Using Unreal Engine, the studio helps create authentic sequences of smoke and fire to Netflix’s miniseries inspired by the 1997 Delhi cinema tragedy that took 59 lives.
FutureWorks was tapped for Netflix’s drama Trial by Fire, delivering all previs for the fire scenes shown in the seven-part miniseries dramatizing the June 13, 1997, Delhi’s Uphaar Cinema tragedy. Due to poorly maintained equipment, a fire broke out during an afternoon screening of the war epic Border, resulting in 59 deaths and 103 injuries from the resulting stampede. Because of numerous safety violations, many cinemagoers were trapped inside, eventually succumbing to smoke inhalation.
Directed by Prashant Nair, Randeep Jha, and Avani Deshpande, Trial by Fire tells the story of a couple – Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy (Rajshri Deshpande and Abhay Deol), who lost their two children in the disaster. The show is based on the couple’s memoir, detailing their emotional struggle in the fire's aftermath and their groundbreaking quest for justice.
Taking the form of a courtroom drama based on the landmark compensation case that followed the avoidable tragedy, Trial by Fire features a snippet of the fire in the show's opening minutes; the scene is then revisited in the finale, comprising most of the last episode.
Netflix India tasked FutureWorks with creating previs for the fire sequences, based on a demo the team put together recreating a devastating earthquake in the 16th century.
Reconstructing real-life events raised the bar for achieving authenticity; FutureWorks VFX supervisor Gouri Shankar explained, “To understand the full story, we looked beyond the storyboard, studying the script, and carrying out our own research to ensure that we were recreating what happened in an authentic and realistic way.”
The previs team surveyed the real-life location, took photographs, and spoke to locals to find out which buildings existed in the area surrounding the cinema at the time of the fire. They also referred to newspapers from the time.
“For most of the work we do, the scenes are action-oriented, so we intentionally go a little overboard on the initial previs shots, with the expectation that the director and DoP will cut it back somewhat,” added Gouri. “On Trial by Fire, the directors cut back even further, as explosive action scenes would not have done justice to what really happened. A creative choice was made to balance compelling storytelling with respect for the real events. While the disaster was caused by fire, it was smoke, rather than flames, that proved deadly for the victims.”
Before starting on the previs, the FutureWorks team researched the director and DoPs’ shooting styles to understand how they worked and their preferred shooting angles.
Based on the storyboards from the DoP, Saumyananda Sahi, the team created a first draft of 100 previs shots in Unreal Engine. They then began animating shots, gradually showing more clips to Sahi, eventually animating the whole sequence. Next was the editorial part of the process, where the DoP liaised with the previs team to determine the length each shot needed to be.
The team collaborated regularly with the DoP to get the sequence right. The second pass completed static camera blocking, but the process became more complex as soon as the cameras needed to be moved. Shots involving slight movement required a few more passes to perfect, while it took around eight iterations to nail down the more dynamic sequences, such as establishing shots.
“The aim of previs here is to support how the director wants to tell the story,” noted Gouri. “Their creative inputs help us to refine the previs.”
Creating smoke was one of the team’s biggest challenges. According to Gouri, “Smoke is difficult to simulate realistically, and it was a big part of the fire scenes. The way smoke behaves when it fills a large room is very different to how it looks in the game engine. It was also challenging because of the lighting – at one point in the sequence, the building’s power is lost so that there is no light source, other than a single cinema usher’s torch beam.”
Providing previs for Trial by Fire was FutureWorks’ first opportunity to do so for a real-life event.
“We created almost the entirety of the last episode, which is rare for us, but it gave us a great opportunity to learn more about how the director and DoP work,” said Gouri. “We got the chance to engage with parts of filmmaking in ways we usually don’t get the chance to.”
FutureWorks’ CEO Gaurav Gupta added, “We’re honored to have worked closely with Netflix on telling such an important story. By creating the previs for some of the most emotional scenes in the show, we aimed to lay a foundation to ensure that the dramatization was as close to what really happened as possible.”
Check out the Trial by Fire trailer:
Source: FutureWorks
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
