Visual effects
March 2010 saw the inclusion of several visual effects techniques being incorporated in the production of Ra.One.[37] In an interview, Harry Hingorani (production director of Red Chillies VFX) stated that "[the company] was set up in 2006 [...] Khan wanted to make something big involving VFX and that was the intension behind starting [it]."[37] Extensive research was carried out by the crew, and no other films were accepted by the studio post My Name Is Khan (2010), with special focus on setting up proper software and creating "the right team" during pre-production itself.[37] To minimize the risk of future delays, the task of adding special effects was outsourced to multiple specialty studios around the globe, including in the United States, London, Paris and Bangkok.[38]In addition, Prime Focus also provided digital and visual effects services to Red Chillies VFX for the film.[34]
Impressed by the work he had seen in the 1994 Hollywood release Stargate, Jeff Kleiser was hired by Khan as the supervisor of visual effects in May 2010.[39] A team of 750 technicians under Kleiser carried out the addition of special effects into the film.[40] Special effects creator Robert Kurtzman was assigned to design the suits of Khan and Rampal's characters. The suits were made by a team of specialists based in Los Angeles, California.[41] While both the actors shot the film wearing a simple suit, a good deal of sparkle and polishing was later added to enhance its look.[9]
The film is reported to have close to 3,500 VFX shots (occupying about 135 minutes of footage), with 800 of them being solely dedicated to G.One's suit alone, thus exceeding the total amount of shots that was used in the 2009 Hollywood film Avatar.[9] Khan later singled out one process, explaining that it took nearly six days (137 hours) to create a single frame shot of glass flying on his character.[42] Keitan Yadav notes: "There is no software or technique in the industry that we have not used for this film. For 3D, we have used software like Maya, Houdini and Macs. For composites, we have used Nuke and Shake. We have even written our own programmes. We programmed certain things rather than doing them manually."[9]
The film's visual effects have generated massive curiosity among moviegoers, film distributors and critics, and have been labelled as "the best India has ever seen [and] on par with Hollywood".[4][43] Hingorani stated that "60% of the film is visual effects. There are 37 sequences in all, and they were considerably difficult and time-consuming."[37] Jeff Kleiser commented that the most challenging part of Ra.One was creating the cubic transformations for the lead characters.[37] It was later found out that the incorporation of visual effects was the main reason behind the increased time for post-production.[33]
