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In 2000, Whistling Woods International – Institute for Film Communication Animation and Media Arts, Mumbai was established through a joint venture between Mukta Arts Limited and Filmcity Mumbai, under which Filmcity was supposed to bring in 20 acres of land as its share of the equity and Mukta Arts was to bring in cash resources towards setup of a Film & Media Institute.

Whistling Woods commenced operations in 2006 and over the past 6 years has built its brand as one of the best film schools in India, and has even been listed as one of the ten best film schools in the world by The Hollywood Reporter.

The court has stayed its order for a period of 8 weeks. The order requires WWI to surrender 14.5 acres currently not in use while continuing operations for two more years. Mukta Arts is aggrieved by the order and is confident that it will get due justice in the Supreme court as Mukta Arts was not responsible for any procedural lapses and Mukta Arts has delivered more than its promise under the Agreement.

Mukta Arts would respond with a detailed release after receiving the copy of the judgment.

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With Brands and Bollywood , constantly on the lookout to connect with the customers with innovative concepts which are favourable for all ,
a 25 sec TVC was produced by P9 Integrated to give out the brand message. This TVC was aired on a mix of GEC’s, music channels and news channels. The TVC highlights the USP of the brand-a unique opportunity to attain glowing skin in 15 minutes and also stresses on the primary ingredients of the product and the benefits its offers thereby.P9 Integrated also executed the planning and buying of media for the campaign.

Pritie Jadhav, COO, P9 Integrated says “P9’s effort has always been to generate a perfect coalition for the brands with the movies. The idea to make an association work is to connect to the right type of audience. The film presented with an opportunity to connect with Zydus Cadila’s leading brand Everyuth Golden Glow Peel Off, hence to engage the consumers we opted for a co-branded approach.”

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Hanuman, released in 2005, created waves in the animation industry and was one of the most loved movies across audiences. Post creating sensation, Percept Pictures worked with renowned Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap to produce ‘Return of Hanuman’ in 2007. It was a fun family entertainment film with a wide range of merchandise and games to support its success. This time, ‘Hanuman 3’ will be loaded with a lot of adventure for a better entertainment experience. The script of the movie is complete and the look of characters, news on events, promotions, merchandise, toys, internet & mobile games along with the release plans of the favorite Hanuman will be launched soon.

An upbeat and enthusiastic, Shailendra Singh, Joint MD, Percept Limited says “We had a great experience working with Anurag Kashyap in Return of Hanuman and now we are glad to sign up with Ruchi Narain. The very first day I met her, I realized that she was extremely charged and excited about the superhero Hanuman, we believe in her vision and the way she has approached the entertaining adventure route for the film Hanuman 3.”

Elaborated Sachin Shetty, CEO, Quintessential Studio, “Ruchi Narain is a writer par excellence. What’s important is that, her writing produces strong visualization. Her script has the energy required for an animation film. Of course, she is directing the film as well. It’s best some one who has depicted the film so vividly, directs it as well. Also, one cannot forget Ruchi is a veteran in AD-film making. Sense of humor, ability to create short sequences to communicate a whole lot of ideas are things that comes naturally to her and this will help her to excel as an animation film director as well. so all in all its extremely a delight working with her.”

Speaking about being roped in, Ruchi Narain, Writer & Director of Hanuman 3 said, “This is something very exciting for me. Incidentally, I was working on an animation film, before I got the offer. For some reason, that project didn’t take off. Percept knew that I was slated to work on that film and then I got a call from them. I like the fact that it will be my version of mythology. When I wrote the script, my aim was to make it fun for audiences.”

The popularity of Hanuman has grown tremendously over the years and the audiences are restless to see their favorite toon character in action – Hanuman 3.

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Telugu film `The Businessman’ screens in 130 UFO digital theatres in its third week. Bengali film ‘Khokababu’ screens in 109 UFO digital theatres in its 3rd week. Telugu film `Body Guard’ screens in 99 UFO theatres in its third week. Tamil film ‘Nanban’ screens in 94 UFO digital theatres in its 3rd week. Tamil film ‘Vettai’ screens in 69 UFO digital theatres in its 3rd week.

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The ranking of the top 10 favorite Bollywood films of 2011 was derived basis the ‘Word of Mouth’ (WOM) score of the film, using data collected through consumer research throughout the year. The WOM score represents the % audiences who liked the film enough to recommend it strongly to their friends.

While box office business is heavily influenced by the opening weekend of a film, the WOM score reflects the audience feedback on the content alone, irrespective of the marketing or the distribution of the film. The table below captures the Top 10 favorite films of 2011, as decided on the basis of audience WOM score.

