Over the past few years, the animation feature film industry in India has been viewed as a potentially high-growth area because of the technical expertise available and the rich content, such as mythological stories, that could be turned into films. While the road to box-office success for animated films hasn’t really gone by the script so far, the demand for visual effects (VFX) from the mainstream film industry is, instead, on the increase.
Indian animation and VFX companies have long been an outsourcing destination for Hollywood films, but industry experts say that local production houses are now beginning to allocate a bigger portion of film budgets to VFX, given the huge possibilities that it opens up, especially in the science fiction, adventure and horror genres.
?After films like Robot, Ra.One and Ek Tha Tiger, we are definitely finding that the extent of VFX is increasing in Indian films. There are genres coming up that were classically not present in the Indian market and which are much more science fiction-oriented or at least fantasy-oriented,? says Nagarajan S, chief operating officer of Visual Computing Labs, the Mumbai-based arm of Tata Elxsi, which has worked on more than 1,000 shots for Ek Tha Tiger, which released in August.
?We do anticipate that, on the visual effects front, the Indian market will move up. It is not moving as fast as all of us in the industry would like, but it is certainly on the upward path and we are quite optimistic about that.?
According to him, the average VFX content in a film would be under 5% of its total budget. ?What we are seeing, however, is that there are films where the content is going beyond 10%,? he says, adding that the number of such movies is increasing. Recent films such as Enthiran, Chandni Chowk to China, and Aladin are estimated to have over 1,500 VFX shots, while films such as Blue and Guzaarish also relied on VFX, but to a lesser extent, according to the Ficci-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2012.
In 2011, the VFX and post-production industry in India witnessed a growth of 45% over the previous year to reach R1,970 crore, according to the report. ?Success of Hollywood movies in India indicates that the audience is ready for it,? it says, noting that the VFX market in India is still at a nascent stage. ?While in the recent past, there have been very few films that have had their scripts rely heavily on VFX to tell their story in mainstream Indian cinema, that number is significantly increasing.?
Agrees Vishal Dhupar, managing director, Asia South, NVIDIA, which makes graphics chips and has partnered with many production houses and their VFX teams internationally. The company has collaborated with the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Ra.One, which, he says, had more VFX shots than the animation blockbuster Avatar.
?Over the past two years, VFX has come to contribute at least around 40% of the film’s length, helping filmmakers explore complex stories and scenes, leading to sharp increases in the demand for VFX studios,? says Dhupar. ?VFX was previously employed only as a tool to cut costs, however, it has since then emerged as value generating tool for the industry.?
On an average, VFX accounts for 20% of the total post-production cost, which accounts for almost a third of the total production cost. According to Dhupar, the cost of animation production in India is one-fourth of that in North America and about 35% lower than countries like Korea and Philippines.
To be sure, Hollywood producers were among the early ones to tap the potential of Indian VFX studios, prompted by the saving on costs. Industry experts say that Indian VFX studios have now moved up the value chain from the labour-intensive and low-creativity work that was outsourced to them in the early years.
?Visual effects are used as a value addition to the content, a tool to enhance the creative story telling. On an average, if you take the total box-office collection of R100-110 billion this year, about 15-20% would be spent on VFX,? says Biren Ghose, country head, Technicolor India. However, Ghose pointed out that in India, the scale is still low in the VFX space compared to Hollywood movies. It is mostly movies in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu that spend on visual effects, but that is still not substantial, he adds.
Nagarajan of Visual Computing Labs reckons that the trend would sustain, given India?s population of youngsters and with the proliferation of TV channels and the reach of Hollywood movies. ?I think the conditions are quite ripe from both the demand and supply sides for this trend to sustain.?