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Something special

Vayu will revolutionise visual effects in India

MASTERS OF THE GENRE (From left) Jon Labrie, Madhu Sudhanan, Barrie Osborne and Michael Peyser

The mood in the Indian entertainment industry is upbeat. A lot of post-production, animation and visual FX work are being outsourced to India from the west. And to give the visual effects segment a truly global essence, Barrie M. Osborne, producer of films such as Lord of the Rings and Matrix, Michael Peyser, producer of films like Speed 2 and Indian VFX producer and National award winner N. Madhu Sudhanan, are setting up the Vayu digital studio in India.

The studio should begin its operations in conjunction with a local partner in Chennai in May. The head office will be in Los Angeles. To start with, the studio will house around 75 artists, a combination of western talents and locals and will gradually raise its capacity to 300. It will provide services in VFX and animation to some of the best filmmakers worldwide.

Jon Labrie, former Chief Technology Officer of Vector Digital Studio, who has projects like Lord of the Rings to his credit, will provide the technical pipeline for the studio here. "We will bring in animation directors, visual effects producers/supervisors, compositing directors and lead managers from Hollywood, who have worked in Academy Award winning films to nurture talents here. Presence of producers like Barrie with tons of experience is a great advantage," Madhu Sudhanan says. On the choice of Vayu (Sanskrit for wind), he says: "Barrie is a great fan of Sanskrit and we wanted to finalise a name that has something to do with air. Vayu is a blend of the East and West and gives a feel of the digital world too."

Madhu Sudhanan, the first chairman of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry— Visual Effects Community, says that the talent pool is very limited. "It's time that visual effects and animation are included in the main degree stream like visual communication and fine arts. Rather than a diploma course, we should cultivate a student culture, because the potential for visual effects, animation and gaming and post-production is immense," he adds.

He says that what is required is a unique blend of IT skills and creativity. "We developed a programme called `massive' using Artificial Intelligence to create a war sequence in Lord of the Rings. The kind of coding used is very different from the coding done in the banking sector."

Talking about the potential of visual effects driven movies, Madhu Sudhanan says that abroad many people would rather watch DVDs at home. "But, visual effects driven movies like Matrix, Titanic and even the recent Chronicles of Narnia and Godzilla are international box office hits because people prefer to enjoy such movies in theatres. We can recreate the magic here once we start using the technology to suit Indian story conditions," he explains.

Stringent recruitment process will be followed to select the best talents from the Indian pool for Vayu. "We have finalised a few projects and it's going to be a great learning experience. We are not competing with Hollywood's visual effects majors but are looking to provide a complementary role. The elements we need are credibility, expertise and quality manpower. It's going to be a cost-advantage situation for them as well," he adds.

K.JESHI

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