Angeles. It?s India office in Mumbai, that has been involved in movies like Chronicles of Narnia and the upcoming Garfield 2, was given a part of the assignment and Achint got into action.

?Just like outsourcing in every field, special effects too comes cheap if done in India,? explains Achint, who is a graduate in Applied Arts and has also dabbled in graphic design.

?We are given a deadline and certain tasks around a particular set of images, and 25 to 30 of us get going together,? adds Achint.

And then he goes about digitally composting the shots. ?It is basically arranging layers and layers of images and putting it all together as one single image,? Achint describes. ?It is more about fooling audiences to believe that there is just this one whole image while in reality there can be thousands of separate frames shot against green screens and placed one above the other.?

When it came to Superman Returns, Achint and company had to handle a lot of complex wire removals. ?Most of their stunts are using wires and for a film like Superman, it only gets more,? says the Mumbai boy. ?So one of our most important jobs was to use previous frames as references and reconstruct those new portions in the given frames where the wires were passing. More than adding more things, a lot of the work is always about cleaning up the frames.?

The cape was a problem point on the post-production table. ?It had a lot of wrinkles in most of the shots,? recalls Achint. ?So we had to create computer generated (CG) capes in many shots. It helped enhance the overall Superman image to have a wrinkle-free cape flowing behind him.?

Achint feels blessed for having got such enviable assignments. ?It?s a lovely job,? he smiles. ?You have the whole world waiting for Superman to return and here I am giving personal touches to frames featuring him.?

What?s more, director Singer himself would review his work. ?After my job is done, the shots are passed through several stages to the final correction table when the director himself sits with the images.?

Achint Bansal

Given a chance, Achint would loved to have worked on special effects for Indian movies but his job at Rhythm and Hues India didn?t allow him to do so. ?We would only get foreign work,? he admits. ?Given the right budgets I feel Indian cinema can easily have the best of special effects. I am yet to catch Krrish but I believe the effects are on a par with the West. Even Paheli had very good special effects.?

What is ?very good special effects?? ?Invisible effects,? comes the ready reply from Achint. ?When the audience cannot differentiate between what is real and what is made up, those are excellent special effects.?

And there are plenty of such invisible effects in Superman Returns that has Brandon Routh resurrecting the legacy.

?There is a scene in the last half hour of the movie when Superman hurls a plane into the sky,? an animated Achint goes back in time. ?Everything in that scene from the plane to the sea and mountains in the background are CG created in LA and placed by us.?

Apart from the effects, what?s invisible is the hard work involved. What lasts on the screen for a few seconds can take months to achieve. ?One single difficult shot might take two weeks to get right,? says Achint, who has now quit Rhythm & Hues to chase his dreams of making movies himself.

?I can assure you it will be full of special effects,? he signs off.