A special Indian effect

Indians make a mark on Hollywood's digital glitz

Jabalpur born Umesh Shukla is a much-wanted man in Hollywood. The National School of Design-trained animator who worked for New Video Studio in Zamrudpur in Delhi is now established in Hollywood as one of the few Indians making a mark in the digital effects business.

Shukla created the digital people on the "Titanic." His official credit in "Titanic" was character integration supervisor and he was part of the 80-member team that won the Academy Award in 1998 for the Best Achievement in Visual Effects for the film.

Using his computer skills, he sinks ships, creates lava and makes prehistoric animals attack cities.

This unassuming and low profile animator came to Hollywood from Singapore in 1995 to join the Los Angeles-based Digital Domain as a senior digital artist. At Digital Domain, Umesh worked on "Island of Dr Moreau," "Dante's Peak" and "Titanic."

He also worked for Disney feature animation and DreamWorks as digital effects tech lead on films like "Wild Life" and "Shark Slayer." He turned down an offer from George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to launch his own studio. He is now working on a project close to his heart "� Mahabharata.

"We as Indians offer a lot of value to the digital effects business. Story telling runs in our blood. Once we master the basics of computer animation, the world is really our oyster," Shukla says.

In another part of Los Angeles, the show reel DVD of an Indian special effects company featuring scenes from "Kal Ho Na Ho" play on the plasma screen in a leading Hollywood studio.

There is pin drop silence for a minute as the show reel ends. Two Indians dressed formally and representing Visual Computing Labs, a digital visual effects studio in India, are brought into the screening room and congratulated on their work.

The Hollywood executives are impressed with the work of creative director Pankaj Khandpur and his talented team in Mumbai. Later the company is short-listed to do tests for the next digital visual effects film.

"We have already successfully delivered digital effects for Hollywood films from our state-of-the-art studios in Mumbai and Bangalore," K. Chandrashekhar of Visual Computing Labs notes.

The creative skills of Indian visual effects studios are becoming visible at Hollywood. Several Indian studios including Crest Communications, UTV Toons, Maya Entertainment, Digital Arts Media, Jadoo Works, Pentamedia, MUV Technologies, Toonz Animation and DQ Software have set up offices in Hollywood to source digital effects work.

To be sure, the special visual effect genre is not exactly new to Hollywood. Since the beginning of film making, optical illusions cinematographers and lab technicians were called in by film directors, to create the impossible.

Hardly any movie is made today without digital effects, from the massive tidal waves of "Deep Impact" and "The Perfect Storm" to the apocalyptic storms of "Twister" and "The Mummy."

Digital effects are also used for subtle effects such as smoke rings that appear as a gun is fired or to simply remove the bruises from the face of a star.

This summer Hollywood is going to release a new big budget digital effects movie "The Day After Tomorrow." A high concept film from Roland Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame, "The Day After Tomorrow" is about a climatologically disaster that ravages the world beyond recognition.

As millions of terrified survivors flee south, Adrian Hall, a professor of paleoclimatology, played by Dennis Quaid, heads for New York City "� which has turned into a frozen wasteland "� in search of his son Sam who may be still alive. Fox reportedly spent $ 125 million on digital effects to recreate the ice age on big screen.

Budgets for special efects in major Hollywood movies have moved from US$ 10 million a few years ago to US$ 55 million a movie already. The digital effects market is worth close to $ 5 billion.

Lucas' ILM is the most experienced digital visual effects studio in the world, with over 200 movies in 26 years. ILM has won 14 Oscars and its biggest competitors are Digital Domain and Imageworks.

In India, digital visual effects work is slowly becoming important for Indian films but it is the BPO model that has made the Indian industry come alive.

Indian visual effects studios now armed with Hollywood technology and Indian craftsmanship are aiming at taking over some of the delicate special visual effects work.

Besides Hollywood, Indian studios are now getting enquires from the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Sweden and even Korea.

Indian visual effects studios came together under the umbrella of the trade association, the Animation Producers Association of India, in 2002.

Biren Ghose of Animation Bridge says: "Indian studios need to market their skills at major trade shows to make India attractive as an outsourcing destination."

Ashish Kulkarni of JadooWorks argues: "The business is exploding by 200 per cent per annum and it for the Animation Producers Association of India to take Indian animation and Fx studios to the next level."

Here in Hollywood on January 27, three-time Oscar nominee Sigourney Weaver read out the nominations for the 76th Annual Academy Awards in Beverly Hills.

One day, the Visual Effects Oscar nominations will include Indian names. Incidentally, Weaver received a 1986 Oscar nomination for her leading role in the special effects film "Aliens" and her next film "The Village" is directed by Indian born Hollywood director Manoj Night Shyamalan.

Lall is the president and CEO of LALL Entertainment, based in Los Angeles and New Delhi.

He can be contacted at lallentertainment@hotmail.com