Bollywood's dash of tech

Remember the movie Black where Amitabh Bachchan, an eccentric tutor, struggles to make Rani Mukherji, a deaf and blind girl, communicate with her parents and the outside world?

Do you recall the movie's sombre backdrops, the shadows and lights? Or the movie Mangal Pandey -The Rising that almost made the uprising of 1857 come alive on the screen?

Being a perfectionist, Aamir Khan wouldn't want to be caught dead showing a concrete dwelling in the backdrop or a village with light or telephone poles in that era. The latest action flick Chocolate too had its heroes blowing up ships and crashing helicopters. Besides, who can forget the cute cartoon characterizations of Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherji in Hum Tum? These were no cheap camera tricks but visual effects facilitated by high-end computer processing.

So has Bollywood finally woken up to the presence of the special effects' software industry? First, some facts. The Indian entertainment industry stands at more than Rs 20,000 crore today and is expected to grow at an 18 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach more than Rs 45,000 crore in 2009, says Sandeep Mehrotra, Sales Manager, Adobe Systems, India.

"Sadly, the world's top film producing country has just realised the need to employ technology to deliver world-class projects. Call it the urge to earn more or a need to take Indian cinema to higher quality levels, the cost-conscious Bollywood maestros have come to acknowledge the value of special effects, colour grading, sound effects and visual enhancement," is how Mehrotra sums up the recent 'go-tech-savvy' trend.

What does this 'effect' translate into? A faster turnaround / delivery rate (saving time and cost) at the production stage and maximising a films visual appeal.

"The need to maintain the quality of visuals has come to the fore with the digitisation of theatres," says Sanjay Gaikwad, director, UFO Moviez, "With multiplex culture in vogue in metros and digital cinemas changing the face of theatres in B and C cities, every director wants his film to look good than others."

Pankaj Kedia, regional sales manager (South East Asia & India), Autodesk Media and Entertainment (M&E) claims that the trend has set the Bollywood on fire.

"Autodesk M&E started with 2 movies in 2003 and will end 2005 with 50 movies. We want to do 100 films in 2006."

Growth for Autodesk M&E has come through films and television. Kedia estimates the television segment to grow at 18 per cent to reach Rs 30,000 crore by 2009. "This segment promises growth too. We have done graphics for NDTV, CSI Digital, X Files and look forward for more partnerships."

With filmmakers getting creative, the market economy is growing too. The new breed of directors do not mind investing Rs 40 lakh to Rs 1 crore additionally in digital technology.

A movie like Chocolate demanded a lot of planning, visualisation, backdrop/sets' planning and finally digital finishing.

"The director wanted to make a slick movie with many different looks. The London exterior used in the film was to look gloomy, with interiors very rich and inviting and mornings fresh and green. The shots of Afghanistan were to look de-saturated with high detail in blood and fire. We scanned the entire film digitally and colour timed it to the required look on a digital calibrated colour grading system," says Amit Gupta, business head of Pixion - the production house behind Chocolate.

"Pixion completed the film in 45 days," Gupta's point, "Can you imagine the cost to blow a ship or the cost to fly around a few choppers on your production shoot. Why do this when you can do all this in computer graphics?"

So the story here is all about high-end super computer systems, lots of storage, fibre-channel networks, multi processor rendering farms and high-resolution scanners and recorders.

The helpers like Adobe's 'Premiere Pro' software help in frame-accurate editing of digital video and audio in real time and 'After Effects' adds those stunning motion graphics and visual effects.

"Another professional audio editing environment offers advanced audio mixing, editing, and effects-processing capabilities while Photoshop CS2 is the professional image-editing standard and leader of the Adobe digital imaging line," details Mehrotra of Adobe.

Rohan Desai, digital intermediate supervisor of Prime Focus India Private Ltd - a post-production house that was involved in giving the rustic look to Mangal Pandey feels that since the film was a period film, "it was a great challenge to achieve the true projection of a raw and rich India in the 1850s."

So, what was a normal 35 mm film was digitally reworked and calibrated frame by frame as per the films' specifications. Prime Focus has been doing DI work since 2001 but then it was limited to visual effects sequences. In 2003, the company completed the first entirely colour graded film in India - Qayamat.

Desai recalls: "The director of photography for Mangal Pandey was extremely clear that he wanted to get the film to look very consciously 'filmic'." So, the task was to deliver just that. Being a bilingual release that was to be released simultaneously as separate films in both English and Hindi, effectively it was almost like two films were to be delivered concurrently.

"We spent three months on digital intermediate and visual effects with an output of 6 negatives for world wide release," he says. A strategic tie up with Adlabs in 2004 helped the company to operate on a larger scale. Today, Prime Focus can boast of 37 complete DI film projects with each film duration averaging to 2 hours 45 minutes.

Epic movies like Taj Mahal and Banaras; English movies like Shooting Gallery and Blood Suckers have also used DI processes to a large extent. Kavita Prasad, director & COO of EFX, a provider of digital effects for the entertainment industry is having a ball with directors lining up outside her office.

"Some of the big bollywood projects that we are working on include Rakesh Roshan's Krish, Raj Kumar Santoshi's Family, Rakesh Mehra & Aamir Khan's Rang de Basanti and Anil Kapoor's Gandhi. These apart, we are also working on mega projects from the regional language film industries and many foreign projects." She has pinned her hopes on Krish that "would set the trends for the visual effects' films made in India."

EFX deployed Autodesk M&E's products like Lustre, Smoke, Flame, Combustion and 3D Studio Max. "We have just installed a Lustre suite in Chennai to service the digital grading market in South India," reveals Prasad.

No wonder software vendors like Autodesk and Adobe are gushing over bollywood, which has awakened to audio production and video editing, animation and re-imaging.

About time!