Interstellar's Indian Connection

'Interstellar was uniquely challenging as most of the shots were done practically on set without use of greenscreens which need further clean up in post production.'

Kochi-based visual effects artist Rahul Venugopal shares his experience of working on Interstellar, the film that won an Oscar for the Best Visual Effects earlier this year.

Appreciation and applause has been pouring in for Rahul Venugopal, a visual effects artist from Kochi, ever since Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Venugopal was part of the team.

A compositor and matte painter (a visual effects technique used in films to show environments which are practically impossible or expensive to shoot; a matte paintings can range from a simple backdrop to complex environments like an alien landscape or ancient castles) with a passion for filmmaking, Rahul has, over the years, worked on several projects in Singapore, India, Bulgaria, Turkey, China and the United Kingdom.

He is currently working on a project in Canada and spoke to Rediff.com contributor Praveen Sundaram via Skype.

After completing his diploma in media technology from Chennai, Rahul moved to Singapore to study visual effects at the SAE Institute.

He began working in commercials simultaneously.

“Commercials were not my thing as they are very superficial. I was more interested in photo-realistic work,” he says.

Singapore did not have many studios then, and he moved back to India. He worked at the Maskuta visual effects studio in Hyderabad.

His first assignment was the Telugu film, Badrinath. He then worked on A R Murugadoss’s Tamil film, Yezham Arivu.

In Rajamouli’s Eega, he was the second on-set supervisor for six months.

“Then I had three to four months of studio work as digital matte painter. I worked directly under the film director Rajamouli and overall VFX supervisor Pete Draper.”

In early 2012, his first Hollywood assignment came from Sofia, Bulgaria where he worked on The Expendables 2 as a digital matte painter.

Soon after, he returned to Kochi, his hometown, to freelance.

His overseas projects included a Kazakhstan production called Hunting the Phantom, for IDA Pictures, Istanbul.

In Beijing, an American studio called Base FX hired him for the feature film Olympus Has Fallen.

“It wasn’t an A list movie, but it made good bucks at the box office and a sequel is on the way,” Rahul says.

He took a break for about eight months.

“Life as a freelancer is tough sometimes. I have to keep updating my website and portfolio online and keep my eyes wide open to get good assignments. Networking also helps. This industry is very unpredictable.”

In early 2014, he got his most prestigious assignment to date. The Double Negative, London, called him to work on Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. He was the digital compositor for the film.

“Christopher Nolan would communicate through video conferencing to his visual effects supervisor, Paul J Franklin (who collected the Oscar), and the technicians in London.

“Nolan knows how to use VFX well, from a filmic standpoint. As a compositor, I worked on shots involving CGI (computer generated imagery), adding them seamlessly into film footage.

“Interstellar was uniquely challenging as most of the shots were done practically on set without use of greenscreens which need further clean up in post production,” he says.

Rahul believes that the Oscar is being awarded to films that “use visual effects subtly to narrate the story.”

Currently, Rahul Venugopal is the digital matte painter at Moving Picture Company Vancouver, Canada. “I am focusing more on matte painting these days, which has more scope for content creation," he explains.