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‘Players’ is based on the 2003 Hollywood blockbuster – The Italian Job. In ‘Players’, a gang of robbers led by Charlie (Abhishek Bachchan) pull off a perfect plan of robbing gold worth $10 billion from a running train, only to be double crossed by one of his own gang member. The movie is perfect mix of action, comedy & drama and has oodles of glamour.

One of the most important and challenging sequence in the movie was the train Sequence, which brings an entire twist to the story. The Prime Focus team planned the sequence from the pre – production stage itself. Talking about the train sequence, DOP Ravi Yadav said, “For such a challenging shot, Prime Focus presented seamless and convincing VFX shots in a short span. Involving Prime Focus helped me to improve the intensity and magnitude of the sequence to a great extent.”

In the sequence, the entire train scene was shot in a static boogie, so guards watching the movement outside the window was entirely shot against chroma and later on moving footage of the Russian background was composited, tracked and rotoed. To create the foggy effect or illusion on the windows of the train, 3D dynamics and matte painting was used and then the entire illusion was composited to make the shot as seamless as possible.

“Very seldom does a single sequence require 305 VFX shots. The scale by itself reflects the complexities involved to deliver a sequence of this magnitude. Our team has added all possible graphical elements to make this sequence as believable as it has turned out”, said Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director and Co-Founder, Prime Focus. “Since we planned the shoot keeping in mind the requirements of post and by utilizing our own internal pipeline, we were able to flawlessly deliver this sequence in 15 days.” continued Merzin.

The train is tracked through a satellite on numerous computers for its security. The monitor inserts having different motion graphics was individually designed and tracked for each computer screen in order to make it seamless with the story line of the movie. The shot when the train passes through a tunnel was completely computer generated, matte painted, tracked and 3D projected. To add glitter to the $10 billion worth gold, each and every individual gold slab was rotoed separately.

“Considering safety hazards, VFX was majorly used for most of shots in this scene. The team used the footage which was originally shot for each character in chroma, rotoed each character and then composited the moving footage of the background. To make the scene as believable, moving reflections and pace were added to the moving background.” said Mahesh Baria, Senior VFX Supervisor. Mahesh Baria continued, “Towards the end of this shot, Charlie and his team member Spider break into a fight. In this particular sequence, since most of the shots were under water, we had to add water bubbles. To make the shot look even more realistic and action packed, a lot of blast enhancements, rig removal, chroma and clean up shots were involved as well. In addition, camera shakes and frame-by-frame roto followed by tracking was carried out to make the shot look believable and authentic.”

Besides the shot mentioned above, there is a shot where Charlie and two of his other team members are driving cars parallel to the train in an underground rail system, to eventually drive it in front of the train engine. For this scene, the underground rail system and cars had to be made completely in CG. Another sequence shows Spider’s house laden with interactive touch screens. For each screen, different moving shots were shot separately and later on the moving backgrounds were composited and computer generated on the screen to make the shot look flawless. Finally, for the climax sequence, car multiplication, matte painting, compositing and transition shots were involved as the director duo wanted to show a massive traffic jam.

Since the first part of the movie was shot in Goa and Russia, the look that was required to achieve in DI was warm yellow and desat respectively. However, the climax needed to be glossy as it was shot in New Zealand.

Commenting on the project, Rohan Desai, DI Head and Chief Colorist, Prime Focus said “One of the biggest challenges and the most difficult sequence of the entire movie was the train sequence in Russia. Since the entire sequence was shot while it was snowing, and the weather – freezing, a persistent look had to be maintained while grading. Keeping in mind the glamorous look of the movie, the snow was treated with finesse. Post the train sequence, a desat look was maintained for the fight sequence.”
“Since the movie is an action packed movie, we enhanced the original colors to make the movie look sleek, stylish and glossy”, said Colorist, Harmeet (Sunny) Singh. “A very warm and glossy look was given to the song- ‘Ho Gayi Tun’ to make it the most glamorous song of the movie. Extensive work was done to make each character look glamorous and stylish in consistence with the movie.”

One of the other challenges was to match and grade shots from multiple setup cameras and the 5D camera.

Credits:
Project: Players
Director: Abbas-Mustan
Post Production: Prime Focus
VFX Creative Director: Merzin Tavaria
DI Head and Chief Colorist: Rohan Desai
VFX Supervisor: Mahesh Baria
Colorist: Harmeet (Sunny) Singh
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sikander Kher, Bobby Deol, Omi Vaidya and Aftab Shivdasani
Co-Producers: Mohammed Burmawalla, Pappu Vaswani

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Telugu film `The Businessman’, which releases today, screens on 295 UFO digital theatres while Tamil film ‘Nanban’ screens in 165 UFO digital theatres. The Bengali film ‘Khokababu’ releasing today screens in 120 UFO digital theatres. Another film releasing today, the Punjabi film ‘Pure Punjabi’ screens in 46 UFO digital theatres. Kannada film `Shakthi’ screens in 51 UFO theatres in its second week.

