MUMBAI: The Indian animation and special effects industry is coming of age with Maya Entertainment Limited (MEL) leading the way. After setting high standards with the superbly crafted film Jajantaram Mamantaram, Maya has another winner in Balaji Telefilms' new film Krishna Cottage.

MEL creative head Chetan Desai said, "Visual effects give value addition to certain sequences in a film but the success of an SFX team would be that the effects are invisible, i.e. they enhance a scene visually without being in your face!"

While a normal film would have 30 seconds to a minute of special effects, Krishna Cottage has a smooth 10 to 12 minutes of visual wizardry that goes hand in glove with the script.

Some latest techniques like the 'Time Slice' and 'Bullet time', which need a multiple camera set-up to shoot the character from 180 degrees, were canned with a single camera for the first time in India while the good old computer did the work of some 35 cameras! With wire removal, freeze frame, Computer Graphics, artificial winds and leaves etc - lo and behold - you have a frozen Isha Koppiker in mid air!

Some other highlights in the movie are Rati Agnoihotri walking right between a day and night sequence in the same frame and also a car coming out of a tunnel, crashing straight into a wall of ice! Every single pixel of the scene is graphically created!

MEL marketing and communications head Rajnigandha Shekhawat says, "The crew at Balaji, specially the director Santram and EP Prakashji, were very professional and made us feel at home even though this was our first venture together."

MEL creative head Chetan Desai said, "Visual effects give value addition to certain sequences in a film but the success of an SFX team would be that the effects are invisible, i.e. they enhance a scene visually without being in your face!"

While a normal film would have 30 seconds to a minute of special effects, Krishna Cottage has a smooth 10 to 12 minutes of visual wizardry that goes hand in glove with the script.

Some latest techniques like the 'Time Slice' and 'Bullet time', which need a multiple camera set-up to shoot the character from 180 degrees, were canned with a single camera for the first time in India while the good old computer did the work of some 35 cameras! With wire removal, freeze frame, Computer Graphics, artificial winds and leaves etc - lo and behold - you have a frozen Isha Koppiker in mid air!

Some other highlights in the movie are Rati Agnoihotri walking right between a day and night sequence in the same frame and also a car coming out of a tunnel, crashing straight into a wall of ice! Every single pixel of the scene is graphically created!

MEL marketing and communications head Rajnigandha Shekhawat says, "The crew at Balaji, specially the director Santram and EP Prakashji, were very professional and made us feel at home even though this was our first venture together."