Raai Laxmi’s film will have an animated tiger for 40 minutes

Cinematographer MV Panneerselvam’s debut film as a script writer, Mirugaa, which stars Raai Laxmi and Srikanth, is in its final stages. He had told us earlier that a tiger will be seen in a crucial role in the film, which is directed by J Parthiban.Now, the team has created an animated tiger which will be seen in the film for almost 40 minutes. “Usually, in our films, the portions that actually have visual effects will be for say, about five to 10 minutes. But in our film, the tiger’s footage lasts approximately 40 minutes,” says Panneerselvam, who has also shot Mirugaa.The team took several references and made dummies of the tiger, which formed the blueprint for the animated version. “Many filmmakers go to Thailand to shoot with tigers for real, or use rubber or thermocol dummies when shooting scenes with tigers, but we did not resort to any such acts. We have created the tiger in our film entirely digitally. I wanted to do this with an animation studio here rather than go abroad or Mumbai for the visual effects work,” he states.The studio that he went with was behind the recent film, Thumbaa, which also had a tiger in the central role. Quiz him as to whether the footage created for that film has also been used here, and he says, “You cannot use VFX that was done for a different film because in every shot the lighting will be different, especially when the animated tiger is a character. Work on the visual effects in this film has been going on since March 2019.” He informs that the animal will appear in three sequences in the film — in the opening sequence, the interval portion and the 40-minute climax. “The climax will have very little dialogues and will feature just four characters — the hero, the heroine, a child, and the tiger,” he says.