Home >Articles

Prime Focus changes the game, delivers end-to-end creative services on ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Posted By : Mukesh Dube    At 08-09-2014 14:07:21

Tags : Prime delivers end-to-end creative services on ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For    

First Indian creative services company to be chosen as an exclusive partner to execute VFX and 3D conversion services, for a Hollywood project of this scale

Mumbai, 8 September 2014 – Prime Focus World (PFW), the creative services business of Prime Focus, the world’s largest media service powerhouse, has collaborated with Troublemaker Studios and Aldamisa Entertainment on Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. PFW is the exclusive VFX and 3D conversion partner for the much-awaited sequel, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, and based on Miller’s cult graphic novels. The film is distributed by The Weinstein Company, and hits the Indian theatres today.

“I’m incredibly proud of the team and the way whole global construct of Prime Focus has come together in achieving something that I don’t believe any other single company worldwide would have been able to do,” concluded Namit Malhotra. “This movie has given us a great opportunity to showcase our creative and technical capabilities. This was a huge commitment to our filmmaking partners, in helping to make this movie happen and will mark a milestone in our journey. I’m delighted with the way this has played out,” said Namit Malhotra, Founder, Executive Chairman & Global CEO, Prime Focus.

Director Robert Rodriguez was full of appreciation for PFW’s contribution to the film. “It was a lot for a single company to take on. They were the underdog, trying to compete with these big f/x houses, and at the end of the day, they delivered.”

Achieving Rodriguez’s vision for the film - and translating Frank Miller’s unique style from comic book page to big screen - meant that each and every shot would be heavily reliant upon the talent of PFW’s global VFX and stereo teams. The massive 2,282 shot workload needed full concept and production design, VFX and stereo creation within a short schedule of just 8 months, requiring PFW’s engagement on a global level and putting the company’s business model to the ultimate test.

In India alone, 550-600 visual effects artists worked on this big-ticket Hollywood movie, coupled with 1500 artists from the 3D conversion team who collaborated on this project. With 2,300 shots to be delivered, planning and production management worked seamlessly to create this visual extravaganza. In addition,  Prime Focus India team supervised and delivered major parts of the movie including decisions related to asset drilling, layout for all the shots (environment and cameras to be used) etc.

“Our production teams worldwide were managing a show of immense scale, which would traditionally go to multiple VFX companies,” said Merzin Tavaria, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Director, Prime Focus. “We have a track record of taking the impossible and making it possible, and this is what we did on the sequel of Sin City.”

The creative challenges were also significant. Early conversations with Robert Rodriguez revealed that the vision for the Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, was a complete upgrade from his original 2005 movie; he wanted to deliver a film in which each frame was stylized to match the look of Frank Miller’s graphic novels. Unlike the previous film, which used partial sets and production design, Robert Rodriguez sought to push the visual effects further by shooting entirely against green-screen, requiring PFW to develop the world of Sin City from the ground up.

Another advance on the original was that this time the action was in 3D. The stereo process required a separate workflow, its own pipeline, and its own team of artists in Mumbai and in Vancouver. PFW Senior Stereographer Justin Jones led the stereo teams, working directly with Rodriguez to create another layer of style and design through the 3D, in order to fully engage the audience.

Every PFW department was engaged on this project. Technology teams worked closely with the R&D department to generate and deploy tools that promoted consistency between shots and seamless integration across all locations; production put in place workflows that would deliver the shots in the short timeframe; and the global leadership team orchestrated the balance of resources that allowed PFW to simultaneously deliver work on some of the biggest films of the summer, including Transformers: Age of Extinction, Guardians of the Galaxy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.