RATNIK

Ratnik, a sci-fi adventure feature film, is the story of a World War III soldier returning home after a quarterly phase rotation program, only to find out that her home front has now descended into some kind of chaos too. The movie features very talented actors such as Osas Ighodaro, Bolanle Ninolowo, Meg Otanwa, Adunni Ade, Paul Utomi and a host of others. It is also visual effects-heavy with all disciplines of visual effects including 3D, 2D, rigging, tracking, animation, keying, rotoscoping, clean-up, digital matte painting, particles, fluid, destruction, modeling, texturing, rendering, and compositing. We finished the filming in several locations in Lagos and Oyo states as far back as 2016, but the movie has been in the works since then, and I must say it has been quite a journey.
Bringing Ratnik to the Nigerian and international audience has come to be the most incredible challenge that I have to overcome. But it has also been the most fulfilling creative endeavor I have ever experienced. Being a sci-fi movie set in an apocalyptic era, the film comes with several unique art directions that are totally different from the norms in Nollywood. As a matter of fact, some actors and crew members doubted the feasibility of actualizing such a movie requiring so much technical prowess in visual effects considering the level of skill set available at the time. Some actors that were invited at the early stages turned down the script fearing a flop and calling the move “too ambitious”. That wasn’t unexpected though, we had conditioned our minds to only warm up to actors who understand and share our passion only.
Shooting Ratnik was very challenging because I had to communicate my vision to a lot of the crew members especially those in the art department who, for most of the parts, had zero experience in this type of filmmaking. I also had to reassure some of the actors in areas where they had to perform with imaginary actors and objects. However, the hardest part came during the post-production process where all disciplines of visual effects were to be diligently observed.
What is exciting is that we also captured a stunts man performance and tracked them to a photo-real fully digital Ratnik character. At Flipsyde studios, our aim is to successfully composite Ratnik into the life action footages without the audience noticing that it was digitally created. That way, they are even more immersed in the story without any CG asset standing out like a sore thumb. We also try as much as possible to push to the limit all of the details that make the illusion complete.
A typical visual effect shot involving Ratnik will start with capture being done on set. We then take this data and make that translate into a character that one can relate to. And for the Ratnik box, the actors had to relate with a life reference box object with track markers. This enabled us to perform a 3D object tracking together with a match move to comp and replace a digital Ratnik box into the scenes.
I think for the first time, from this part of the world, we’ve been able to create a seamless blend of life action and digital action in a Nollywood movie.