Gangadharam Raja shares his experience as the senior compositing artist for the Nascar “75 Anniversary” spot

What was the most exciting part of working on this spot?

Each advertisement and project we work on here brings its own unique and thrilling elements. When I saw the offline, I felt certain this is going to be a masterpiece. This spot has some live shoot footage and historical highlights, we brought the historical events to life using 3D and Compositing. Adding the ocean on the desert horizon was a bit challenging: we comped the supplied stock elements, stitched them together to fit into the shot and maintained the continuity throughout the sequence. Every department’s collaboration was crucial. For me as a compositor, it’s about being very smart and detailed in doing the comp. That made me more excited to work on this spot.

What were the biggest technical challenges while working on this?

We didn’t face any massive difficulties or challenges, but adding the CG crowds into the live action plate and matching the lighting and motion blur according to the shot was a bit challenging, as these were fast moving shots. We needed to show more lighting variation in the CG crowd, especially in the night sequence shots. We successfully nailed this in comp.

What was the creative process like for your department?

As we were showing significant changes in time, we had the CG stadium geo of one stadium, and we were supposed to use the same for the other two also. We were facing some minor mismatches in the stadium wall and fence alignment and considering the short time we had to deliver the spot, we managed to fix these mismatches in comp by warping and using other comp techniques.

What’s been your career trajectory in VFX, have you worked on a lot of automotive projects before? How was this different?

I started my career as a motion graphics artist in television. I’ve progressed through different stages from there, transitioning into roto paint, junior compositing, and eventually mid and senior compositing. I began as a mid-level compositor at The Mill, then upskilled to being a senior compositor. It’s a great accomplishment to reach this stage in my career, I’m looking forward to further growth where I can contribute more. I have worked on few automotive projects for Mazda, Toyota Tundra and Forza Horizon. This was different as I had more creative liberty while executing the shots. My supervisors in India and the home site supervisors motivated me to give my creative best to the visuals and I really enjoyed working on this spot because of that.

Did you learn anything new while working on this spot, especially while collaborating across The Mill sites?

As we create the new and extraordinary, every project we work on here has something new to learn. We are in a creative field so every day we work here teaches us something new. The team from the other Mill sites was clear on what they want from us, and we delivered high quality work as expected. Apart from that, I enlarged my aesthetic vision on the night effects CG stadium shots through the creative feedback from New York.

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