Bollywood Joins VFX, Animation Fray

DV MAGAZINE

The Indian film industry, collectively known as Bollywood, is no longer just song and dance. Indian artists in the visual effects and computer-generated imagery realm put their creativity on display Tuesday in the Content Theater during “Globalizing Bollywood: Indian Animation and VFX Films Eye the Global Stage.”

The demonstration put the world on notice that lavish effects can be produced on the subcontinent, too.

In a country of more than 1 billion people, Bollywood is a machine, producing far more feature films each year than Hollywood. However, complex animated and VFX fare had been avoided due to a lack of tools and talent. But that’s changing.

“The Indian audience is going global,” said Keitan Yadav, COO of Red Chillies VFX, a visual-effects post-production company. “They’ve been so exposed to Hollywood films that visual effects become the selling point of the film.”

As an example, Ocher Studios Executive Producer Kartik Gangadharan showed footage from “Sultan the Warrior.” Currently in production, “Sultan” is the largest CG animated movie to date in India, budgeted at $10 million. The film is using well-known Indian actors and complex motion-capture techniques à la “Polar Express.”

VFX and CG artist is a hot job in India. “We have people who want to get into this industry but right now the schools in India are not training the kids the way they should be,” Gangadharan said. “Someone who comes out of a school in Europe or America is as good as a senior artist back in India. There’s a very big area for schools to come and open shops in India.”

Yadav said India got a late start entering the CG-heavy filmmaking business.

“We should go global with the production, have technicians from all over the world [come in] to give exposure as to how they did filmmaking works and learn from them,” Yadav said.