Namit Malhotra is India’s man of the hour on the 2022 Oscars and for good purpose. The third era of a filmmaking household, Malhotra is the Chairman and CEO of DNEG, the VFX professional behind the 2 Oscar-nominated movies on the 94th Academy Awards, which is slated to happen on March 27 at 8 PM EST (March 28, 5:30 AM IST) on the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
DNEG has obtained nominations within the Best Visual Effects class for its unbelievable work on director Denis Villeneuve’s acclaimed movie ‘Dune’ and Daniel Craig-starrer ‘No Time to Die’. The different movies up for nominations in the identical class embody Free Guy, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
“It’s an important feeling. It’s the primary James Bond film to get a nomination on this explicit class in lots of, a few years. Dune, however, is the brand new benchmark of visible results in storytelling,” Malhotra tells us over the phone from Los Angeles.
DNEG’s VFX work has previously won six Academy Awards for ‘Best Visual Effects’ – including Tenet (2021), First Man (2019), Blade Runner 2049 (2018), Ex Machina (2016), Interstellar (2015), and Inception (2011).
Talking about the challenges that his team faced while working on ‘Dune’ and ‘No Time To Die,’ Malhotra says, “No Time to Die was sort of just finishing when the pandemic hit. Bond had its own complexities just by the virtue of its scale and quality because the promise of a James Bond movie is that it’s got to look absolutely real. When you go and watch a Bond movie, you expect that all of this is filmed and done with meticulous planning, and ensuring everything that has been captured is absolutely seamless. The audience should say, ‘Oh wow, how did they shoot this?’ So, delivering that photoreal and 100 per cent authenticity in the constraints of time, Bond had its unique challenges from that standpoint including delivering a very seamless vision, which is what you see today. You can’t actually differentiate what’s been shot and what’s been done digitally. Fortunately, people were still in their offices at the time so they worked together and it was a little easier.”
Malhotra continued, “By the time Dune got here to us, the pandemic had struck and we have been within the important section of placing the movie collectively globally throughout all our completely different places of work. But we ended up bringing a really completely different imaginative and prescient. When you see Bond or any of the opposite massive movies, there are all the time these wow moments while you take a look at a specific shot or a scene. Whereas in Dune, it’s not essentially pushed to create a wow second however the entire movie is a wow. From the begin to the tip, it’s probably the most seamless rendition of a really real, constant imaginative and prescient that’s taking part in out organically. And, to attain that stage of excellence throughout a complete film may be very completely different than creating these wow moments. Dune is a brand new customary in filmmaking as a result of the filmmaker shouldn’t be attempting to say, ‘Look at this scene, it’s so cool.’ You by no means really feel such as you’ve been taken out of the film as a result of all the pieces is so seamlessly built-in.”
So what makes DNEG the go-to choice for mega filmmakers for visual effects and in what ways it is pushing the envelope by doing something different with every project? Malhotra says, “We have got more creative artistes all over the world with a very strong technology structure. At the core, there’s a very strong passion for creativity and flexibility. Despite being a big powerhouse in terms of infrastructure and knowing how to execute complex skilled work, the leadership of the company is driven by the passion of delivering very specific outcomes of filmmakers- whether it’s a small film like Ex Machina which got an Oscar a few years ago, it was a very light budget movie in terms of visual effects, or when we are doing Dune or No Time to Die, we are able to adapt ourselves very specifically in the framework of what filmmaker is expecting.”
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