The much anticipated ‘Agneepath’, starring Sanjay Dutt and Hrithik Roshan, is expected to release in about 1200 plus UFO cinemas.

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The objective of the campaign was to make inextlive.com the news website of choice for the youth of markets where the tabloid is circulated. It’s a three month campaign that commenced in January 2012.

Mudra Max defined the TG of the client as one with traditional values but global aspirations. They covet fame and are materialistic but still care for their parents. They live in tier 2 and 3 cities and villages of India. On the internet, the TG is looking for Infotainment – songs, music, local news, videos etc.

Based on these insights, a folk singing competition was used as a peg to launch the website with a fresh look and feel. This competition would bring the TG close to the tabloid and as registrations and updates about the competition will be available on the website of Inextlive, exposure to the fresh website was bound to be there. Besides this, the competition will also give a fresh breath of life to the folk music of these areas as the youth will be incentivized by their love for this music.

IKtara, was the name given to the folk singing competition. A call to action for the youth was created with the tagline “Aao Maati ki dhun sunao”. An online media plan along with print support from iNext and Dainik Jagran was designed to launch the campaign. For social media support the Youtube, Facebook and Twitter pages of Inextlive were revamped. The likes to the page were targeted to get regular fans of iNextlive page. For the initial three days, a teaser campaign was launched before the final campaign to announce the competition.

Iktara is a one of a kind initiative to have happened on the web-space, wherein except the shortlisting by judges & recording of the content in studios everything else such as the call for entry, registration, upload of user generated content and finally the airing of the content is all on the same platform.

In just four days of the teaser campaign, IKtara received 532 users registered for the competition. People have shown immense interest in the folk music and are coming forward to participate in the contest. Daily visitors to the website inextlive.com have almost grown three times after the launch of campaign.

Speaking on the campaign, Pratap Bose, COO, Mudra Group said, “This is proof of the through the line thinking that we promote & practice at Mudra Max. The challenge was to launch with an idea that brings stature, awareness & engagement for iNextlive & endears iNext to its core constituency. Initial results of the campaign are more than encouraging to say the least. ”

“Not only will it bring this largely neglected form of music to the fore, but also help amateur folk singers venture into the mainstream and connect the youth of today with the music of their roots.” said Alok Sanwal, COO & Editor, Inext.

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Unilazer Exports and Management Consultants bought 18,15,593 lakh shares of UTV Software Communications held by Unilazer (Hong Kong) for Rs 992 each, taking the aggregate value of the block deal to Rs 180 crore, according to data available with the National Stock Exchange.

As of the September quarter, Unilazer Exports and Management Consultants held a 9.22 per cent stake in UTV Software Communications, while Unilazer (Hong Kong) held a 6.29 per cent participating interest in the company.

Shares of the company closed at Rs 993.70 on the BSE today, up 0.18 per cent from their previous close.

Last month, Walt Disney said it intends to delist UTV Software Communications by acquiring 12,215,776 equity shares (29.96 per cent) from public shareholders. It fixed a price of Rs 835.03 to Rs 1,000 per share under the delisting offer.

The buyback offer will open on January 16 and close on January 20, 2012.

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The film that redefined the rules of Indian Cinema – Delhi Belly, has scored a total of 20 nominations including Best Picture, Best story, Best Director, Best Actor (Popular Choice) for Imran Khan, Best Actor in a supporting role along with Best Actor in a Comic Role for Kunaal Roy Kapur. Best Actor in a supporting role (Female) for Poorna Jagannathan along with Best Ensemble Cast, Playback Singer (Male) for DK Bose, Background Score, Choreographer for Disco Fighter, Screenplay, Story, Editing, Cinematography and Sound Design!

Setting the trend of women centric films, No One Killed Jessica has 9 nominations consisting of Best Picture, Best Director and both the lead actress Rani Mukherji and Vidya Balan for Best Actor (Female) as well as Rakesh Sharma for Best Supporting Actor (Male) and Background Score, Screenplay, Editing and Sound Design respectively.

Along with these two box office blockbusters, the critically acclaimed films 7 Khoon Maaf has won 5 nominations. Actress Priyanka Chopra received 2 nominations for Best Actor (Female) and Best Actor in a Negative Role (Female). Best Supporting Actor (Male) for Neil Nitin Mukesh, Best Playback Singer and Choreography for the foot-tapping number – Darling. Chillar Party got nominations for Best Ensemble Cast along with Best Child Artist for both Naman Jain and Irfan Khan.

Commenting on the nominations, Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, UTV Motion Pictures said, “The Screen Awards are amongst the most prestigious awards in the country and 37 nominations reiterate the fact that our films have managed to entertain audiences across and the team effort behind making them has been appreciated. We congratulate all the nominees and wish them all the luck. May the best one win.”