Kochadaiyaan: Motion capturing the legend of Rajinikanth

Everything about “superstar” Rajinikanth is larger than life — his latest flick Kochadaiyaan promises to be not only larger than life, but also larger than everything else he has done before. If his last blockbuster Enthiran (Robot in Hindi) used unprecedented computer graphics which clicked with the masses big time, Kochadaiyan will use ‘motion capture’, an animation technique used by Steven Spielberg for The Adventures of Tintin. Another larger than life fact is that Rajini will be playing a long-haired Pandya king known for his legendary valour. This eighth century king had dominated the Cheras, Cholas and Marathas. As in the legend, an animated Rajini will sport the king’s signature long hair in the film. AR Rahman will score the soundtrack as well as the background score. One of the top hit directors in the south, a Rajni regular, KS Ravikumar, will direct the movie. The floors of his favourite studio in the city, the AVM, is being readied for the shoot, where he will be performing mostly in front of coloured screens in body suits with reflective markers attached to them. Cavorting with him in body suits and markers will be Katrina Kaif. His daughter-producer Soundarya has confirmed that Katrina was “excited” about this film and is working out her dates. [caption id=“attachment_186449” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A smart showman that he is, Rajini however has made it sufficiently clear that he is hale and hearty through strategic appearances in public. Reuters”]  [/caption] What is however not clear, is if there will be real human characters in the film interacting with animated characters enlivened by real-character moves, or will it remain a fully animated film. Soundarya has promised her twitter followers that the first look of the film will be out by the end of the month. Kollywood it seems, simply cannot wait any longer. At the moment, the motion capture technique and a highly regulated— if not sanitised— studio floors will help Rajini stage a quick come back given his recent history of bad health. Regular studio floors are notoriously dusty, crowded and messy. Therefore it is very likely that he and Soundarya have opted for this state-of-the-art method to shoot their film as it will help perpetuate the Rajini legend without exposing him to the travails of film shoots. A smart showman that he is, Rajini however has made it sufficiently clear that he is hale and hearty through strategic appearances in public. In the recent past, he watched the drama of a colleague and family member YG Mahendran and attended a political event of Thuglak magazine where Narendra Modi and LK Advani were the star speakers . Soundarya, the second of his two daughters, has been planning to immortalise the Rajini magic through her favourite medium of animation for a long while now. A computer graphics aficionado, she had embarked on a big budget animation film with her father much before the highly successful Enthiran. Titled Sultan, the Warrior, the movie went into production for several months, but never saw the light of day despite generating enormous hype and hoopla and some financial dispute. When the dust on the Sultan hype settled, a reworked film titled Rana was announced. However, on the mahurat (pooja in Kollywood parlance) of Rana, Rajini fell ill and withdrew into his privacy which included a stint in a Singapore hospital and recuperation at home. Now, Rana has made way for Kochadaiyaan. The announcement of Kochadaiyan has generated tremendous expectation and jubilation among Rajini-followers and the media in Tamil Nadu. Local newspapers are vying with each other to carry some tidbit every day, in the process even spinning gossip. One of the alleged buzz is that his daughters are fighting with each other to cash in on their father’s commercial value, which was vehemently denied by them. Earlier, some Tamil and English publications carried unverified stories suggesting romantic liaisons between his son-in-law and Kolaveri Di star Dhanush with Kamal Haasan’s daughter Shruti Haasan. They are the leading pair in a movie titled 3 which incidentally is directed by Rajini’s first daughter Aishwarya. Both Shruti and Aishwarya expressed outrage at such stories. Since Rajini has made a commercially successful crossover to Bollywood and other Indian markets with his Enthiran, the new movie is expected to have a pan-Indian audience and is jointly produced by Eros. Many actors from different language industries are being charted in to play key roles. One might expect a more neutral looking Rajini in his animation avatar so that he appeals not only to the Indian markets, but also to audiences overseas. Besides the traditional pockets of Tamil diaspora such as Malaysia, Singapore, USA, England, France, Sri Lanka and South Africa, Rajini also has a faithful following in Japan. Many of his movies since Muthu have played to packed audiences in Japan that in a movie titled Baba, he even inducted a Japanese actress. Many of the posters of the Rajini movies in Japan used to carry the epithet Muthu Maharaja (or Golden King). In motion capture, that Kochadaiyaan will employ, the actors wear body suits with reflective magnetic markers which will plot their movements and expressions through several digital cameras and impart them to animated characters using high-end computers and software. This technique makes animation close to natural and captures even the subtle expressions and movements of body parts as one saw in Avatar or Tintin. Different versions of motion capture and appropriate high-tech contraptions have been in use for a while in Hollywood which resulted in some breathtaking visuals in films such as Matrix. In fact, Shankar the whizkid of Kollywood, who directed Rajini’s Enthiran had featured the possibility of motion capture in real life in one of his earliest movies, Jeans, which had Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan as the main romantic interest. Here is a simple demo of motion capture