Those wonderful men who make flying machines!

ENTERTAINMENT: India is finding its feet as an offshore location for adding special effects too.

The location: India. The project: Special effects. The client: Hollywood. And if you're one of those who couldn't resist seeing The Da Vinci Code on the big screen, here's a piece of trivia "" at least some of those spectacular special effects were done right here, in India.

Rewind back to King Kong and the gorilla, perfect down to that last hair on the nape of his neck, the terrific sets and the other icky creatures. Peter Jackson's King Kong was a working model of what striking images coupled with digital effect could do to a shot.

Others, like your friendly neighborhood Spiderman, or the blockbusters Superman Returns (awaiting launch in India), The Da Vinci Code, The Triangle (sci-fi miniseries), X-Men: The Last Stand and even television's Smallville are an example of visual finesse on screens worldwide.

Computer and software are the twin genies working to deliver these life-like effects. Autodesk Media and Entertainment (M&E), which dabbles in integrated digital content creation, management and distribution tools, would like to credit itself with a few of these Hollywood endeavours.

Pankaj Kedia, the company's regional sales manager (South-east Asia and India), allows, "Computer-generated imagery (CGI) for the thriller The Da Vinci Code, X-Men and other projects have extensively used Autodesk tools to enhance visual appeal."

Post production houses these days touch up almost every shot for a "fuller picture". The marriage, however uneasy, between movie makers and computers has come a long way since George Lucas' Star Wars. Today, the cost of CGI has dropped hugely.

Not that all that money has translated into better budgets for CGI. Kedia points out that a typical Hollywood film now costs upwards of $60 million "but not the allocation of budgets for special effects".

He adds, "Special effects have definitely ballooned into being a vital pinion in the production process. But that does not necessarily mean that the special-effects companies are flush with profit." (Initial hardware installations might cost upwards of $60,000.)

Naresh Malik, CEO of post production house Pixion, raises an interesting point, "Despite our talent and cheap labour, India has not bagged significant international projects because one cannot expand production capacities based on a project." Malik's firm has done three international VFX projects and promises some more are ready to roll.

Hollywood production houses cut costs by outsourcing bits of frames to off-site locations like India. Pixion claims that software and imaging technology in India is at par with the rest, but lack of backend support plays spoilsport.

Clearly, it's easier to create monsters in its studios than shift Hollywood's attention to India's CGI industry. Yet.