Planning for Battle

A historical battle — the Battle of Panipat — with cannon fire and war elephants, following the historical accounts of the battle tactics. Two units and five cameras shooting over about ten days, which is quite fast given the scale of the scenes.

That speed took a very meticulous planning process. We first spent about two weeks with the director and stunt coordinator, determining the historical battle tactics that would form the backbone of the action and the narrative story beats that would create the dramatic tension for the characters. Then we storyboarded every scene in as much detail as possible, and spent another week with the VFX, SFX, stunt and AD teams, scheduling and planning.

We were shooting on a large open dirt field, and the approach to lighting was to orient each scene so the sun was always in the back of shot. At times we used big blackouts as negative fill, but mostly we strategically ran very long soft plastic pipes around the battlefield, through which three very big smoke machines piped smoke. That created depth and atmosphere in the frame — and, as it rose to the sky, a kind of broken-up diffusion wall for the sun. Lighting was mostly careful scheduling, orientation and smoke.

Cameras were on a crane for the elegant pre-battle moves, a stabilised head on a 4-wheeler for the charges of men, horses and elephants, dolly and Easyrig for hand-to-hand combat, and drone for the big wides showing the battle tactics.