For the past four-and-a-half months, production and visual effects company Prime Focus has been working on the visual effects of a British independent film Tales of the River Bank, directed by Peter Watson and slated for a 2008 release.

As Amit Gupta, director, corporate development, Prime Focus, transports the 1,400 VFX (visual effects) shots to London, there is a sense that Indian studios are coming of age and executing high-end shots for big international releases. Tata Elxsi?s visual computing lab (VCL) is working on an episodic 3D series for a North American client and doing visual effects for a project for one of the largest studios of Hollywood. While non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) prevent many of these companies from talking at length on these international assignments, Bhaskar Dutt, head, marketing, VCL, Tata Elxsi admits that, ?Indian studios are gradually, but surely, doing more high-end work than they were doing some years ago. It?s a process and work is picking up.?

VCL is working with almost all the big Hollywood studios and has already executed projects for Sony Pictures Images, MGM, Columbia. For Prime Focus, the ?breakthrough? project was 20th Century Fox?s 28 Weeks Later, the apocalyptic sci-fi thriller that was released this May, for which the DI (digital intermediate) and visual effects were handled by their London and Indian studios.

This is the company?s first full-length Hollywood project after it acquired a 20-year-old London studio last year. A team of about 25 artists in India and about 15 in London collaboratively worked on over 100 visual effects shots in the project, which included a complicated sequence of napalm bombing of London at night. Also, a lot of photo real props like military vehicles, planes and choppers were added to many of the scenes digitally.

The fact that India is slowly gaining ground in VFX outsourcing is also evident from other happenings?like, for instance, Los Angeles-based and Oscar-winning animation and visual effects studio Rhythm & Hues has been growing its India operations, with one in Mumbai and the other coming up in Hyderabad. Some of the milestone projects the Indian studio has worked on over the past two years have been Night at the Museum, Superman Returns, and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Says AR Seshaprasad, digital production manager, Rhythm & Hues Studios, India: ?One needs to understand that we are the same studio both in LA and in India. We currently have about 700 people in the Los Angeles facility and a little over 200 in our Mumbai facility. So the work gets split up accordingly.?

And while it?s difficult to pinpoint the percentage of work that gets done in India, Seshaprasad points out that the ?Mumbai facility is involved in all the stages like modelling, rigging, animation, lighting, camera tracking, technical animation and compositing. Today, the artists in India work on all of the same Hollywood feature films as our colleagues in Los Angeles, and we work together in a highly collaborative manner to deliver the highest quality imagery.?

At the moment, Rhythm & Hues Studios India is working on Newline Cinema?s The Golden Compass and Fox?s Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mummy 3 and The Incredible Hulk. Companies are increasingly opting for an east-west collaboration. Says Gupta: ?We have the cost advantage, and they have many interesting ideas. Together, we can deliver the best images in the business.? But if the London VFX market is slated to be about $1 billion, the US market is five times that size. ?Hollywood is Hollywood,? admits Gupta, and says the company is looking at entering the Hollywood market, either by acquiring a company or by setting up its own studio. Tata?s VCL too is thinking of expanding, both in India, with additional centres outside Mumbai, and overseas as well, points out Dutt.

The trend in Hollywood now, claim experts, is that a lot of the big-budget movies?think Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Spiderman series?being made are using a lot of special effects. For instance, Spiderman 2 used 700-800 VFX shots. And yet, while volumes have increased, release schedules are not changed. Says Gupta, ?Studios are breaking projects into multiple facilities to handle the sheer volume of work and release the film on schedule.? All this only means more business for Indian studios.

Mohan Krishnan, head, corporate communications, of the Chennai-based Prasad Group, stresses that setting up a studio in Hollywood in 2005 has gradually increased the workload in India. ?We are catering both to the US and European market and though the kind of work we get is still not very high-end, it has changed from the low-end work we would get earlier.?

Thanks to several success stories in the industry, there is a flood of VFX work being done in India. ?The big challenges are to be able to consistently delivery high quality work on the various projects, without over-committing and under-delivering,? warns Seshaprasad. Many of the experts that FE spoke to felt that India needs to move up the value chain. ?It needs to transform itself from a destination for lower cost, labour intensive VFX tasks and it should rather focus more on the high-end, creative VFX tasks, because India will soon lose out to other markets if it tries to compete purely on a cost perspective,? he adds. All the players insist that working with a foreign studio leads to all-round efficiencies.

Says Dutt: ?It has helped us gain exposure to better practices and technology trends and gather knowledge.? This translates to a more streamlined method of working even in domestic projects, which is another growth story. ?Ignore the domestic VFX market at your peril,? says Gupta of Prime Focus. Having worked in 95 Bollywood films since its inception a decade ago, from Qayamat to Eklavya, Guru, Cheeni Kum, Chak De! India to the upcoming Saawariya, Indian films are working on their look and spending money on it too. Tata?s VCL is working on Ashutosh Gowarikar?s Jodha Akbar, Aamir Khan?s Taare Zameen Pe, Afzal Khan?s God Tussi Great Ho and Goldie Behl?s Drona. ?We are also working on,? says Dutt, on the ?hugely exciting landmark project, India?s first 3D animation feature film, Roadside Romeo, a Yashraj Films and Disney co-production.? ?There?s a lot of interesting projects at hand,? admits Keitan Yadav, COO, Red Chillies VFX, which has been busy with home production Om Shanti Om.

?We did a lot of shots for Chak De, Don, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom,? he adds.

As Red Chillies VFX quickly ramps up from 50 to 150 and shifts to a bigger studio in Mumbai, it is also talking to international studios?one of the reas-ons why they are expanding capacity.

But with plenty on the plate, there?s a major people problem. Says Dutt: ?There?s a tremendous lack of adequate and trained manpower.? Ask him for a solution and he quips: ?Proactive in-house training seems to be the only short and medium-term solution.? Agrees Seshaprasad: ?One of the challenges is finding high quality trained talent because there are very few or no long-term cour-ses in art and animation. At R&H India, we have had to grow our own artists from intelligent, enthusiastic, and passionate students whom we put through a well-structured, multi-month training programme.?